On this day in 1953, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 - 9 November 1953) expired in New York at St Vincent's Hospital.

Both the The White Horse Tavern and the Chelsea Hotel in New York lay claim to the fame of being where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. In New York, did all his drinking at the White Horse Tavern, which has a commemorative plaque there for him today. He lived at the Chelsea Hotel.

In truth, he died in neither place, nor in fact was it probably alcohol that killed him. Despite popular belief, he didn't actually have serious cirrhosis of the liver. No one is saying that his overdrinking did him any good. But he was also a diabetic, and the cause of death was actually recorded as pneumonia, which the morphine injections he got from his doctor would have aggravated by slowing his breathing further. The myth of his having drunk himself to death came about because just before he fell into a coma, he bragged of having drunk 18 whiskeys (others say in actual fact he'd only managed 8.)

History
The British tax man realized in 1948 that Thomas had never filed a tax return in his life, and owned them unpaid income tax of £1,902. For the remaining 5 years of his life, they had a lien on half of all he made. American tours paid well, and he was therefore forced to undertake them to pay off the taxes that were being demanded of him by the tax man back in the UK.

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