Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens died of hospital-acquired pneumonia on 15 December 2011 in the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, aged 62. In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research. "Mortality", a collection of seven of Hitchen's "Vanity Fair" essays about his illness, was published posthumously in September 2012.
Charles Hitchen
Charles Hitchen was born in poverty to a family in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, presumably in about 1675. He was apprenticed as a cabinet maker before he married Elizabeth, the daughter of one John Wells of King's Walden, Hertfordshire, in 1703. Shortly, he set up trade as a joiner for a time and the couple moved to live on the north side of St. Paul's Churchyard in the City of London. They must have had at least one child as Hitchen mentioned his "family" though other than that nothing is known about them. In 1711, John Wells died and left his property to his two daughters to be equally divided between two of them. Not long after, Hitchen persuaded his wife to sell all her inheritance to invest in a very profitable business as he foresaw it and on 8 January 1712, with his wife's proceeds he purchased the office of City under-[marshal]] for £700.