Winston Churchill’s 1931 Accident in Prohibition-Era America – And His Licence to Drink

In December 1931, Winston Churchill had just begun a 40-stop lecture tour across the United States when he found himself running late for a dinner engagement with financier Bernard Baruch on New York City’s Upper East Side. Assuming that Baruch was such a prominent figure any taxi driver would instantly know where to take him, Churchill neglected to bring the address.

It was, of course, a time long before mobile phones or Google Maps.

Eventually managing to hail a cab, Churchill grew impatient with the slow progress and decided to make his way on foot, darting across Fifth Avenue mid-block in the hope of gaining some time.

Instead, he was struck by a car travelling at roughly 35 miles per hour—an accident that left him, in his own words, nearly “squashed like a gooseberry.”

Churchill, who wasted no time peddling his memories of the accident and subsequent hospitalisation to The Daily Mail, explained his miscalculation thusly:

In England we frequently cross roads along which fast traffic is moving in both directions. I did not think the task I set myself now either difficult or rash. But at this moment habit played me a deadly trick. I no sooner got out of the cab somewhere about the middle of the road and told the driver to wait than I instinctively turned my eyes to the left. About 200 yards away were the yellow headlights of an approaching car. I thought I had just time to cross the road before it arrived; and I started to do so in the prepossession—wholly unwarranted— that my only dangers were from the left.

Another cab ferried the wounded Churchill to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he identified himself as “Winston Churchill, a British Statesman” and was treated for a deep gash to the head, a fractured nose, fractured ribs, and severe shock.

“I do not wish to be hurt any more. Give me chloroform or something,” he directed, while waiting for the anaesthetist.

After two weeks in the hospital, where he managed to develop pleurisy in addition to his injuries, Churchill and his family repaired to the Bahamas for some R&R.

It didn’t take long to feel the financial pinch of all those cancelled lecture dates, however. Six weeks after the accident, he resumed an abbreviated but still grueling 14-stop version of the tour, despite his fears that he would prove unfit.

Otto Pickhardt, Lenox Hill’s admitting physician came to the rescue by issuing Churchill the Get Out of Prohibition Free Pass, above. To wit:

…the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters.

Perhaps this is what the eminent British Statesman meant by chloroform "or something"? No doubt he was relieved about those indefinite quantities.

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