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Today in history - The King is dead!

Writer's picture: Nicholas HodgsonNicholas Hodgson


King George the Fifth – King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India died at the age of 70 on this day, January 20th in the year 1936.


He was also the first British Monarch in centuries to be murdered in his bed.


Wait… what?


Okay… first a little background.


George was born in Windsor, England in 1865. He was the second eldest son of Prince Albert Edward, who himself was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

George had an older brother, (also called Prince Albert Victor… yes this gets confusing at times) and at birth was third in line for the throne.


Prince George as a child in the 1870's. He is wearing a sailors outfit, traditional for royal children at the time.


To use today’s terminology, he was the spare.


His father was the Prince of Wales and would one day succeed his grandmother, Queen Victoria. His older brother was next in line for the throne and George would only succeed if for some reason his brother died before him AND had no children.


So of course, that’s exactly what happened.


But first, George required an education. At the age of twelve he was sent to the Royal Naval College. He would go on to serve in the Navy for almost twenty years, touring the globe and becoming the first future British Monarch to visit far flung parts of the Empire including Australia and South Africa.


He also visited Japan where he met the Emperor and got a tattoo. As you do when you are young, single and abroad.


But suddenly, in 1892 – his brother Prince Albert Victor died childless during an influenza epidemic and George was vaulted upwards in the line of succession.


Prince George, in his late twenties at the time, had to give up his naval career and become a full-time member of the Royal family. Especially with the Queen advancing in age and unable to carry out many of the public functions of the monarch.


There was something else he needed to do too – quickly.


Marry and have an heir.


George had no problem with this. He had already fallen in love while stationed at Malta during his time in the Royal Navy. The subject of his affections was Princess Marie of Edinburgh, the grand-daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. a

He asked her to marry him.

Unfortunately for George, Princess Marie’s mother disliked the match. She didn’t think the second son of the Prince of Wales was good enough for her daughter so the proposal was declined.


Shortly afterwards, George’s brother died suddenly.


Leaving behind his own fiancée, Princess Mary of Teck.


George and Mary, both in mourning for George’s brother, become close over the next few months. Queen Victoria approved the match and in July of 1893, they were married.


Between 1893 and 1901, George was a full-time Royal, carrying out many engagements.

Then in January 1901, his grandmother Queen Victoria died.


And George’s father, Prince Albert Edward, ascended to the throne as King Edward VIII.

George was now Prince of Wales and the heir to the throne.


And he knew it wouldn’t be a long wait, as his father was already in his sixties.

As Prince of Wales, George travelled all around the world on behalf of the Crown.

He was at the opening of the first Parliament of Australia in 1901.

He visited New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Canada.


King George V in his official coronation portrait.


And in 1910, after nine-years as heir apparent, George’s father died and George ascended the throne as King George V.


To say that George had a turbulent time as Monarch would be an understatement.

At the start of his reign, Britain was the most powerful country in the world. It had a huge empire and unmatched supremacy over the globe thanks to the power and might of the Royal Navy.


George’s cousin Wilhelm sat on the throne of Germany as the Kaiser.

His other cousin Nicholas was the Tsar of Russia.

And his cousin King George sat on the throne of Greece.

The two other mighty European Empires were the Austro-Hungarian Empire, headed by the elderly Emperor Franz Josef and the Ottoman Empire which ruled much of the middle East and North Africa from the Sultan’s palace in Turkey.


By the time King George died in 1936, Britain was the only one of those countries left with either a monarchy or an empire.

The Kaiser and Austria-Hungarian Emperor were forced to abdicate at the end of World War One.

The Tsar of Russia was overthrown in a revolution and his whole family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. 

The Ottoman Empire crumbled at the end of World War One, the Sultan was overthrown and a new secular state called Turkey was created in its wake.

The Greek monarchy was overthrown by revolution in the early 1920’s *


Only Great Britain remained stable, having endured the slaughter of World War One (1914 – 1918), The global Influenza Epidemic (1918 – 1920), the Russian civil war (1918 – 1921), the stock market crash (1929) and subsequent global economic depression for much of the early 1930’s.


By 1936 when George died, Hitler was in power in Germany and was beginning to ramp up both his persecution of the Jews and his preparations to go to war in 1939, Russia was under the boot of the tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin, British India was campaigning for Independence, Ireland had claimed independence, Japan was preparing to flex its military might in the Pacific and the new American President Franklin Roosevelt was trying to drag America out of the depression.


It was a turbulent world which George.

King George himself was lucky to have had a mostly stable life. By 1936, his eldest son David Edward was Prince of Wales, although as yet unmarried and with no children. His second son Albert was the Duke of York and was happily married with two daughters (Elizabeth and Margaret). The biggest personal tragedy of his reign was the death of King George and Queen Mary’s youngest son Prince John who died of a seizure in 1919 at the age of 13 after a lifetime of ill-health.


Portrait of the Royal Family in the early 1930's. From left to right: Prince Edward: Prince of Wales, Princess Mary: The Princess Royal, Prince George: Duke of Kent, King George V, Prince Albert: Duke of York, Queen Mary, Prince Henry: Duke of Gloucester.


In January 1936, the King’s health started to decline.


Preparations had long been made for the succession and his sons were summoned to Sandringham to farewell their father.


On the 15th of January, the King took to his bed. He would not leave his bedroom again.

As it became increasingly clear that the King was dying, preparations were made.

On the morning of January 20th, the King’s physician Lord Dawson of Penn issued a statement that “The King’s life is moving peacefully towards it’s close.”


By now the King was unconscious for most of the time. Lord Dawson attempted to make him as comfortable as possible while his life slipped away and that night, as this breathing became increasingly laboured, Lord Dawson made the most extraordinary decision a Royal doctor has ever made.

In his words:

 

‘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 & keeps 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 [grains] and shortly afterwards cocaine gr.1 [grains] into the distended jugular vein ... In about 1/4 an hour – breathing quieter – appearance more placid – physical struggle gone.

 

Yes. The doctor essentially murdered the King (euthanasia not being legal in Britain at the time). And his reasons for doing so?

 

Dawson wrote that he acted to preserve the King's dignity, to prevent further strain on the family, and so that George's death at 11:55 pm could be announced in the morning edition of The Times newspaper rather than "less appropriate ... evening journals". Neither Queen Mary, who was intensely religious and might not have sanctioned euthanasia, nor the Prince of Wales was consulted. The royal family did not want the King to endure pain and suffering and did not want his life prolonged artificially but neither did they approve Dawson's actions.

 

So there you have it. King George V, killed by his doctor on this day in 1936.

 

* Prince Andrew of Greece, the youngest son of King George of Greece, went into exile after the fall of the Greek monarchy. His only son, Prince Phillip of Greece would end up being educated in Britain and eventually join the royal navy. It was while in the navy that Prince Phillip was introduced to Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of King George VI of the United Kingdom. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip would marry in 1947 and as the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip would remain faithfully at her side as she reigned over United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth as Queen Elizabeth the Second from 1952 until he died at the age of 99 in 2021.  Prince Phillip’s eldest son, King Charles III is currently the King of the United Kingdom. His grandson Prince William is Heir to the Throne.

 

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