29 May 2011

WSG centenary

It is the centenary of the death of acute legal commentator and frequent litigant (contract, defamation, copyright) Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911).

The ODNB notes that -
Gilbert died of heart failure at Grim's Dyke on 29 May 1911, having swum too rapidly to save a girl who mistakenly supposed she was drowning in his artificial lake. His body was cremated, and his ashes were buried on 2 June in the churchyard of St John the Evangelist in Great Stanmore, Middlesex.