London question
 

Whilst looking for wills, I found one for my great great uncle Charles Clarke in 1895. He lived in Battersea but died in St George's hospital Hyde Park, which doesn't seem particularly close by. He was a train driver and only 51 when he died and I have a vague idea that he was died as a result of an accident, although I am not sure where I got the idea from. So, would Hyde Park be the nearest hospital to Battersea? I have had a look for a newspaper report, but not found anything.

Thanks

St Thomas' would be closer. But if it was an accident, that might not have happened in Battersea.
Also, it's possible that there was a hospital used by railway staff that everyone went to. Or he may have paid into some sort of hospital insurance scheme.

Does the death certificate suggest anything about cause of death?

I was thinking more along the lines of if he had just been ill, he would have been in a hospital closer to home. I don't have the death cert.

Run over by a bus at Hyde Park Corner perhaps? You'd need the d.c. My sister trained at St George's, which is now an extremely posh hotel. The hospital migrated to Tooting.

I was thinking more a train accident, since he was a train driver. Unfortunately, getting the death cert is out of the question, since I have discovered they are now £11! I thought you could get a cheap pdf version :(

Copied from the GRO site:

What records are available as a PDF?
PDFs are available for historical digitised civil registration records held by GRO (i.e. birth entries from 1837 - 1918 and death entries from 1837 - 1957). A GRO index reference is required to be provided with the application. You can find the GRO index references by logging on to the GRO online ordering service and accessing the GRO online indexes. A PDF will cost £7.00 each.

Thanks Merry, I knew I had heard about it, but couldn't see any mention of it.

When you place your order the pdf bit is on the same page as where you enter the registration details such as district, volume and page number. The next bit says:

and the pdf option is the last one (because they want you to pay £11??!!)

My great aunt lived in rural Kent but died in St George's Hospital, Hyde Park just before WW1 began. She died of cancer and I assumed she was in St George's, despite living so far away, because it was a specialist treatment hospital....if they had such things in those days. Maybe your great great uncle needed specialist care for whatever was wrong with him.

My grandfather died in St Thomas's Hospital in London despite living in Guildford. He had stomach cancer and the treatment was probably better than at a local hospital. In addition, his daughter (my aunt) was a doctor there at the beginning of her career, and she was the informant.