The Death of George V

The death of King George V, in January 1936, made a public impact which not only allowed Rudyard Kipling to slip into the grave comparatively unnoticed, but after half a century still seems historically remarkable. Eight years earlier, on December 9th, 1928, the king’s life had been saved only at the last moment when Sir Bertrand Dawson, as he then was, succeeded in locating and draining the abscess that had gravely complicated an attack of pleurisy. That crisis, and the long months of recovery, had indeed inspired a surge of popular feeling towards the throne and its occupant, who had never courted personal publicity. But by 1935 the nationwide fervour of the Silver Jubilee (in celebrations promoted by his government, not himself) not only touched but amazed him, and Queen Mary also. Seven months later the spontaneous participation in his obsequies was hardly less spectacular. Nearly a million mourners filed silently round the bier in Westminster Hall, where it was guarded at one interval by the new monarch and his three brothers; and the final act at Windsor was delayed for an hour by the pressure of the crowds along the entire route.

In 1928 the Great War that King George had keenly but privately felt to be ‘horrible and unnecessary’ had not yet been seen as a subject for books and plays, though the poets had their limited say. By 1936 the apprehensions of a second one were by close observers regarded as hastening his end. The reign of eighteen changing years had effectively become an era, and the very survival of the throne and the empire had helped to make the king into something of a father figure though in a sense very different from that which he seems to have presented to his own family. That none of his sons was completely at ease with him is hardly surprising in the light of his own admission that he had himself feared his father, that his father had feared his, and that he intended to be feared in his turn. That, however, was no part of the generally accepted image. And if respect for a royal dedication to duty had been expanded into demonstrative affection, one significant cause is not far to seek.

For the first time in history a sovereign’s voice, intimate but inspiring, had been heard in the homes of millions of his subjects. It was in 1932 that the king had first, and reluctantly, been persuaded to deliver a Christmas broadcast. What was to become an established institution combined the human touch with an idea of the throne as the guardian of standards, domestic as well as social. The script for the first and highly successful transmission had been contributed by Kipling, the subsequent ones by Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang. But the special broadcast of thanks for the Jubilee demonstration was addressed by the king in his own words to ‘my very, very dear people’; and at the reception for the dominion premiers the family concept had been broadened to embrace the empire.

It was a new note, but the promise of service had been reaffirmed; and while some of the royal staff showed the immediate strain of the whole business the king himself carried on through the resignation of Ramsay MacDonald, for whom he had a genuine liking, and the subsequent general election (November 14th) which confirmed Baldwin as prime minister. As will be seen, there was a great deal that preyed upon his mind, but it was not until the beginning of November, by Lord Dawson’s account, that there was ‘obvious diminution of energy and interest’. Since, even so he continued to apply himself to state affairs, the public at large had no good reason to believe that he was slipping into his last illness until as late as January 17th, 1936, when a bulletin suggested ‘some disquiet’. Only three days after that came Lord Dawson’s famous final bulletin and the death of the king.

That announcement, that ‘the king’s life is moving peacefully towards its close’, can be said to have passed into legend like the young Queen Victoria’s ‘I will be good’. Yet apart from this, and a couple of conflicting anecdotes about the king’s last words, the public seems neither to have known nor enquired about anything concerning the drama at the bedside. An old and now warmly admired sovereign had passed away in his 71st year. A ‘younger’ one (41), popular for much longer but in a different way, would take his place amid expectations of a new style for a new age. All deathbed details, of the behaviour of the family and notably of the Prince of Wales himself, could broadly speaking be left within the closed circle of the doctors, advisers and privy counsellors.

As viewed from conditions of a mass-avidity for personalities as news-stock, and a wholly new range of techniques for its satisfaction, it requires an effort to appreciate the style of coverage – sensations and all – of fifty years ago, and the acceptable operations of ‘news-management’. King George V, who as Prince of Wales and in his early years on the throne had to confront some notorious slander, made no attempt, as has been said, to gain popularity through the press. He read The Times , but left it to his private secretaries, Lord Stamfordham and his successor Sir Clive, later Lord Wigram, to draw his attention to anything elsewhere that might concern him – for example the disproportionate publicity attracted by the Prince of Wales’ falls while steeplechasing. At the same time the secretaries saw to it that The Times should have advance copies of the King’s speeches, and now and then such leaks reflecting his views as they judged to be opportune. But the warning that ‘the Press would not remain silent for long’ was one which would recur with increasing emphasis as the private life of the Prince disturbed the royal household, to culminate after he became king in the extraordinary spectacle of a censorship self-imposed, for sundry reasons, by the entire Press.

