Dylan Thomas, who had a history of chest problems since childhood, was already ill when he arrived in America on October 20 1953, and using an inhaler to help his breathing. A course of penicillin would have taken care of his developing chest disease but his New York doctor injected morphine, sending him into a coma from which he never recovered.
But the ending of Dylan’s life was a joint enterprise; his American agent, John Brinnin, failed in his duty of care. He knew Dylan was ill, so you might wonder why he didn’t cancel his programme. But that was never an option for Brinnin; he was badly in debt and needed the money that would come from Dylan’s engagements, a punishing schedule of two script revisions, four rehearsals, and two performances of Under Milk Wood in just five days.
October 9: Dylan left Laugharne on the first leg of his trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye. "He always felt that he had to get out from this country because of his chest being so bad."
October 10: Dylan stayed in London with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on Under Milk Wood. Locke noted that Dylan was having trouble with his chest, “terrible” coughing fits that made him go purple in the face.
October 20: Dylan was ill on arrival in New York and exhausted after a long plane journey. Liz Reitell, John Brinnin's assistant, later noted: “He was very ill when he got here.” Nevertheless, she took him that evening to the first rehearsal of the play.
October 21: He continued to feel unwell. “This dreadful illness that was coming, he would feel wretched…he’d vomit and be torn apart by coughing.” (Reitell)
October 22: At the second rehearsal, the cast noticd he was ill, with bad breath and a sweating, blotchy face.
October 23: At the third rehearsal, Dylan said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever. He collapsed on the stage.
October 24: At the fourth rehearsal, Brinnin “was so shocked by his appearance I could barely stop myself from gasping aloud. His face was lime-white, his lips loose and twisted, his eyes dulled, gelid, and sunk in his head.”
After the first performance later that day, Dylan was again close to collapse, standing in his dressing room, clinging to the back of a chair. The play, he said, “has taken the life out of me…”
October 25: The second performance. His fellow actors realised that Dylan was very ill:
“He was desperately ill…we didn’t think that he would be able to do the last performance because he was so ill…Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so ill…still my greatest memory of it is that he had no voice.” (Nancy Wickwire)
Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, gave him a shot of cortisone, which helped him get through the performance but he collapsed afterwards.
October 27: Dylan’s 39th birthday. He went to a party held in his honour but was too unwell to stay. The party, said, Reitell, marked the beginning of the end.
November 2: Air pollution rose to levels dangerous to those with chest problems. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog. Reitell later recalled that in these last few days Dylan was “enormously ill.”
November 4: Dylan woke up at noon. He told Reitell he was suffocating. His voice was so low and hoarse that he sounded, said a friend, like Louis Armstrong. Dr Feltenstein was twice called to the hotel during the day. He came again in the late evening, when he injected Dylan with 30mg of morphine, three times the normal dose for pain relief. He left at 11pm, warning Reitell that Dylan was very ill, and that she needed help looking after him.
November 5: At midnight on November 4/5, Dylan went into coma. Reitell delayed in calling an ambulance, and he arrived in hospital two hours later, at 1.58am. The admitting doctors found bronchitis in all parts of the bronchial tree. An X-ray showed pneumonia, and a raised white cell count confirmed the presence of an infection.
November 9: Dylan died at 12-45pm in St Vincent's Hospital, New York.
November 10: A post-mortem was held. The pathologist found no evidence that Dylan’s brain had been poisoned, damaged or changed in any way by alcohol. He issued a Notice of Death in which he said he was unable to confirm any diagnosis of alcoholic brain damage. Nor did he note any signs of alcoholic hepatitis or cirrhosis in the liver. The immediate cause of death was swelling of the brain, caused by pneumonia reducing the supply of oxygen.
November 24: Dylan was buried in St Martin's church yard, Laugharne. It was a sunny day, when birds sang, cocks crowed and the organist played Blessed be the pure in heart.