Westminster Hospital

 I posed a question yesterday.

Westminster Hospital

What is the connection between the date of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and Westminster Hospital?

As we know the RMS Titanic sank on the night of 14^th/15^th April 1912.

If we move on to 72 years later, on the evening of 15^th April 1984, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Westminster midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show, Lives from Her Majesty’s, Tommy Cooper suffered from a heart attack.  At the time millions were viewing.

Tommy Cooper

It wouldn’t be until the second commercial break that paramedics moved Cooper’s body to Westminster Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Other famous patients of the hospital have been Malvina Longfellow, silent movie actress who died 1962. 

Airey Neave, Conservative Member of Parliament, who was badly wounded by a car bomb that he was driving nearby the House of Common on March 1979 died later that day at Westminster Hospital.

American author of Shaft and Academy Award winner screenwriter of The French Connection, Ernest Tidyman died 1984.

Sewallis Shirley

Also, MP Sewallis Shirley, who died 1904.  In a later article to be written we will see what Sewallis Shirley did!