Widow tells of the final days of misery of children’s author
CHILDREN’S AUTHOR John Cunliffe died after days of “unnecessary pain and misery” due to administrative hospital errors, his wife has revealed.
Mr Cunliffe, who wrote the Postman Pat and Rosie and Jim series, died of heart failure at his home in Ilkley in September 2018.
His widow Sylvia Cunliffe revealed the 85-year-old was left in discomfort after a mix-up with the bed provided, while a carer sent to watch him during the night was found fast asleep and snoring next to him in his final moments.
Mrs Cunliffe said no one was there to wake her to alert her to her husband’s imminent passing and she was only there to say goodbye after discovering him “by chance”.
In a letter to The Guardian yesterday, she said her husband had hoped for “a good death” at home but the administrative mix-ups in providing a hospital bed put paid to that.
She said: “First of all the bed’s pump failed within an hour of being installed, then later on the
bed was found to be too short, so John had days of unnecessary pain and misery before an engineer appeared to extend the bed, which he refused to do since John was too ill to vacate the bed, so my son had to extend it while an engineer instructed him.
“There was also an unusable commode provided, plus another one exactly the same day after his death.”
John Cunliffe lived in Lancashire and Cumbria before moving to Yorkshire, where he was patron of Ilkley Literature Festival.