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Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family hid ‘vile’ online abuse from him to avoid ‘breaking his heart’
He had been targeted by cruel trolls online
The family of Captain Sir Tom Moore hid online abuse from him as it would have ‘broken his heart’.
Captain Sir Tom Moore’s daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore said: “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.”
It comes after police charged a 35-year-old man over an alleged offensive tweet about the war veteran.
Captain Sir Tom died aged 100 in Bedford Hospital around two weeks ago after contracting Covid-19.
Last spring, he raised over £32m for the NHS after walking 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. In July, he was knighted by the Queen for his efforts.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Ms Ingham-Moore spoke about her last conversation with her father: “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.”
Ms Ingham-Moore added that her family ‘really all believed he’d come back out’ following his admission to the hospital.
“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,” she added.
Before he passed away, he ticked a trip to the Caribbean off his bucket list, travelling to Barbados with his family just before Christmas.
Ms Ingram-Moore said: “It was just amazing.
“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.”