Abstract
In June 1962 at the age of 87 years, Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) fell over in his hotel room at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo and sustained a fracture to the neck of his left femur. He was flown back to London and the fracture operated on at The Middlesex Hospital by two eminent orthopaedic surgeons, Mr Phillip Newman (1911–1994), Consultant to the The Middlesex Hospital and The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, and The Institute of Orthopaedics, London, and Professor Herbert Seddon (1903–1977), Consultant to the The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, and Director of The Institute of Orthopaedics under whom Churchill was admitted as a private patient. Churchill’s recovery was complicated by the development of deep vein thrombosis. During his convalescence, Churchill befriended Seddon who recorded his time with him in his private papers. On 21 August, Churchill was discharged to his home at 28 Hyde Park Gate which had been modified during his admission and made a return to public life in November 1962 at a dinner at the dining club he had originally founded, The Other Club.
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References
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21.Lovell R. Wilson, Charles McMoran, first Baron Moran (1882–1977), physician and writer. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb 9780198614128-e-31843 (2004, accessed 24 March 2018). Moran in his controversial memoirs published soon after Churchill’s death did not disclose anything he had recorded in his diary during the last 5 years of Churchill’s life including this episode .
22.Sir Herbert Seddon’s papers, the Archives at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, reference MS0279. The Seddon papers consist of hand-written notes made by Seddon on the occasions when he attended Churchill during the last years of his life, firstly after a fall in November 1960 and secondly after this second fall in 1962. After retirement, Seddon was eager to secure an appropriate locus to lodge his notes for perpetuity mindful of the confidential and personal nature of the records and consulted the Churchill family. It was agreed that nothing of the papers would be published before the death of Lady Clementine Churchill except by Martin Gilbert, the official Churchill biographer. Seddon died before the papers were deposited, so his widow Lady Margaret entrusted the original papers to Newman for safe keeping. He subsequently donated them to The Library of The Royal College of Surgeons, London, where they are available for inspection. Seddon’s original hand-written notes contain both clinical and personal observations. Churchill was admitted to the Middlesex Hospital as a private patient and so presumably did not have an NHS ‘set’ of notes which is why the Seddon papers are the only record of his in-patient stay. Philip Newman had kept several facsimile copies of a type-written abbreviated transcription of the original papers, which written in Seddon’s free hand are sometimes difficult to decipher. It is possible that these were made by Newman himself. Although Churchill was not discharged from the Middlesex Hospital until 21 August 1962, curiously the Seddon papers include hand-written notes only up to and including 16 August. One can only assume that Seddon’s original notes for this last week of Churchill’s hospital stay if they ever existed at all are now irretrievably lost. Incidentally, there are no hand-written notes on Seddon’s personal relationship with Churchill which developed during his stay in hospital .
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