Death
He was killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in Kensington, London on 23 October 1975. The bomb, placed under a car, was intended for Sir Hugh Fraser. The Balcombe Street Gang were subsequently convicted of his murder.
Brian Keenan a senior IRA commander, was also apprehended and stood trial at the Old Bailey in London in June 1980 accused of organising the IRA's bombing campaign in England and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Gordon Hamilton-Fairley. Keenan was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment after being found guilty on 25 June 1980.
Hamilton-Fairley had four children, the youngest of whom was 12 years old when he died. Hamilton-Fairley had been offered an appointment as the Queen's personal physician, but he turned it down, preferring to work with the public. More than 10,000 people attended his funeral, and the Queen sent a representative to pay her respects.
He is commemorated by a blue plaque in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral which reads: "Gordon Hamilton-Fairley DM FRCP, first professor of medical oncology, 1930-75. Killed by a terrorist bomb. It matters not how a man dies but how he lives". A ward at St Bartholomew's Hospital was named after him.
Read more about this topic: Gordon Hamilton Fairley
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“‘Lay me a green sod under my head,
And another at my feet;
And lay my bent bow at my side,
Which was my music sweet;
And make my grave of gravel and green,
Which is most right and meet.”
—Unknown. Robin Hood’s Death (l. 65–70)
“Perhaps it is nothingness which is real and our dream which is non-existent, but then we feel think that these musical phrases, and the notions related to the dream, are nothing too. We will die, but our hostages are the divine captives who will follow our chance. And death with them is somewhat less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“You know, if this is Venus, or some other strange planet, we’re liable to run into some high-domed characters with green blood in their veins who’ll blast at us with their atomic death rayguns, and there we’ll be with these—these poor old-fashioned shootin’ irons.”
—Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)