Whatever assessment may be made of the rumours and gossip of this subsequent phase, it is safe to say that at the time of King George’s death the vast majority of his subjects knew, and therefore cared, as little about the prince’s two-year friendship with a Mrs Simpson as they had about his previous entanglements. There were equally unpublicised difficulties over royal properties and the king’s will, while euthanasia was so controversial a subject that the final hastening of the inevitable outcome has even now escaped comment.

Outside the Windsor archives there remain two manuscript sources for a fuller picture. These are the diaries and memoranda of Lord Wigram and the private notes of Lord Dawson, intended for an autobiographical record which a phenomenally active life prevented him from carrying further. It was more than a year before the prince’s attachment to Wallis Simpson had taken hold that his father, in a long talk with him at Buckingham Palace, had warned him of what ‘the whole of London’ was talking about – in that case his involvement with Thelma, Lady Furness. By the account which the King gave to Wigram next day (March 3rd, 1932), he had told his son that he had previously appealed to him as a father, but this time wanted to put things from the viewpoint of a reigning monarch. The prince, he said, was now at the zenith of his popularity, indeed worshipped by the public. But would this last when the more or less double life that he was leading came to be realised and ‘the great nonconformist conscience of England’ made itself heard?

To this the prince replied that people were much more tolerant nowadays:

The king would not admit this, saying that the days when royal princes kept well-known mistresses and had families by them were gone forever, and that the people of England looked for a decent home life in their royal house. Young men sowed their wild oats, but was not the Prince of Wales at 38 rather beyond that age. His liaison with Lady Furness was a well-known fact. The prince did not attempt to deny that Lady Furness was his mistress, but said that scandal-mongers had doubtless been only too ready to tell tales to the king. (Wigram)

But his father would not have this either. With servants, sentries, police and others already in the know, he wanted to be sure that the lady herself could be trusted not to make trouble. Though the prince said he had no anxieties on this point, we might today think with hindsight that Lady Furness had already made trouble, since it had been at her country house that the Prince of Wales, in 1930, had first been introduced to Mr and Mrs Ernest Simpson.

That, of course, did not arise. The main burden of the King’s discourse concerned the future of the throne and the empire, which in his view required as their focus a married sovereign. He did not think that the Prince’s way of life brought him happiness. ‘Did not he sometimes long to have someone to whom he could turn for sympathy and true affection?’ Admitting that he was not particularly happy, the prince then said that a bar to his marrying had been his distaste for the idea of selecting a foreign princess and his understanding that the king would not wish him to marry a commoner. He was assured that this was not so. Times had changed and ‘a suitable and well-born English or Scotch [sic] girl’ could be considered. The prince’s remark that this was the first time such a suggestion had been made’ to him is curious, since the decision by King George and Queen Mary that ‘our children would be allowed to marry into British families’ had been made as early as 1917, and Princess Mary and the Duke of York had already shown the way. The prince then said that the only lady he had ever wished to marry had been Mrs Dudley Ward (the charming woman who, despite his other affairs, had been almost like a wife to him for the past sixteen years). ‘He would still like to marry her, but the king said that he did not think this would do’.

The impression of an unusually satisfactory interview gathered by Wigram (even though he had been told that ‘H. R. H. smoked countless cigarettes and maintained rather a frowning attitude’) was outdone by the delighted reaction of the Prince of Wales’ private secretary, Sir Lionel Halsey, to his master’s own account of the meeting, which Wigram heard next day. The prince had said that it had cleared the air. His father had spoken with complete frankness, but had been ‘very nice’. True, he was ‘a bit old-fashioned’, and his remarks about personal friendships were rather to be resented, but in general his criticisms had been fair comment, among them some observations about religion and the problems that would arise when, as king, he would have to meet the Convocations of Canterbury and York as his father had just done. But the prince declared himself in no way prejudiced, and hoped soon to resume the discussion. Both staffs concluded that, thanks to the king’s tactful handling of the whole business, the prince was for the first time taking serious notice of the issues involved.

