The vice president of the National Deaf Children’s

The vice president of the National Deaf Children’s Society brought her life of philanthropy to an end after refusing hospital help, an inquest heard today.

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Elfreiden ‘Freddy’ Bloom, OBE, 86, took an overdose of drugs which had been prescribed to treat her arthritis and declined treatment offered to her by doctors at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

The former journalist who gave up her career to care for her deaf daughter and other children with hearing difficulties knew what the consequences of refusing medication would be.

Mrs Bloom had already made two unsuccessful suicide attempts in the last year of her life.

Westminster Coroner’s Court heard that Mrs Bloom had lost the will to live and asked only to be ‘comfortable’ through her death.

But the Coroner, Doctor Anthony Burton, recorded a verdict of death by natural cases which took into account Mrs Bloom’s long-running heart complaint.

Mrs Bloom’s passing on May 20 this year brought to an end a wise and varied life which began in New York in February 1914.

Born the daughter of Robert Wenzel, a German consular official and shipping agent, and her mother Emmy, a journalist, ‘Freddy’ attended Barnard College, Colombia University, before flying to Ireland to complete a post-graduate degree in modern languages at Trinity College.

With her first husband Gilbert Retz, a doctor in the Indian Medical Service, Freddy travelled widely in the orient.

But the newly wed couple had only been in Malaysia for a month when Gilbert Retz died from pleurisy in 1940.

Until Japan’s advance through Malaysia in December 1941 Freddy made her living working as a journalist in Singapore where she met the man she was to live with until his death in 1984, Major Philip Bloom.

Major Bloom served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and his regiment had been garrisoned in Singapore when the Japanese offensive began in 1941.

She worked alongside her husband as a nurse and was determined to stay as the Japanese blitz intensified.

Freddy and Major Bloom tied the knot at a registry office nine days before the Japanese troops marched into the island state.

Mrs Bloom and her husband were imprisoned separately at Japanese prisoner of war camps where the squalid conditions nearly took her life where the bombs and bullets had failed.

Forced to stand in her cell all day and condemned to drink water from the communal toilet she nearly died in captivity.

Her journalistic connections had brought her under surveillance on suspicion of espionage and it was with reluctance that the Japanese authorities released her on the brink of death in 1945.

After the war Major Bloom set up in London as a consultant obstetrician and Freddy worked for charities which supported literacy among the post-war youth.

In 1946 Freddy’s first child, Virginia, was born and her daughter’s deafness was to play a pivotal role in shaping her future.

In the early 1950s Freddy began to work for a small group which helped deaf children and in 1958 this charitable organisation was galvanised under the name of the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Freddy Bloom became the chairwoman and put her experience in journalism to the service of the children she helped by editing ‘Talk’, the society’s magazine, for 25 years.

She held the chair until 1965 and was eventually awarded an OBE for services to deaf children.

Freddy also served on the board of trustees for four years and remained a vice-president until her death.

The court heard that in 1985, the year after Major Bloom died, she was involved in a car crash which left her requiring a hip replacement operation.

She suffered from appalling arthritis and when she took an overdose of naproxen, an anti-inflammatory drug used to treat the condition, her daughter was instructed to allow her to die.

But as Mrs Bloom’s condition worsened Virginia Bloom took her mother to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, a short journey from her home at (8) New Cavendish Court, New Cavendish Street.

She was described as an ‘independent’ lady who was still fully ‘compis mentis’ despite her old age.

Dr Burton said on admission to hospital ‘she was adamant in refusing treatment.

She wished only to be comfortable and she understood the consequences of not taking treatment.

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Doctor Derek Chase, Mrs Bloom’s GP, told the court that his patient had ‘over the recent weeks made a positive decision not to continue her life with her current level of disability.

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VERDICT: DEATH BY NATURAL CAUSES.

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