Churchill — who died 50 years ago this year — was famous for lifting British spirits throughout World War 2, telling the House of Commons on May 13, 1940 in his first speech as Prime Minister:
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Now a small tube of Churchill's blood is set to be offered for auction in the west of England. It was collected in 1962 when Churchill was recovering from a fractured hip in The Middlesex Hospital, London.
Churchill, aged 87, was on holiday in Monte Carlo when the cigar-smoking titan of British politics fell out of bed, sustaining a fractured hip. The government had him packed into an RAF VC10 jet, at the request of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and flown back to London.
While in hospital, his situation deteriorated and he contracted bronchitis and pneumonia which in turn led to thrombosis.
Samples of his blood were taken at the time by medical staff and — on his recovery and departure from hospital, the last phial of his blood was set to be thrown out.
Student nurse Patricia Fitzgibbon asked if she could keep the sample, labelled "Sir Winston S. Churchill WWB9" and her request was granted. Following her death it is to be offered for sale at Duke's Auction House in Dorset on March 12 and is expected to fetch between £300-£600.
Timothy Medhurst from Duke's told the Dorset Echo: "It is impossible to put an accurate estimate on this unique piece of history. There are just a couple of drops in the phial that is clearly labelled. At the time this blood was taken Churchill had already experienced a catalogue of injuries. So to have another devastating injury occur at such an old age was a threat to his stalwart ‘British Bulldog' image.
"Though Churchill largely relied on his walking stick by the time this broken hip occurred, the operation to fix the fracture would have a caused a shortening in his leg and photographs following 1962 always show Churchill leaning on his iconic walking stick."
Famous False Teeth
As strange as it might seem, his blood is not the only thing people have been keen to get their hands on. Churchill's false teeth were sold at auction by Keys Auctioneers in Norfolk, in July 2010, for £15,200.
The teeth were made by dental technician Derek Cudlipp, and specially designed to preserve Churchill's distinctively slurred voice. Cudlipp's work was deemed so vital to the war effort that Churchill reportedly tore up the dentist's enlistment papers, thus keeping him from the front line.
The false teeth may well have been clenched around one of his famous cigars, a half-smoked one of which recently sold for over £2,000!