By 1935, however, these issues were obviously more imminent. In April of that year – before the Jubilee – Wigram had made up his mind that the king’s health was being affected by worry and anxiety concerning the Prince of Wales and ‘his goings on’. He did not tell the doctors, ‘not knowing what to say’: an interesting point of discretion, perhaps induced by the fact that Lord Dawson, like most people, had fallen under the prince’s charm. ‘How they misunderstand him’, he noted a little later.

Wigram did, however, go over to Fort Belvedere from Windsor on April 11th to broach the matter with the prince himself. He told him that his father had very little reserve of strength, and that if he should die suddenly he, as his private secretary and confidant, would feel guilty if he had not drawn the prince’s attention to the problem. Specifically the question of his relations with Mrs Simpson, and her presence on his recent trip in Europe (Kitzbuhel, Vienna and Budapest) had filtered back suggestive stories. The press (once again) ‘would no longer remain silent’, and if HRH ever became King, ‘the middle-class nonconformist section’ (once again) ‘would not tolerate a sovereign keeping company with another man’s wife, however innocent their relations might be’. It is not surprising that Wigram felt that he had made no impression on the prince, who simply said that his private life was his own affair and that he was astonished that anyone should take offence in regard to the charming and cultivated woman in question.

Reporting back to the king, who was greatly perturbed, the private secretary was told of their majesties’ ‘fury’ when, at the reception for the Duke of Kent’s wedding in the previous November the Prince had smuggled Mrs Simpson into the Palace and had introduced her both to the king and the queen. By Mrs Simpson’s later account their perfect manners had been impressive. But their actual feelings had been shared by other members of the royal family, and the king now instructed Wigram to give orders to the Lord Chamberlain that the lady was not to be invited to any Silver Jubilee function nor to the enclosure at Ascot.

The Jubilee service at St Paul’s was on May 4th, and six days later the king had another long and serious talk with the prince about the future if he became king, once more deploring the fact that he had never married. This time the prince (who as we now know had privately made up his mind in the previous year to marry Mrs Simpson) changed his ground to reply that he could never marry as such a life had no appeal to him. When the king tackled him frankly about Mrs Simpson as his mistress, ’the Prince was very annoyed and gave the king his word of honour that he had never had any immoral relations with Mrs S’. He had broken with Lady Furness, whom he now called a ‘beast’, as the king had asked him to do, but Mrs Simpson was quite different and ‘made him supremely happy’. He begged to be believed that she was not his mistress, and asked that she might be invited to functions at Buckingham Palace and to Ascot.

The king said that if H.R.H. would give his word of honour that his friendship with Mrs. S. was absolutely a clean one, then the king would naturally believe the word of H.R.H. To this H.R.H gave his word and the King said that he would arrange for invitations to be sent to Mr. and Mrs. S.
Halsey and the prince’s staff were horrified at the audacity of the statements of H.R.H. Apart from actually seeing H.R.H. and Mrs. S. in bed together they had positive proof that H.R.H lived with her. (Wigram)

Their reaction is understandable but in the final judgment nothing that has since emerged need prevent belief in the prince’s word as given to his father. The Simpsons got their invitations, but without attracting public attention. At the court ball on May 14th Wallis led off with the prince, afterwards confessing to a premonitory shiver as they passed under the icy gaze of the king, who was seated on a dais. During the Ascot meeting her husband was away on a short visit, but she attended every day, and at night found herself a guest at fashionable parties.

The Jubilee over, and Cowes also, the complications of the prince’s position followed the king to Balmoral. On September 5th he had an important conversation with Mr E.H. Savill, who was in charge of Windsor Park and adjacent crown lands, and had been approached by the Prince of Wales about his wish to acquire Belvedere. Having spent considerably on its development the prince contended, according to Wigram’s report, that ‘the day may come when a republic will be declared in this country and he will have nowhere to live unless Belvedere is his own private property’.

The contemplation of a republic can hardly have improved the king’s spirits. In his memoirs as Duke of Windsor, Edward was to deny that he had not wanted the throne – he was prepared to succeed, but on his own terms. His father had been heard more than once, in fits of depression, to confide that he did not expect to be succeeded by his eldest son, or that if so it would be disastrous; and latterly, indeed, that it would be better if the throne should pass to the Duke to York, with his excellent wife and delightful little daughters. As to Belvedere, it was enough in his view that, as the prince knew, he had left him in his will both Sandringham and Balmoral, which were not crown lands, for his personal enjoyment.

