Most people, whatever their political beliefs, were pretty shocked by the news that Boris Johnson had been placed in intensive care at St. Thomas' Hospital. We all realised that this was no Boris prank: his life was clearly in danger. It made me wonder about the panic that ensues when a leader is suddenly taken ill. Had, I wondered, a British Prime Minister ever died in office - apart from the one who was shot? And how many Prime Ministers have been seriously ill when still in harness, and were the public told the truth about their condition? What about other leaders - or rulers - how many, here or abroad, were on their last legs, or actually dead, before the public was informed?

Oddly enough, last night, while reading my permitted portion of Hilary Mantel's latest novel (I'm rationing myself), The Mirror and the Light, I came to the page where Cromwell, attending on the King who has been ill again with his bad leg (it's early 1538), remembers the terrible moment two years previously - January 24th, 1536 - when Henry had an extremely serious accident while jousting. For about two hours it was thought there was no hope for the king - that the fall had actually killed him. Henry is remembering too:



Henry says, "Cromwell, I remember Greenwich. When I. When you." He cannot easily speak of his death. "I do not remember the fall. Only blackness. I thought myself extinct. My senses were stopped. I believe I saw angels."


He thinks, at the time you said not.


Inside a tent the king was stretched out his full length, pale as paper. Henry Norris was intoning the prayers for the dead. The Duke of Suffolk was bawling like a teething baby. Outside the Boleyns were shouting their own names, and Uncle Norfolk was bellowing that he was in charge now: "Me, me, me!"...


...He recalls the howling surge of servants and lords, his own bellowing for quiet; his palm on the king's chest, the pounding of his own heart. Then beneath the horsehair padding of the king's jacket, a fibrillation, like a scamper of shrews' paws. After a second, Henry gasped; he groaned; he coughed violently, and uttered, "Thomas Cromwell." The shocked lords wailed, "Lie down! Lie down!" but Henry levered himself upright; his eyes turned and he took in the scene. Alive again, he looked at England. He saw her dark valleys and green fields, her broad silver waters, her nightingale woods. He saw her just laws, her free people: he heard her prayers.


Dr Butts is back, a urine flask in hand. "Majesty, you must not think of transacting business today."


"No?" Henry says. "Then who will rule, Dr Butts?"


It sounds like a civil enquiry. But it makes the doctor step back.


"We are talking of my fall at Greenwich," Henry says. "Reminiscing." He spits the word out.


Butts says,"God protect your Majesty."


"He did," Henry says. "I heard every man in that tent believed I was dead except Cromwell. He stood over me and felt the beating of my heart when others had given me up."


He thinks I could not allow you to be dead. Who had we for sovereign? Mary, a papist, who would have killed all your ministers? Eliza, still in the cradle? The unborn child in Anne's womb? And how is it better now? I still have no plan; I have no route out; I have no affinity; I have no backers; I have no troops; no right, no claim...


...He knows his own story; at Greenwich the royal heart fluttering, faint as a god's breath in a glass bubble. He recalls himself praying, but others recall him doubling his fist and pounding the king's chest hard enough to split his ribcage. And Christophe, who was at his side all that wretched hour, claims he bounced the king's person up and down by the shoulders; that he seized him by the ears and bellowed into his face: "Breathe, you f**ker, breathe!"



I can't help but wonder if Dominic Cummings would identify with Cromwell's desperation. He was last seen running from Downing St - to his own sickbed apparently.

PS I have been told by an unreliable source that Lloyd George was, like Boris Johnson, very ill and put on oxygen therapy during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. The official story was the Prime Minister had a bad cold. Anyone know if this is true or not?

This is on the Guardian website;

Spanish Flu 1918

On 11 September 1918, Lloyd George, riding high on news of recent Allied successes, arrived in Manchester to be presented with the keys to the city. Female munitions workers and soldiers home on furlough cheered his passage from Piccadilly train station to Albert Square. But later that evening, he developed a sore throat and fever and collapsed.

He spent the next 10 days confined to a sickbed in Manchester town hall, too ill to move and with a respirator to aid his breathing. Newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian, underplayed the severity of his condition for fear of presenting the Germans with a propaganda coup. But, according to his valet, it had been “touch and go”.

US President, William Henry Harrison lasted one month in 1841.

Zachary Taylor lasted a bit longer, 16 months, before succumbing to "cholera morbus", reputedly caused by eating cherries and iced milk.

Prime Minister Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham, died in 1782, victim of an influenza epidemic.

William Pitt the Younger died in office in 1806 of a peptic ulcer. Pitt was known as a "three bottle man " on account of his fondness for port.

It's arguable to what extent "health reasons" led to Eden's resignation.
It is ironic, perhaps, that his successor, "Supermac" was almost certainly fit enough to continue in office, whereas his predecessor, Winston Churchill, was probably no longer fit to do so when he was PM in the post-war period.

