Warwick Davis's wife Samantha died hours before hospital discharge, inquest finds
The actor and campaigner Samantha Davis, the wife of Harry Potter star Warwick Davis, died after suffering a cardiac arrest hours before a hospital was planning to discharge her, an inquest has found.
Davis, who co-founded Little People UK – the dwarfism charity known as 'an essential resource for little people and their families' – died aged 53 at London's University College hospital on 24 March last year.
Prof Fiona Wilcox, of Inner West London coroner's court, concluded during Davis's inquest on Monday that she had died of arrhythmic cardiac arrest after complications of essential surgical treatment.
Davis was admitted to hospital on 7 February last year following a sudden loss of mobility in her lower limbs after a disc prolapse. On 20 February, and then again on 14 March, she had a thoracotomy operation – a surgical procedure where the chest wall is opened.
Upon the second surgery, her condition improved and the University College hospital at Westmoreland Street was planning to discharge her, the inquest heard. However, Davis went into cardiac arrest at 11.25pm on 23 March and was pronounced dead in the early hours of the morning on 24 March, following a failed resuscitation attempt.
Wilcox said: 'I am satisfied that the medical cause of death should be arrhythmic cardiac arrest and complications following left thoracotomies.
'In my view, the stress of everything together has precipitated this arrhythmic cardiac arrest in a lady who was not known to have any previous arrhythmia problems.'
According to Wilcox, Davis had achondroplasia, a bone growth disorder that results in dwarfism, which was 'complicated by very severe spinal problems' requiring multiple surgeries from 2016.
The coroner said: 'In my view, if this compression hadn't occurred, Ms Davis simply wouldn't have been so unwell. She wouldn't have needed two lots of major surgeries.'
She commended the 'excellent care' provided by the hospital, noting that it was 'frankly heartbreaking' that the surgery itself was successful only for complications to arise and to cause her death.
Upon her death last year, Samantha Davis was described by her husband as 'the greatest love of his life'. Speaking about his wife, he said: 'She was a unique character, always seeing the sunny side of life. She had a wicked sense of humour and always laughed at my bad jokes.
'Without Sammy, there would have been no Tenable quizshow, no Willow series. No Idiot Abroad series 3.'
Warwick Davis said Samantha was his 'most trusted confidante and an ardent supporter of everything I did in my career' and that having her by his side felt 'like having a superpower'.
He dedicated his Bafta film fellowship award to his wife during an emotional tribute at the ceremony in February.
Additional reporting: PA Media
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A litre could be brought back on a plane in a drinking water bottle and, when evaporated in a low oven, converted into a mound of fluffy, crystalline white needles, which would cover the cost of the next exotic holiday. The convenience of the powder form made ketamine a staple of dance and rave events. Small sniffs or 'bumps' could be shared on the dancefloor and, especially when combined with ecstasy, produced an agreeably woozy, floaty sensation, like dancing on the moon. It could equally be mixed with cocaine, the cocktail known as a Calvin Klein ('C' plus 'K'), which tempered its dissociative effects with a stimulant and euphoric buzz that sharpened physical, verbal, social or sexual engagement. [See also: Inside the psychedelic elite] All this time ketamine had been quasi-legal, a licensed veterinary product but not a banned drug: a status reflected in its seemingly obligatory media labelling as a 'horse tranquillizer'. 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Some now offer it by mail order and administer the accompanying therapy via a phone call; others sell it with no therapy component at all. The first UK ketamine clinic, Awakn, opened in Bristol in 2020, charging £6,000 for a course of injections in a clinical setting for the treatment of anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction. But it closed down in 2024 because of struggles to recruit private patients, and following an allegation of sexual misconduct against its most prominent practitioner. There are, however, many who have found ketamine invaluable for treating depression and PTSD without professional help. How it works is unclear – psychiatrists often resort to the old metaphors used for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 'whacking the TV set' or 'shaking the snow globe' – but it seems to offer a jolt that disrupts fixed and overly rigid patterns of thinking. If its action is essentially physiological, as this suggests, it's no surprise that many choose to self-medicate rather than seek mental healthcare that is unaffordable for most and unavailable on the NHS. There is no waiting list for ketamine. With the advent of the dark web, and now the profusion of social media channels such as Telegram and bot sites that make it simple to call up 24-hour delivery via your phone, the drug is more readily available than ever. Jeet Heer recently reaffirmed in the Nation that it is 'the drug of our time', as cannabis was to the Sixties or cocaine to the Seventies. But its prevalence doesn't reflect a single social trend so much as the diversity of niches it has colonised across 21st-century culture. In different doses and contexts, it can be a social lubricant or an intense visionary experience, a blast of sublime confusion or a psychiatric medication. For all these, its essential promise is that it will – reliably, briefly and relatively safely – make reality feel very different. Web-based distribution has personalised and atomised the contexts in which ketamine is used; it is now, like the internet itself, something of an every-drug. Many of the niches it now occupies existed already, created by other substances. As a relief from depression or anxiety, it serves a similar purpose to sedatives such as Xanax or Valium; as a rocket ship to inner space, it rivals other short-acting psychedelics such as DMT; as an aid to psychotherapy, it compares to MDMA or psilocybin; as a dancefloor party-starter, to cocaine. At the most desperate end of the spectrum, it has established itself firmly in the bargain-basement niche for oblivion-seekers once claimed by glue and solvents. The pandemic played havoc with drug supply chains and mass socialising, but ketamine seems to have benefited from it: wastewater surveys suggest that its use in Britain has increased as much as 85 per cent in the last few years. For those who withdrew into their screens and their bedrooms, it was private and easily manageable even at large doses, and it has now overtaken MDMA in popularity among 18- to 24-year-olds. For those who find social events enervating or overwhelming in the wake of the lockdowns, it offers a 20-minute respite in the corner of a crowded party. For others, it makes it easier to tolerate bleak living conditions, overcrowding and fuel poverty. Underpinning all these selling points is a simple one: ketamine remains cheap, at £20 a gram or less, enough for a mind-bending session for a few friends at less than the price of a round of beers. In a sense it has become the alcohol of drug culture: ubiquitous and multi-purpose, both social and antisocial. Like alcohol, the balance of its health consequences is undoubtedly negative, but it's not hard to understand its appeal as a holiday from reality, an accompaniment to a wide range of pleasures, or a palliative for what ails you. [See also: British psychiatry on the brink] Related