In any case, if precedent is followed and a Republic established the Prince would not be able to live in this country and his private property would probably be appropriated. Belvedere cannot be sold without the sanction of Parliament, and a bill with a clause allowing Crown Lands to do this would have to be passed.

Such a bill, the king told Savill, would have to provide that on Edward’s death the property must pass to his successor, and that while it was in his possession no upkeep or repair would be undertaken by crown lands. At the same time, while Belvedere could not be bequeathed to a private individual (and one can perhaps guess of whom the king was thinking) it could be lent after the passage of such a bill to any friend as a ‘grace and favour’ residence.

At Balmoral, though the king was evidently conscious that he might not have long to give to the problems of the succession, his physical condition did not unduly disturb Dawson, who was pleased to note, on a visit from London, that he was keeping up his favourite activities sufficiently to have brought down a large stag. Sister Black, who had remained on the royal staff ever since Dawson had chosen her from the London Hospital in the crisis of 1928, reported recurrent daytime sleepiness, with restlessness at night, when he preferred a prone position, and she would sometimes administer oxygen around 3 am. He had never liked to be fussed by doctors, and Dawson had always needed psychological as well as medical skill in devising (with conspiratorial help from Queen Mary) the stratagems necessary for maintaining a constant watchfulness. There had been some recurrence of the bronchial trouble in 1931, and the king still sometimes suffered pain from the effects of having been badly thrown by his horse in France on a 1915 war-time visit. Since it has been suggested in some quarters that the last four English kings (to all of whom Dawson had been physician) died of smoking-related complaints, it is worth noting in parentheses that the deleterious connection was put forward only in the early 1950s, some years after Dawson’s death. King George V had been introduced to cigarettes by his tutor in his early teens, and all his sons were addicted as a matter of course. Dawson was a lifelong advocate of physical fitness and exercise, but found in this instance no reason to restrict the king (after the 1928 operation he allowed him his first cigarette after only three days at Bognor). Had the question arisen, he would doubtless have been on the side of moderation, as he was in the case of alcohol as a gift to health, happiness and sociability.

The diminution of energy noted by Dawson at the beginning of November 1935 did not prevent the King from spending most of the last two months of the year on state business in London; but he was ‘less well – sometimes depressed about his health, with reference now and then to Anno Domini’. The last illness of Princess Victoria, his well-loved younger sister (the queen thought her meddlesome) was an additional distress. She died on December 3rd, when he should have been opening Parliament but for once had been relieved; and her funeral at Windsor on the 7th, with a service which Dawson had vainly tried to have shortened, was a visible strain.

The impact of international affairs, and most immediately of the Abyssinian campaign of Mussolini, whom he had distrusted for many years, must have been especially depleting for a king whose firmly principled desire for peace (he had once said that he would abdicate sooner than lead the nation into another war) had to be combined with revulsion from the dictatorships. ‘Collective security’, now in company with a measured rearmament, continued to be British policy. But King George had also to face, in this as in other matters, sharp differences with his eldest son. It would seem that for the past couple of years the prince had viewed the Nazi regime (which his father disliked in its personalities as well as its persecutions) as a necessary bulwark against communism; and that while hoping and believing that a war could be avoided he had decided that if it came it would be well to be on the winning side, which would be the Germans and not the French. Nor had he been discreet about letting views be known which were not those of the Foreign Office. This had naturally distressed the king, whose latest and diligent biographer Kenneth Rose has described how German diplomacy sought to make the most of the opportunity. The prince was hoping to be allowed to attend the following year’s Olympic Games in Berlin, and after his abdication and subsequent marriage he was to be received, with his duchess, by Hitler at Berchtesgaden. (In September 1936, during his brief reign, a similar visit was paid by Lord Dawson himself, accompanying Lloyd George.)