George Canning died while Prime Minister in 1827, a tenure which had lasted 119 days, the shortest term for a PM of the United Kingdom;

I went to Scotland during the autumn of 2018 and enjoyed a day exploring Jedburgh and the beautiful Border country around this little Scottish town. In the centre of Jedburgh there is a Visitors' Centre - Queen Mary's House - where one can wander through rooms where Mary, Queen of Scots, stayed in 1566, rooms which include the tiny bedchamber where she came perilously close to death. In the middle of October, 1566, on a chilly, showery, autumn day, Mary had - recklessly, some say - ridden to Hermitage Castle and back, determined to spend time with the injured Bothwell - himself rumoured to be dying. On her return after a fifty-mile round trip on horseback, the young queen was soaking wet and chilled to the bone. On entering the Jedburgh house, where she and her entourage were guests, she immediately collapsed. It was a physical and mental breakdown so severe that, as Antonia Fraser tells us, "many of those who observed Mary in the throes of it formed the opinion that she was unlikely to recover..." The queen was seized by prolonged fits of vomiting - "more than sixty times" - and finally she fell into unconsciousness. Two days later, unable to see or speak, she was having frequent convulsions. Mary was by now believed to be dying, and was publicly prayed for in the churches of Edinburgh, as Knox's own History testifies.

Moray, the queen's brother, showed real concern, for his half-sister's silver plate and her jewellery that is, items which he speedily removed and then had to return after Mary's eventual recovery. This happened after the queen's skilful French  physician, Arnault, refused to give up the fight for her life: he forced open the sick woman's mouth, poured wine down her throat and then administered a clyster. This drastic treatment worked: the queen vomited up a vast amount of "corrupt blood" (from a burst ulcer?) and subsequently started to recover.

Moray and Knox no doubt offered up public prayers of thanksgiving - privately they must have been cursing the French doctor.




Here is the house where Mary very nearly died in 1566.

Crossed posts - thank you for all your examples, Trike. Jolly interesting! And GG too - poor old Eden. I'd forgotten about him: in the recent Netflix superb series, The Crown, Eden is shown to be a legal junkie - kept going by amphetamine and morphine! He was a very sick man. No wonder Suez was such a catastrophe!

Neville Chamberlain was seriously ill while PM but didn't realise it until a few months after he was replaced by Churchill on 10 May 1940. Chamberlain had long enjoyed excellent health, but by July 1940 he was in almost constant pain from gout. He sought treatment and later that month entered hospital for surgery. The surgeons then discovered that he was suffering from terminal bowel cancer, which he must have had for some time. However they initially concealed it from him, instead telling him that he would not require further surgery and so he resumed work in mid-August. He died of the cancer on 9 November 1940 at the age of 71. A funeral service took place at Westminster Abbey but due to wartime security concerns, the date and time were not widely publicised. After cremation his ashes were interred in the Abbey.

The timing of the announcement of a death is important too.

King George V had been in failing health for several weeks when Queen Mary summoned the eminent physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, to Sandringham on 17 January 1936. Dawson had managed George V's respiratory illness in 1928, when he had undoubtedly saved the king's life. He was thoroughly respected within the medical profession, president of the Royal College of Physicians, elected twice president of the BMA, and honoured with a viscountcy. His reputation would have been considerably diminished, however, had it been known that he actually finished the king off.

Dawson's private diary, unearthed after his death in 1945 and made public in 1986, reveals that he hastened the King's death by injecting him, after 11.00 pm on 20 January, with two consecutive lethal injections: ​3⁄4 of a grain of morphine followed shortly afterwards by a grain of cocaine. Dawson wrote that he acted to preserve the King's dignity, to prevent further strain on the family, and so that the King's death at 11:55 pm could be announced in the morning edition of The Times newspaper rather than "less appropriate ... evening journals". Neither Queen Mary, who was intensely religious and might not have sanctioned euthanasia, nor the Prince of Wales was consulted.

I had imagined that the death - and subsequent arrangements for the funeral - of Victoria, the Queen/Empress of one-quarter of the world's population at the time of her death, would have been planned, orderly and dignified - as far as these things ever can be. Apparently not. If this article in HistoryExtra - a reputable source? - is to be believed, there was total chaos both before and after the old queen's demise. No one quite seemed to know what to do, and things were complicated by the arrival of the extremely bossy German Emperor, who, obviously appalled at the lack of Teutonic efficiency in the British branch of the family, started ordering everyone about. When the royal undertakers arrived at Osborne House, it was discovered that they had forgotten to bring the coffin. The comments of the Kaiser at this moment are not recorded.




Where's The Coffin - Has The Kaiser Got One With Him?



