Churchill's personal tragedy; Marigold Churchill (1918-1921), Kensal Green Cemetery

DIED AT BROADSTAIRS MR. AND MRS. WINSTON CHURCHILL BEREAVED Taken ill while on holiday at Broadstairs with her two sisters and only brother, little Mistress Marigold Frances Churchill, the three-year old child of Mr. Winston Churchill, Colonial Secretary, and Mrs. Churchill, died last night. In charge of a nurse, the children arrived in Thanet some time ago, to stay at the residence of Col. Charles and Mrs. Grant. Marigold was then apparently in her usual health but was taken suddenly ill about a week ago. Up to yesterday it was understood the complaint from which she was suffering had not been satisfactorily diagnosed. On Monday evening her condition was so serious that the father cancelled his engagement to attend the bedside, to which Mrs. Churchill, who had been on a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, had hurried. Both were present last night when their child died.

East Kent Times and Mail - Wednesday 24 August 1921

Reviewing the TV drama ‘Churchill’s Secret’ The Times (28.02.2016) noted that the death of his young daughter “was the personal tragedy that haunted Winston Churchill throughout his lifetime but has gone largely unnoticed.” The opening scene of the production showed Churchill imagining two-year-old Marigold as she ran on the beach at Broadstairs in the days prior to her death in 1921. It would have been a feat of imagination rather than recollection for Churchill to summon up an image of his daughter playing on the beach as neither he, nor his wife Clementine, were with their children at Broadstairs. Churchill, as always, had urgent government business to attend to and Clementine was visiting the Duke and Duchess of Westminster. The French governess was nervous of reporting Marigold’s ill health to her parents and delayed sending a telegram to Clementine until the child was in serious danger. Clementine travelled to Broadstairs and having seen her daughter immediately summoned Winston. Both parents were at Marigold’s bedside when she died; according to Churchill biographer William Manchester Clementine “shrieked in agony, like an animal in mortal pain,” when she realised her daughter was dead.

Mr. CHURCHILL'S LOSS The funeral took place Kensal Green yesterday Mr. Winston Churchill's three-year-old daughter. Marigold Frances Spencer Churchill, who died August 23 at Broadstairs. The service was conducted the Rev. B. C. H. Andrews, chaplain, and only members of the family were Present.

Daily Herald - Saturday 27 August 1921

The funeral took place at Kensal Green just three days later. It was a private ceremony but press photographers appeared in the cemetery; confronted by Winston and asked to leave they departed without taking a single shot. There seems to be only one photograph of Marigold in the public domain; taken with her mother the little girl has her back to the camera and her face is not clearly visible.

Marigold’s memorial, attributed to the now notorious Eric Gill, is grade II listed. The rather simple cross is in fact a replacement for a much larger Gill stone column and sculpted crucifix that was stolen. The original inscription is still in place on the square sectioned base.  Marigold was the only Churchill buried in the cemetery and the family had often expressed its wish to disinter her and rebury her with the rest of the family in Bladon churchyard in Oxfordshire, close to the ancestral home at Blenheim Palace. An article in issue 87 of ‘Telamon’, the magazine of the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery says that “the task of re-interment was completed earlier this year.” (2019). On February 27 2022 the International Churchill Society’s website stated “The Churchill family have announced that the body of Marigold Churchill, the fourth child of Winston and Clementine Churchill, was quietly moved in 2020 from its original resting place at Kensal Green Cemetery in London and reinterred at the churchyard of St. Martin’s, Bladon, where Marigold’s parents, sisters, and brother are all laid to rest.” It isn’t clear why the family would be announcing this two years after the event and neither is it clear whether it actually happened in 2019 or 2020.