J.M.W. Turner died on 19 December 1851, aged 76, in a rented house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, where his neighbors knew him as Admiral Booth. Cholera is the cause usually given, but the best evidence points to his heart.
He had been dying for months. By October 1851 he could no longer leave his bed, and two doctors came and went while his landlady, Sophia Booth, nursed him.
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Cholera is the answer most often given, and Turner did have it. He survived a severe attack a year before he died. The illness that nearly killed him had already passed.
What ended his life looks slower, and a doctor saw it coming. The weakness that would take him sat in his chest, and the cholera was behind him. About three weeks before the end, Dr David Price diagnosed a heart that was "very extensively diseased." I find that more convincing than any cholera story, because it was written at the bedside.
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