Nicholas Brandram’s Family Reject ‘Putney Pusher’ Claim and Attribute Death to Police Pressure

The family of Nicholas Brandram have denied that he was the so-called “Putney Pusher” and said he took his own life after months of intense pressure stemming from a Metropolitan Police investigation into the allegation.

Brandram, 44, was found unresponsive inside a property in Chiswick, west London, on Tuesday evening. The address was believed to be his home.

The senior City banker had been arrested in June in connection with an incident nearly 10 years earlier on Putney Bridge, where a jogger shoved a woman headfirst into the path of an oncoming bus.

The Metropolitan Police said Brandram had been released under investigation following his arrest.

In a statement issued on Thursday on behalf of his immediate family, Brandram was described as having died by suicide after “months of immense pressure caused by a Metropolitan Police investigation into whether he was the so-called ‘Putney Pusher’”.

His family denied that he was involved and said investigators had no forensic evidence linking him to the incident. They also said there was no evidence placing him on Putney Bridge at the time or any credible basis for identifying him as the man shown in the footage. According to the family, the available evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

They said police chose to arrest Brandram rather than invite him to attend an interview voluntarily. His home was searched, and information released by the Met’s press team led to public speculation and his identification in subsequent reporting, the family said.

They added that the consequences continued to affect Brandram, leaving him for months to endure the stigma of a serious allegation that police had clearly found unsupported by the evidence.

“He lived with the shame, anxiety, humiliation and extraordinary pressure created by what the family considered a wholly unnecessary investigation,” they said.

The family said police were repeatedly asked to end the investigation and had been warned about its impact on Brandram’s mental health, but the inquiry continued. They attributed his death to the resulting pressure.

The Metropolitan Police have been approached for comment.

Brandram worked as a director at HSBC and had previously served in the military, where he attained the rank of captain.

He was the grandson of Princess Katherine of Greece, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the Daily Telegraph reported in 2013. That year, he was convicted after crashing his Harley-Davidson motorcycle into a female cyclist near Hyde Park Corner and leaving without providing his details.

In a March interview with Citywealth, Brandram described himself as a senior relationship manager at HSBC Private Bank.

He said he usually cycled from his west London home to the bank’s Mayfair office before travelling to Canary Wharf, the City or the airport. He aimed to finish his first meeting over breakfast and be home for his child’s bedtime, adding that he was a single father sharing parenting responsibilities with his three-year-old’s mother.

Brandram said his proudest professional achievement was being invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party after serving in Afghanistan. He named his mother as the person he most admired, describing her as having raised three children alone while demonstrating exceptional moral integrity, courage, resilience and stamina.

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