Legionnaires’ disease ‘kept quiet by Feathers hotel in Ludlow’

A retired health and safety officer died after contracting Legionnaires’ disease from a hotel, months after another guest was struck down by the disease.

Elaine Brown, 69, suffered a fatal stroke triggered by the disease, which is caught by breathing in droplets of contaminated water.

The grandmother-of-four and her husband Graham, 58, spent a night at The Feathers Hotel in Ludlow, Shropshire, on July 31.

Days later she developed flu-like symptoms and was taken to Royal Liverpool University Hospital where she died of a stroke on August 26.

It later transpired that a guest in her seventies contracted the disease after staying at the £120-a-night hotel in April.