Tragedy at the hospital
The sleepy idyll of 1930s Ealing was rocked by a murder-suicide when a father shot his daughter at the Chiswick and Ealing Isolation Hospital before turning the gun on himself.
Sybil Armstrong, a nurse, had fled to London to escape her domineering father who was enraged to hear she had fallen in love with someone ‘below her station.’
John Armstrong travelled down from Lancashire to confront his daughter who insisted Matron Ida Gregory be present when they met.
Armstrong pleaded with his daughter to call off her impending marriage and, when she refused, pulled out a revolver.
Matron Gregory stepped between the pair and wrestled with the gunman before being shot in the arm. Mr Armstrong then shot his daughter before turning the gun on himself.
The Middlesex County Times reported that ‘not within living memory has such an appalling tragedy happened in Ealing.”
The hospital was on the site of what is now Clayponds Hospital.