Thanks all.
OC, having studied the papers more closely his last court case was exactly a year before his death and presumably after the Italy trip, assuming they went. It seems you could die quite quickly after symptoms became obvious - one site says "Many patients faced a bleak prognosis, with some dying within months, weeks, or even days of admission to medical care".
AN, his wife is another issue - she remarried about 20 years after his death to a younger man (15 years her junior) and they remained together until her death at 83. He lived until he was about 90. So.... this is another set of reasons leading me to wonder if the first husband did have syphilis.
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 Merry
"Something has been filled in that I didn't know was blank" Matthew Broderick WDYTYA? March 2010
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