The casting of a death mask was ordered by the Kaiser, causing uproar among the royal family as it was known the queen had disliked the use of such masks. The Duke of York was suddenly struck down with a dangerous illness and the royal undertaker arrived from London but forgot to bring the coffin. The Lord Chamberlain refused to cooperate with the Earl Marshal, and the Kaiser turned on the Bishop of Winchester, who had been the queen’s favourite cleric, saying that if he were his cleric he would have him hauled out into the courtyard by the neck and shot.
Sir Frederick Ponsonby, the queen’s assistant private secretary, travelled to London to discover the Earl Marshal’s office in total chaos with nothing arranged. In desperation, he called on Lord Roberts, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the British Army, who gave Ponsonby carte blanche to organise the military as he saw fit. There were only a few days left to organise the ceremonial...

Two Prime Ministers in a row died while in office in the mid-18th century. Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington (d 1743) and Henry Pelham (d 1754)

Geoffrey Rush, Roger Allam ( as Henry Pelham ), Richard Griffiths and Anton Lesser, in Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides:

King Alexander I of Greece had an unfortunate encounter with a monkey.

wiki:
On 2 October 1920, Alexander was injured while walking through the grounds of the Tatoi estate. A domestic Barbary macaque belonging to the steward of the palace's grapevines attacked or was attacked by the king's German Shepherd Dog, Fritz, and Alexander attempted to separate the two animals. As he did so, another monkey attacked Alexander and bit him deeply on the leg and torso. Eventually servants arrived and chased away the monkeys, and the king's wounds were promptly cleaned and dressed but not cauterized. He did not consider the incident serious and asked that it not be publicized.

That evening, his wounds became infected; he suffered a strong fever and sepsis set in. His doctors considered amputating his leg, but none wished to take responsibility for so drastic an act. On 19 October, he became delirious and called out for his mother, but the Greek government refused to allow her to re-enter the country from exile in Switzerland, despite her own protestations. Finally, the queen dowager, Olga, George I's widow and Alexander's grandmother, was allowed to return alone to Athens to tend to the king. She was delayed by rough waters, however, and by the time she arrived, Alexander had already died of sepsis twelve hours previously at a little after 4 p.m. on 25 October 1920. The other members of the royal family received the news by telegram that night.

Yes Temperance, that Kaiser...I read already that much during the years about that Hohenzollern, especially about his role leading to WWI...I read also about his attendance to the funeral and his unexpected actions on Victoria's deathbed, but never in such details. And yes, there he scandalized as usual, the British with his, up to then already known, roughness (they translate it from the Dutch: onbehouwenheid). Some say that it was due to his handicap, but I doubt. And thank you Temperance for this bit of history. 

PS: the deathmask.
Despite his roughness, William II was right about the custom of the death mask...
I was some years on a French forum of a Paris laywer, who had a forum about Napoleon (but mostly on the adjecant forum of general history)
The theory was about a conspiracy that the British had exchanged the corpse of Napoleon, with another one...And there I learned a lot about the Napoleon death mask...
http://www.empereurperdu.com/forum/phpBB2/index.php
http://www.empereurperdu.com/tribunehistoire/
And still a lot of controversy about the mask or have I have to say the masks...
https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/the-affair-of-napoleons-death-masks/
Yes, even nowadays, those French (or at least some ) devoted to their "Kaiser"...

PPS: reading your link i came on:
"Meanwhile, information reached Gustav Steinhauer, a personal bodyguard to the kaiser, of an assassination plot by three notorious anarchists. They intended to kill the kaiser and Leopold II, King of the Belgians, during the funeral procession. Scotland Yard was informed."

Searching on the internet, I didn't found anything about this event, nor in British, German or Belgian history.
But by that I came again on this Saxen Coburg Gothas...
And among them the daugher of Leopold II Louise, the sister of Stéphanie of Mayerling fame...The present crown princess calls also Louise (I don't know if that Coburg Gotha christian name is given with a purpose...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Louise_of_Belgium
What a life:
Her story, written by herself...
It reads as a novel...(at least to me )

And as I know you dear Temperance, it could be perhaps even for you some alternance to Hilary Mantel...?

Kind regards from Paul.

Temperance wrote:

I had imagined that the death - and subsequent arrangements for the funeral - of Victoria, the Queen/Empress of one-quarter of the world's population at the time of her death, would have been planned, orderly and dignified - as far as these things ever can be. Apparently not ... No one quite seemed to know what to do, and things were complicated by the arrival of the extremely bossy German Emperor, who, obviously appalled at the lack of Teutonic efficiency in the British branch of the family, started ordering everyone about. When the royal undertakers arrived at Osborne House, it was discovered that they had forgotten to bring the coffin ...

That made me chuckle ... and so typically like the Kaiser, or at least how he's aways been portrayed.

