Bournemouth hotelier is first man to die of AIDS in Britain
The finding was revealed in a three-month-long investigation
Anna Highfield
Kate MacLachlanReporter
(Image: ITV)
An investigation has uncovered that a Bournemouth man was the first male to ever die from AIDS in Britain.
John Eaddie died of AIDS on October 29, 1981 but his identity had remained a mystery for 40 years.
An ITV investigation revealed that Mr Eaddie ran a guesthouse in Bournemouth which his friends remembered as a 'safe-haven for gay men to meet and drink' in the late '70s and early '80s, reports My London.
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Ken Dee, a friend who knew Mr Eaddie from his guesthouse, said he had "set up some place that was really safe" in the midst of a "terrible" era for the gay community.
On October 29, 1981 Mr Eaddie died at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea from pneumocystis pneumonia, a rare form of pneumonia which would only later be recognised as a symptom of HIV/AIDs.
Doctors at the time had no idea the pneumonia was caused by an underlying virus, AIDS, which would go on to cause 15,000 deaths in Britain alone.
The only documentation of John's death was a few lines in the Lancet medical journal in December 1981 and until now, the first AIDS patient to be publicly identified in Britain was Terrence Higgins, who died in 1982.
The journal entry, which called John a "known homosexual," described how he was suspected to have died of the same mystery illness that was ravaging the gay community in America, after he had returned from a trip to Miami.
One of Mr Eaddie's friends, Tony Pinnegar, recalled visiting him in hospital at the end of his life, after his condition had deteriorated rapidly, and his shock at being told by doctors that his friend wasn't going to make it.
Tony said: "We thought he was going to recover, but I remember the doctor saying, 'He's not going to survive'.
"He was just lying there unconscious, strapped up to machines.
"And that was it, we never spoke to him again."
Another friend, Paul Wills, described the relief of finally having confirmation that John died of AIDS, which he had suspected years later.
He said: "I think it's quite fitting that John can be remembered, because there was such a stigma.
"That stigma led to many gay men being victimised in the early '80s, as AIDS began devastating their community.
"At first, the disease was referred to as 'gay cancer' or 'the gay plague', with many patients blamed for having contracted HIV."
After John's symptoms had begun to show, like most AIDS patients in the '80s his life expectancy would have been limited to weeks or months.
Professor Jonathan Weber, the current Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London was a professor of Communicable Diseases and GU Medicine (medicine for STIs and HIV) from 1991 to 2018.
After John's death, Professor Weber began a study of 400 gay men in London who had early symptoms of AIDS.
Out of the 400 men, he told ITV, 399 died.
He said: "We had nothing for the underlying disease. And indeed we still didn't know what the disease was.
"We had no idea what it was until 1984. The power of this virus to kill people without intervention is quite extraordinary."
Huge advancements in drug treatments in Britain have reduced death rates from HIV/AIDS in the last 40 years.
This viral suppression, which can successfully reduce a person's viral load to undetectable levels, means there is no reason anyone with HIV in Britain should not live a full life now.
But AIDS is still killing 600,000 people every year around the world - mostly in Africa, where access to drugs is far more limited.
Searching for Patient Zero: Britain's AIDS Tragedy is on ITV at 7:30pm on Thursday 11 November. It will be available to watch after broadcast on the ITV Hub.
Those affected by HIV in Dorset can seek support through Body Positive Dorset here.
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