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Virginia Maher

From the South China Morning Post this week in 1952

King George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham early on February 6. He died in the same place he was born on December 14, 1895.

His valet found him when he went to wake him.

Announcement of the king's death was a stunning surprise to Britons, who thought their monarch was on the way to recovery from a lung operation the previous September.

King George VI had reigned for 15 years and one month.

He ascended the throne on the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, on December 11, 1936.

As the news spread, a solemn silent crowd began gathering immediately in front of the great gates of Buckingham Palace.

With the king's death, his daughter, Elizabeth, immediately became queen.

She cut short a tour of Africa and flew home on news of her father's death.

The accession of Queen Elizabeth II to the throne was publicly proclaimed in medieval pomp and pageantry as she called on God's help to 'discharge worthily this heavy task that has been laid upon me so early in my life'.

The 25-year-old Elizabeth went to St James' Palace, where she took her oath as queen before the Privy Council.

The public reading of the Proclamation of Ascension drew massive crowds to the same historic landmarks of old London Town where Shakespearean multitudes hailed the accession of another Elizabeth 394 years earlier. Queen Elizabeth II became Britain's first woman ruler since Queen Victoria, who died in 1901, and the fifth since Mary in 1553.

Britain reached its peak of greatness under women monarchs.

The first Elizabeth's reign produced Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, great poets, statesmen and soldiers.

Under Victoria, one of the most powerful empires in world history grew.

Queen Elizabeth II approved arrangements for the funeral of her father in the resting place of kings at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on February 15.

The king's body was to be taken by train to lie in state in Parliament's Westminster Hall so the people could pay him tribute.

Then it was to be taken in a state funeral procession to Paddington station for its final journey to Windsor, 25 miles from London.

The world's first open-heart surgery was performed at Guy's Hospital in London by chief surgeon Russell Claude Brock. The anonymous patient was a young man hailed in the press as a normal, healthy, living example of the miracle of modern surgery.

He was walking around London with a five-inch-long section of the aorta - the main artery - taken from a dead accident victim.

It was grafted two months earlier to replace another section.

A Swedish professor had operated on an aorta before, but no piece was grafted on.

Brock perfected the technique before offering the option to the patient.

He told him that if it worked he could expect to live a normal life, but that he would probably die if it failed.

The patient accepted the odds and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

David Jones, MP for Hartlepool, tabled a Commons motion asking the House to disapprove the actions of Judge H. P. Gamon, who 'expressed a derogatory opinion on the morals of residents of West Hartlepool'.

At Durham divorce court a month earlier, the judge said: 'Morals there seem to be lower than any other place in the country.'

A woman gave birth to a boy in deep snow in temperatures four degrees below zero.

The birth by a roadside near Vienna was unassisted and the mother wrapped the baby in a shawl and put him in a basket with things she was taking to the hospital.

They were found six hours later by a farm hand who heard feeble cries.

The mother and child were taken to hospital, where the mother was treated for frostbite.

Her son was 'doing fine'.



slice of life