Kenneth Williams - Personal Life and Death

Personal Life and Death

On 14 October 1962, Williams's father, Charlie, was taken to hospital after drinking carbon tetrachloride that had been stored in a cough mixture bottle. Williams refused to visit him, and the following day went out for lunch and then to the cinema. Charlie died that afternoon and, an hour after being informed, Williams went on stage in the West End. The coroner's court recorded a verdict of accidental death due to corrosive poisoning by carbon tetrachloride.

Several years later Williams turned down work with Orson Welles in America because he did not like the country and had no desire to work there. Many years after his death, The Mail on Sunday, quoting Wes Butters, co-writer of the book Kenneth Williams Unseen: The Private Notes, Scripts And Photographs, claimed Williams had been denied a visa because Scotland Yard considered him a suspect in his father's death.

Williams insisted that he was celibate, and his diaries substantiate his claims – at least from his early 40s onwards. He lived alone all his adult life and had few close companions apart from his mother, and no romantic relationships of significance. His diaries contain references to unconsummated or barely consummated homosexual dalliances, which he describes as "traditional matters" or "tradiola" (since male homosexual activity was a criminal offence in the UK before 1967, outright admission would have been held against him if anyone had read the diaries). He befriended gay playwright Joe Orton, who wrote the role of Inspector Truscott in Loot (1966) for him, and had holidays with Orton and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in Morocco. Other friends included Stanley Baxter, Gordon Jackson and his wife Rona Anderson, Sheila Hancock, Maggie Smith and her playwright husband, Beverley Cross.

Williams lived in a succession of small rented flats in North London from the mid-1950s. After his father died, his mother, Louisa, lived close by him and, finally, in the flat next to his. His last home was a flat on Osnaburgh Street, now demolished. Williams was fond of fellow Carry On regulars Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Connor, Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims and Bernard Bresslaw.

Williams rarely revealed details of his private life, though he spoke openly to Owen Spencer-Thomas about his loneliness, despondency and sense of underachievement in two half-hour documentary programmes entitled Carry On Kenneth on BBC Radio London. In later years his health declined, along with that of his elderly mother, and his depression deepened. He died on 15 April 1988 in his flat; the cause of death was an overdose of barbiturates. An inquest recorded an open verdict, as it was not possible to establish whether his death was a suicide or an accident. His diaries reveal he had often had suicidal thoughts and as far back as his earliest diaries he noted there were times when he could not see any point in existence. His authorised biography argues that Williams did not take his own life but died of an accidental overdose. The actor had doubled his dosage of antacid without discussing this with his doctor, which, combined with the aforementioned mixture of medication, is the widely accepted cause of death. He had a stock of painkilling tablets and it is argued that he would have taken more of them if he had been intending suicide.

His mother died in July 1991 and his half-sister, Pat, died in 1994.