Letters and telegrams were sent and received; friends visited; the composer tossed and turned in bed, attended by the nurse. Coleridge-Taylor fretted about manuscript parts wrongly addressed by the Americans until the parcel had been received, and then he insisted that he and Jessie checked that each part had been returned. The nurse told Jessie to call Dr Collard again. He returned with a colleague and they sent for a special nurse. The composer, propped up by pillows, conducted an imaginary orchestra. His mother, Jessie, two nurses and ‘a West African friend’ were all present when a little after six on Sunday evening 1 September 1912 he died from pneumonia.

Downing wrote fourteen years later:

Reports appeared in newspapers across Britain and abroad. Everywhere there was a sense of great loss. The Musical News obituary ended: ‘His death removes from the ranks of British composers one possessed of a sense of beauty, and of undoubted originality’.