My mother has always believed that her cousin died in the Coventry blitz. However, I got the death certificate and it turns out that her cousin, who was a young child, died of diphtheria on 16 Nov 1940 in Whitley hospital, Coventry, which I understand was the infectious diseases hospital.
I have a medical background so I know a bit about diphtheria, and the stats for the type of infection on the death cert are that 10% of children so infected died. Not good, but it still means that 90% survived.
Does anyone have any knowledge or information about whether Whitley hospital was affected by the blitz (it doesn't seem to have a taken a hit, so far as I can see)? 16.11.1940 was the day after the Blitz so I'm guessing that the city infrastructure was ruined - would the hospital still have had electricity/water? Would staff have gone to work there as normal (if they were alive and able to get there!) or would they, and equipment, have been redeployed elsewhere in the city where medical need was greatest?
I'm just wondering if an element of my mother's story is correct, inasmuch as maybe the diphtheria wouldn't have killed her cousin if there was a working ventilator available, or if the staff had all been at work as normal, etc etc.
Does anyone have any further ideas or information? It's conjecture of course but I would like to give my mum an idea of the circumstances of her cousin's death. (My mum lived in western Leicestershire at the time and remembers having a bed made up under the dining room table, for extra protection, and seeing the red glow on the horizon and being told that that was Coventry burning).
