Captain Sir Tom’s family hid online abuse from him as 'it would have broken his heart'
Captain Sir Tom Moore's daughter said the family hid the online abuse from the 100-year-old in his finals days as "it would have broken his heart" to hear about the trolling they received.
Hannah Ingram-Moore said she could not tell her father “people are hating us” after he raised more than £32 million for the NHS by walking 100 laps of his Bedfordshire garden last year.
She spoke about her father's final days in hospital and their last family holiday to the Caribbean.
Sir Tom, who captured the hearts of the nation with his mammoth fundraising efforts, died at Bedford Hospital on February 2 after testing positive for Covid-19.
Daughter Ms Ingram-Moore told BBC Breakfast: “I couldn’t tell him.
“I think it would have broken his heart, honestly, if we’d said to him people are hating us.
“Because how do you rationalise to a 100-year-old man that something so incredibly good can attract such horror? So we contained it within the four of us and we said we wouldn’t play to … that vile minority, we wouldn’t play to them, we’re not, because we are talking to the massive majority of people who we connect with.”
Three days after Sir Tom's death, a 35-year-old man was charged in connection with an alleged offensive message posted on Twitter about the 100-year-old. A court hearing will take place on Wednesday at Lanark Sheriff Court in Scotland.
Sir Tom had been looking forward to coming back home to steak and chips after being admitted to hospital, Ms Ingram-Moore said.
She said: “I said to him in the last few days: ‘So, what do you want to eat when you come home?’ And we decided it was steak and chips.
“He was really excited about coming out for steak and chips and getting his frame back outside and his walker.
“The last real conversation was positive and about carrying on, and that’s a lovely place to be.”
When the Second World War veteran went into hospital, the family “really all believed he’d come back out”, Ms Ingram-Moore said.
She said: “We thought the oxygen would help, that he would be robust enough, (but) the truth is he just wasn’t. He was old and he just couldn’t fight it."
Critical care nurse tells how Captain Sir Tom Moore's fundraising helped hospital patients and staff
Before he died, Sir Tom fulfilled his dream of holidaying in the Caribbean. The family jetted off to Barbados just before Christmas.
“It was just amazing,” Ms Ingram-Moore said.
“He sat in 29 degrees outside, he read two novels, he read the newspapers every day, and we sat and we talked as a family, we went to restaurants (because we could there) and he ate fish on the beach and what a wonderful thing to do.
“I think we were all so pleased we managed to give him that.”