On December 9th King George had a long talk with Anthony Eden about Italy and Abyssinia and the danger of a wider war; and as late as the 18th, following the scandal of the Hoare-Laval Pact, he accepted at Buckingham Palace the resignation of Sir Samuel Hoare as foreign secretary. When Dawson examined him early on the 20th, he looked and felt tired. He then left at last for the Christmas return to Sandringham, which was expected to do him some good. After speaking to the king’s London doctor, Sir Stanley Hewitt, Dawson wrote to Sir Frederick Willans, who was in medical charge at Sandringham, with advice about treatment and the avoidance, if possible, of outside activities before Christmas, despite which the king went out a little on his favourite old pony. He attended church on Christmas Day and the annual broadcast went well. So did the family party, and after Christmas the white pony was again in the picture. Hewett joined the household, but nobody thought it necessary to summon Dawson from his other concerns, though Sister Black wrote to him on 7th January that the king was again in one of his phases of sleepiness and breathlessness, with little or no cough, but generally feeling ‘cheap’. After telephoning Willans at Sandringham Dawson decided to invite himself there on the following Sunday, 12th January. He found the king ‘feeling life on top of him’, but he did not stay overnight, though from London he arranged. to send an additional nurse. Not until the 17th, when some of the guests had left, did the queen send both for the Prince of Wales and for Dawson. They travelled down next day on the same train, an experience of which Dawson later made some note:

I visited his compartment en route – he was friendly, free and open in conversation – one realised how completely different in ideas he was from his family & made me doubt whether the life he lived or the qualities he possessed as P. of W. wd. enable him to comprise the duties of a king with its close attention to daily & routine duties. As P. of W. his appearances were in limelight, in excitement with a certain dramatic setting. Betweenwhiles he disappeared from view into his own private life – in later days at Belvedere. He had a wonderful flair – a sense of atmosphere – little or poor reasoning. No system – no orderliness of mind – and his judgment & conduct deteriorated under his association with Mrs. S. or perhaps the inevitable conditions of the association... Can’t concentrate, therefore has to jump at truth... has to do everything by jumps... True instinct and quick perception help him you can’t keep him to anything for long. His restlessness must have outlet in effort – he has Personality but not Character... Then and before and since my personal relations with him have been happy. He never talked of Mrs. S. except as ‘my friend Mrs. Simpson’. And thus he held himself to all including authority until... the Simpson divorce brought his intending marriage on to the stage of possible events.

On the same day Lord Wigram, for whom the queen had also sent, reached Sandringham from Windsor. He saw her at once and realised that she did not think the king could live, so he telephoned prime minister Baldwin and Sir Maurice Hankey, clerk to the Privy Council, to alert those concerned to be at hand over the weekend, and afterwards had a talk with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York about the arrangements that would become necessary. He had been pressing for some months, with the king’s approval, for a regency bill to be passed, ‘but unfortunately the bill had been hung up through some objections on the part of South Africa. If only this had been passed there would have been no trouble’.

As it was there was to be a good deal, though the prince was apparently much impressed by the staff work when Wigram showed him his file of a secret committee which had been considering arrangements on the demise of a sovereign, and told him what an accession council entailed and what messages would have to go out to the dominions and so forth. It was arranged for the prince and his brother to motor back to London next day to see the prime minister. The king had ‘lucid moments’ when Wigram saw him for a short time after dinner, but said he was very tired and unable to concentrate. Dawson‘s examination, for which he had also summoned Sir Maurice Cassidy, the heart specialist, resulted in the first bulletin (too cautious in Wigram’s opinion) which was issued at 10.45 that evening. In the absence of a death certificate, which is not available in the Royal Archive, this must be accepted as the clinical indication:

The bronchial catarrh from which His Majesty the King is suffering is not severe, but there have appeared signs of cardiac weakness, which must be regarded with some disquiet.

It was perhaps in the hope of postponing the strain of non-essential official business that the doctors next morning (Sunday) told Wigram that their patient was a little better. What the queen had to tell the private secretary when she sent for him concerned Sandringham, which she and the Duke of York had been ‘horrified’ to hear was regarded by the Prince of Wales only as a hobby. Trying to reassure her that all would come right in the end, Wigram remarked that ‘everyone was rather keyed up and not quite responsible for their thoughts and words’. In the afternoon he went for a walk with the queen and Princess Royal and the Sandringham question came up again. The idea was mooted of a joint stock company with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York each contributing towards the upkeep. Wigram was ready to consider anything which would prevent ‘dishonouring the memory of the king’ by breaking up his cherished estate, and he added that he was sure that the running expenses, then amounting to more than £50,000 a year, could be considerably reduced. In another confidence the queen told him that she was dividing some of the late Princess Victoria’s jewellery among the Princess Royal and the Duchesses of York, Gloucester and Kent but giving nothing to the Prince of Wales, ‘who might pass them on to Mrs. Simpson’.

