He was physician to the Churchill family for many years, seeing young Winston through a serious bout of double pneumonia in 1886. ![]() Roose combined a sympathetic bedside manner with a wide knowledge of medicine. He moved to London in 1885 where he built up a practice catering to the rich and famous, including Prime Minister William Gladstone, cabinet minister Joseph Chamberlain and the Shah of Iran. Roose attended to a number of wealthy patients when they were in Brighton. Trained in medicine at Guy’s Hospital London, Roose began his career by setting up a practice Brighton, a fashionable health resort on England’s south coast. He remained in a coma for much of the journey back through France to London where he arrived on 17 December 1894.ĭr Keith continued to be closely involved in Lord Randolph’s care, as did the family physician, Edward Charles Robson Roose, known as Robson Roose. They travelled through the Suez Canal to Alexandria in Egypt where Lord Randolph fell into a coma. By the time they reached Bombay (Mumbai), Lord Randolph was in such poor health that Dr Keith was advised to bring him home as quickly as possible. After visiting San Francisco they continued on to Japan, Singapore and India. They journeyed to New York and Maine, then to Canada where they crossed to Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The party left England in late June of 1894. They also took a young doctor called George Keith, son of Lady Jennie’s gynaecologist, who was tasked with sending regular bulletins back to England. Lord Randolph decided that his complete rest would take the form of a trip around the world accompanied by Lady Jennie and a selection of servants. Lord Randolph had experienced a number of health problems during his adult life but The Times noted that he became increasingly unwell in early 1894 when his doctors had prescribed a period of complete rest. The possible reason for that will become apparent. Somewhat surprisingly, very few subsequent historians, including Winston Churchill, have made reference to the obituary. European perspectives were provided by correspondents from Paris, Berlin and Vienna. It reviewed Lord Randolph’s “strange, meteoric career”, from his election as a Member of Parliament in 1874 to his appointment as Secretary of State for India in 1885, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons a year later. The obituary summarised Lord Randolph’s childhood and early adulthood, including his spells at Eton and Oxford (where “he was said to have been a somewhat unruly undergraduate”), his marriage in 1874 and the birth of his two sons. It appeared the day after Lord Randolph’s death, extending across seven columns. ![]() His slow decline gave ample opportunity for The Times to prepare a lengthy obituary. There remained for me only to pursue his aims and vindicate his memory.” ĭuring Lord Randolph’s final weeks, bulletins appeared in Britain’s two leading medical periodicals, the British Medical Journal and the Lancet. He had hoped to serve alongside him as a Member of Parliament, but it was not to happen: “All my dreams of comradeship with him, of entering Parliament at his side and in his support, were ended. Indeed he had long been in stupor.” Winston had endured a difficult relationship with his father. Summoned from a neighbouring house where I was sleeping, I ran in the darkness across Grosvenor Square, then lapped in snow. ![]() Recalling the moment of his father’s death many years later, Winston Churchill wrote: “My father died … in the early morning. The fact of the death was communicated quickly to Queen Victoria, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Prime Minister and other leading figures. Lord Randolph’s wife, Lady Jennie Churchill, was present at the death, as were his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, and his sons Winston and John. He was forty-five years old and had been unwell for some time. ![]() Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, father of Sir Winston Churchill and a major political figure in his own right, died at home in Grosvenor Square, London, on Thursday 24 January 1895.
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