However the undertakers might be forgiven for forgetting the coffin itself - well only just a bit - as they also had to suddenly round up all the twee mementoes, souvenirs and other memoral clutter and general bric-a-brac, that Vicky had specified were to be interred with her. These included (in no particular order):

Albert’s dressing gown
A cloak once worn by the Prince Consort, embroidered by their daughter, Alice
Her wedding veil
A plaster model of Albert’s hand
A photograph of John Brown
A lock of Brown's hair (which her physician placed in her hands, hidden under flowers)
Lockets - one per child, grandchild and great grandchild
Her favourite bracelets
A sprig of heather from Balmoral
Assorted photographs and trinkets from her family
Albert's bible (the de-luxe German edition)

No wonder then that the Kaiser was exasperated. (He of course detested his own parents, while they despised him as unfit to ever be king). Families, eh ... don't ya' just luv 'em?

One would hope in these more organised days that the current queen's passing would be somewhat better planned (see The Guardian (March 2017) - 'London Bridge is down': the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death ). Given the current circumstances, however, I rather fear Her Maj' will be thoroughly locked down, even into a deep freeze if necessary, until at least the schools go back, Parliament reconvenes, the FA league restarts, and public gatherings of more than two people are once again allowed ... and accordingly the usual pomp and circumstance and bollox can once again be followed. I jest - perhaps in poor taste, for which I apologise to any so offended - but it is only because of the brutal reality of the situation, and, as The Guardian link above shows, there are indeed people continually planning for all such possible eventualities.

The problems didn't end with the funeral. Nobody was sure of the protocol around a coronation, nor of setting up a King's court. Presumably it has been written down this time? Or will wingnuts get something botched up?

Oh dear - I'm having second thoughts about this thread - worrying now that it might all be in rather poor taste. If the Boss wants to remove the whole thing, that's OK by me. I don't suppose Trike, MM or GG would mind either.

Or I might just change the title. Please note words are those of Hilary Mantel's Putney lad, not mine. I do seem to be going all PC these days...

That said, Caligula's panic (in I, Claudius) when he realised Tiberius wasn't quite dead was funny - more a matter of, "Don't breathe, you etc..." But I suppose that death scene was all made up and not yer proper history.

Charles II's death seems to have been quite calm and orderly, without any unseemly panic. The king actually apologised to everyone for keeping them all waiting. His demise, from kidney failure, was lingering, and must have been pretty grim, but it would appear he was still able to be good-humoured about it all:

Quote :

"You must pardon me, gentlemen, for being a most unconscionable time a-dying"

No exhortations to his ministers to "not let poor Nelly starve", though. Someone made that up.

Temperance wrote:

No exhortations to his ministers to "not let poor Nelly starve", though. Someone made that up.

I always assumed it was Nelly who made it up

I don't think it's in poor taste, Temp. Actually very interesting.

We all are wondering just how ill Donald Trump is. A previous president, Woodrow Wilson, was extremely sick with the Spanish flu, but his doctors advised the American public that their leader just had "a bad cold". It was a "cold" that, it seems, even after the man's recovery, may have affected his presidential judgement. Could the lingering effects of the 1918/1919 virus have contributed to the disaster that was the Paris Peace Conference?

Everyone here in the UK is saying that the British Prime Minister, who nearly died in intensive care earlier this year, is not the man he was - whatever he was back then. Madness in great ones should not unwatched go, Hamlet's uncle noted - perhaps he would warn us to be on the lookout for signs of post-viral loopiness too. The effects of this awful disease can linger, even after an apparent full recovery. Worrying - as if we all didn't have enough to fret about.







It was shocking to witness the malevolence that greeted the news of the current President's ill-health, but such ill-wishing is not new. Here are the words of John Knox when informed that that Mary of Guise was horribly afflicted with a dropsy that was killing her. It was a slow and  agonising death, but that was no reason for a Minister of God to show any compassion:

And within a few days thereafter, yea, some say that same day, began her belly and loathsome legs to swell, and so continued till that God did execute his final judgement on her.

Calvin displayed a Knox-like exultation just a year or so later when the young king of France, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, died, having suffered the agonies of an abscess behind the ear, an affliction which spread infection and inflammation into his brain. As with his mother-in-law in Scotland, his drawn-out sufferings were terrible - and caused a similar glee. Here are Calvin's triumphant words, from a letter he wrote to Johannes Sturm:

Did you ever read of hear of anything more timely than the death of the little King? There was no remedy for the worst evils when God suddenly revealed himself from Heaven, and He who had pierced the father's eye, struck off the ear of the son.

I can't find the source now, but Knox apparently noted with satisfaction that God had poisoned little Francis's ear because it "was an ear that would not listen to His truth".

Human nastiness still seems to be alive and well.