The more urgent problems, both for Wigram and for Dawson, arose from the latter’s serious doubts of the king’s ability to use his right hand, and therefore to sign, or at least initial, his approval of the formation of a council of state to act for him, as the cabinet had decided was constitutionally necessary. The sovereign’s consent would itself have to be attested by a meeting of the privy council, which Dawson reluctantly agreed should be summoned for the following day. Messages were therefore sent to bring MacDonald (lord president of the council), Lord Chancellor Hailsham, and home secretary Simon, to form a quorum with Wigram, Dawson and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.

Lang, had already reached Sandringham on Sunday, probably summoned as much for his long friendship for the king as for his official presence, which should not in itself have been constitutionally essential. Dawson was also intimate with the archbishop, but made a note that the Prince of Wales ‘had long disliked him (& more than once had told me so) and showed it. Canterbury knew it’. Relieved that the prince was in London that day. Dawson took the Archbishop to the king’s room that evening, and Lang blessed him as he slept.

The bulletin issued that Sunday night said briefly that there was ‘no change in His Majesty’s condition’, but next day, according to Wigram, ‘the doctors were more anxious about the king whose left side of the heart showed signs of weakness’. At about 11 am the Private Secretary, having been suddenly summoned, found the king with a copy of The Times in front of him:

He murmured something about the empire, and I replied that ‘all is well, sir, with the empire’. H.M.’s mind then faded away. When the blood circulated in his brain again the king said ‘I feel very tired. Go and carry on with your work. I will see you later’. Alas! This was my last conversation with my beloved master.

The three additional privy counsellors having arrived at 11.30, Wigram was a fascinated witness of an elaborate discussion between the lawyers, Hailsham and Simon, on the validity of whatever signs the king might be able to make and the degree to which Dawson could assist him. Dawson meanwhile saw the king and told him of the decision to appoint a council of state. ‘At first H.M. objected and said that this had never been done before, but eventually Lord Dawson was able to reassure H.M. who agreed’. It is Wigram’s memorandum, made the same day, that provides the fullest account of the scene which followed:

The Council met in the bedroom at 12 noon. The King was sitting in a chair in his dressing-gown with a table in front. H.M. greeted the Members with a nod and his familiar smile. The Lord President read the proceedings and the King said ‘I approve’ with a firm voice. For 10 minutes or more the King was unable to sign with either hand. Lord Dawson kneeling at his side proposed first the right hand and then the left. H.M. then remarked to Lord Dawson ‘You don’t want me to sign with both hands?’ and then, looking towards the Privy Counsellors, ‘Gentlemen, I am so sorry for keeping you waiting like this. I am unable to concentrate’. Eventually H.M. made two marks which might be recognised as an attempt to sign ‘G.R.’ It was apparent that the King would not allow a subject to sign for him in any way or to guide his hand. At one time the pen was upside down and had to be turned round by Lord Dawson. On taking leave the Members received a delightful smile and nod from H.M.

The privy counsellors had lunch with the queen, after which the Prince of Wales, having flown back to Sandringham with the Duke of York, allowed MacDonald, Hailsham and Simon the use of his aircraft for their return to London. The prince, Wigram did not fail to record, had been ‘rather annoyed that Lord Dawson had summoned him back in such haste’. But it became clear to the doctors during the afternoon that the king, who had gone to bed after the privy council meeting and remained asleep during Dawson’s examination, was unlikely to live through the night; and Wigram busied himself with detailed instructions for the preparation of the coffin.

While the royal family, who had been joined by the Duke of Kent, were at dinner Dawson, having dined alone in his suite, was visited by Wigram, who said that the last bulletin that had been issued, though it had said that the king was ‘sinking’ seemed insufficient as an indication that he was in fact dying. He had brought in his pocket a copy of the final bulletin concerning King Edward VII, a ‘very commonplace’ one which surely ought to be improved upon. It was then that Dawson took up a menu card and, writing on his knee, composed the now-famous statement. That the precise phrasing was reached after a short discussion seems to be supported by a draft in his own hand – not quite accurate – which still exists.

