What A Way to Go

Reading in Robert Louis Taylor's biography of Winston Churchill, re the fate of a minor, hapless Churchill political ally.

Says Taylor:

"[James Mawdsley] was an enormous man and had been gaining a little more weight each year. A large china tub in which he was accustomed to bathing had at last collapsed under the growing avoirdupois and Mawdsley was destroyed in the wreckage."

Wikipedia is less colorful: "Mawdsley died in 1902 at Taunton, Ashton-under-Lyne from complications following an accident. His injuries were sustained by sitting in a china bath and breaking it."

(Wikipedia quotes another Churchill biographer, Roy Jenkins, in the matter.)

I've written about this book before. After hearing of Churchill's exploits during the Boer War of 1900, I begin to see why Michael Palin and Terry Jones saw such rich material in British history for their parody series, Ripping Yarns. Churchill could have featured in an entire season of the show, with little embellishment necessary.

(Just wanted the intro, but apparently it's not available solo on YouTube.)

Then there's William Howard Taft, luckier but perhaps more infamous.