Stuart Sutcliffe - Death

Death

While in Germany, Sutcliffe began experiencing severe headaches and acute sensitivity to light, and Kirchherr stated that some of the headaches left him temporarily blind. In 1962, Sutcliffe collapsed in the middle of an art class in Hamburg. Kirchherr's mother had German doctors perform various checks on him, but they were unable to determine exactly what was causing the headaches. They suggested he go back to England and have himself checked into a hospital with better facilities, but Sutcliffe was told there was nothing wrong with him, so he returned to Hamburg. While living at the Kirchherrs' house his condition got worse, and after collapsing again on 10 April 1962, he was taken to hospital by Kirchherr (who rode with him in the ambulance), but he died before the ambulance reached the hospital. The cause of death was revealed to have been an aneurysm, which caused bleeding in the right ventricle of his brain.

On 13 April 1962, Kirchherr met the group at Hamburg Airport, telling them that Sutcliffe had died a few days before. Sutcliffe's mother flew to Hamburg with The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, and returned to Liverpool with her son's body. Sutcliffe's father did not hear of his son's death for three weeks, as he was sailing to South America, although the family arranged for a padre to tell him when he docked in Buenos Aires. After Sutcliffe's death, Kirchherr wrote a letter to his mother, apologising for being too ill to attend his funeral in Liverpool and saying how much she and Lennon missed him: "Oh, Mum, he (Lennon) is in a terrible mood now, he just can't believe that darling Stuart never comes back. just crying his eyes out.... John is marvellous to me, he says that he knows Stuart so much and he loves him so much that he can understand me."

The cause of Sutcliffe's brain haemorrhage is unknown, although it is believed to have been started by an earlier head injury, as he was either kicked in the head or thrown, head first, against a brick wall during a fight outside Lathom Hall, after a performance in January 1961. According to former manager Allan Williams, Lennon and Best went to Sutcliffe's aid, fighting off his attackers before dragging him to safety. Sutcliffe sustained a fractured skull in the fight and had his little finger unintentionally broken by Lennon. Sutcliffe refused medical attention at the time and failed to keep an X-ray appointment at Sefton General Hospital. However, in a post to the New York Times, Sutcliffe's friend, Mersey Beat editor Bill Harry, claimed that Sutcliffe did not appear at Lathom Hall at the time Williams said the attack had happened. According to Harry, Sutcliffe's mother told him that he had fallen down the steps from the attic room in Kirchherr's house, and that Neilsa Kirchherr, Astrid's mother, confirmed this.

Although Lennon did not attend or send flowers to Sutcliffe's funeral, his second wife, Yoko Ono, remembered that Lennon mentioned Sutcliffe's name very often, saying that he was " alter ego ... a spirit in his world ... a guiding force".