With the card in his hand, Dawson noted, ‘I then visited the royal dinner party to submit its terms for approval. The P. of W. especially but all of them appreciative and kind’. The bulletin was then telephoned to the BBC for the evening broadcast.

After dinner the Prince of Wales, with the Duke of York and the Duke of Kent, drew up plans for the funeral with Wigram in his office. The processional arrangements in London were entirely the prince’s idea. The queen, who had been among the first to accept that the illness was fatal, had throughout it, Dawson noted, ‘remained calm and kindly’, and had spaced her visits to her husband. ‘During them I do not think much that was intimate passed; the king was too tired for it must be remembered he had carried on to the end of his road – and in the last brief stage weakness and “awayness” came upon him fast’. She was there in the evening when Hewett, because of ‘a little evidence of struggle’, administered a morphia injection, on which the King ‘roused, sd. “God damn you” and settled down to sleep... She laughed, sd. how humorous to be able to say that “when you were dying”: that had helped her’.

From 10 o‘clock onwards ‘sleep passed gradually into stupor and coma, though the latter was never deep’. The Archbishop, with whom in the morning the king had tried to say a prayer, held a short service by his bedside while he was unconscious, after which the queen allowed him to retire, so that only the family and the doctors should be present at the end. The Prince of Wales had earlier told Lord Dawson that he and the queen had no wish for the king’s life to be prolonged if the illness were judged to be mortal; but that, having made their view known, they left the decision in the doctor’s hands. Dawson was in complete sympathy, and promised to direct the treatment accordingly.

The legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, with proper safeguards, had for some time been promoted by a society founded by Dr Killick Millard, President of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. That the practice already existed, though naturally unpublicised, was hardly a secret, and its controversial aspects were debated in the press on a scale that was to increase steadily over the following year, at the end of which the Voluntary Euthanasia (Legislation) Bill was introduced but defeated in both houses. In the House of Lords (December 1st, 1936) Lord Dawson, curiously enough, would be among those who voted against the second reading, but on certain clear principles. ‘This is something’, he said, ‘which belongs to the wisdom and conscience of the medical profession and not to the realm of law... The machinery of this Bill would turn the sick room into a bureau and be destructive of our usefulness... I believe not only that the law would remain nugatory but that it would deter those who are, as I think, carrying out their mission of mercy’. How he had seen that mission in King George’s last illness is clear from his private Sandringham notebook:

At about 11 o’clock it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the Patient but little comporting with that dignity and serenity which he so richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. Hours of waiting just for the mechanical end when all that is really life has departed only exhausts the onlookers & keep them so strained that they cannot avail themselves of the solace of thought, communion or prayer. I therefore decided to determine the end and injected (myself) morphia gr.3/4 & shortly afterwards cocaine gr.1 into the distended jugular vein: ‘myself’ because it was obvious that Sister B, was disturbed by this procedure. In about 1/4 an hour – breathing quieter – appearance more placid – physical struggle gone.

Then the queen and family returned and stood round the bedside – the queen dignified and controlled – others with tears, gentle but not noisy... Intervals between respirations lengthened, and life passed so quietly and gently that it was difficult to determine the actual moment.

The moment, according to the final bulletin, was given as 11.55 pm and the news was broadcast by the BBC at 12.10. Dawson conceded that one of his considerations had been ‘the importance of the death receiving its first announcement in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate evening journals’, and he had telephoned his wife in London to advise The Times to hold back publication as the announcement could be expected. This and his other objectives, as distinct from concerns over cases of painful and incurable disease, had been ‘a different or small aspect of so-called euthanasia on which almost silently agreement now exists’.

Just before the king’s death the Prince of Wales (recorded Wigram, who was there for the last few minutes) ‘became hysterical, cried loudly, and kept on embracing the queen’. Dawson, always more moderate in his comments, described it thus:

When I signified that death had arrived, the P. of W. left the room crying aloud – an emotional outburst at the realisation & following strain of studies and preparations for the happenings which must follow the King’s death. A little later on he returned – stood quietly by his dead father’s bedside & went out to the anteroom & sd. ‘I hope I will make good as he has made good’.

The queen, ‘in her quiet way greatly moved’, thanked the nurses and warmly clasped Wigram‘s hand and that of Dawson, who wrote: ‘We both cast our thoughts over seven years watchfulness and sometimes struggle – and these now over. She played a great part in preserving him’.

Although King George and Queen Mary, like Dawson himself, favoured cremation in principle, this was obviously out of the question, and the Prince of Wales had a few hours earlier given sanction for embalming – to Dawson’s relief, having in mind such unfortunate accidents as that to the coffin of the Duke of Teck which, after a death from acute abdominal sepsis, ‘burst open with a loud report’ during the procession. The professionals summoned to Sandringham from London, missed their way by car and arrived only at 6 am but carried out the embalming to Dawson’s entire satisfaction. For the first lying-in-state next morning – for the household and estate workers – ‘the king’s face was lifelike, and the expression contented and serene’.

The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York having gone to London for the accession council, King George’s coffin was placed on a hand-cart, with a detachment of the King’s Company as pallbearers, and taken at 5.30 in the evening to rest in the chancel of Sandringham Church until Thursday, when it would be conveyed to the capital from Wolferton station. ‘Headed by the king’s piper’, wrote Wigram, ‘the procession wended its way along the narrow path to the church, the same path which the king always walked... Rain was falling and only one or two torches were available to light this weird and impressive procession’.

At the queen’s suggestion the prince had earlier invited Wigram to remain with him as private secretary. Though ‘proud to do so’, Wigram at the same time had ‘begged him not to keep him too long’. He was getting old and had ‘grown up with the King’, but the new sovereign, he felt, would need to have about him capable young men of about his own age. ‘I told H.R.H. that Alec Hardinge was quite excellent and I had the utmost confidence in him’.

Nor was Wigram‘s first experience of the reign to be auspicious. The new king returned briefly to Sandringham on the Wednesday (22nd January), and in the evening was present, with Queen Mary and Wigram, when King George’s will was read by the solicitor, Sir Halsey Bircham:

The King was much perturbed that his father had left him no money and kept on saying ‘Where do I come in?’ We tried to explain that the late King felt that his eldest son, as Prince of Wales for 25 years, ought to have built up a nice surplus out of the Duchy of Cornwall and that there was no necessity to provide for him. King Edward VII never left his eldest son any money, for the same reason. However, we failed to comfort the new King. He kept on saying that my brothers and sister have got large sums but I have been left out. It was most unfortunate that King Edward VIII was not reasonable. As a matter of fact it was discovered later that he had tucked away over a million sterling. I tried to assure His Majesty that he would be very well off and there was no reason why he should not save money from the Civil List and the Privy Purse as his father had done. His Majesty continued to be obsessed about money.

It was Wigram’s devotion to the old king that sharpened his references to the new one. To remain as private secretary through the gathering drama of 1936 would hardly have been possible, and in fact it was Alec Hardinge (afterwards Lord Hardinge of Penshurst) who was shortly, as he had strongly recommended, to take over. After the Simpson divorce, however, Hardinge sent a note to the King (November 27th, 1936) which precipitated events and caused his instant replacement in the royal confidence by Sir Walter Monckton. What Hardinge had warned was (and this time it was true) that ‘the press would not remain silent much longer’, that the Baldwin government might then resign, and that he ‘had reason to know’ that the king would find it impossible to form another. And he ended by begging the king to consider letting Mrs Simpson go abroad without delay.

On December 10th, the eve of the abdication, Wigram had once more to wrestle with the contentious issue of his late master’s will, when there was a conference on the subject at Fort Belvedere, attended by King Edward and some of his staff, the Duke of York and two solicitors. The king, Wigram recorded, ‘made an impassioned speech pointing out how badly off he would be’, and asking that the will be altered so that he might fully benefit from it as the eldest son. With seemingly equal fervour Wigram intervened to say that ‘King George would turn in his grave if he thought that his eldest son was not willing to give effect to his wishes’. Abdication, he emphasised, had not been contemplated, and naturally not provided for, when the will was drawn up, and he repeated what had been intended concerning the opportunities of saving money available to the sovereign but not to his brothers and sister. The party spilt up into groups in separate rooms, and eventually a few minor alterations to the will were agreed upon and signed by King Edward and the Duke of York in the presence of the others.

Francis Watson is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and author of Dawson of Penn (Chatto & Windus, 1950).