Tom Frith, 66, from Cheshire, was rushed to the A&E department at Leighton Hospital in June 2025, suffering with a temperature, confusion and struggling with his speech.
"It was carnage – bodies everywhere and nurses running around," Tom’s wife, Julia Chard, told ITV News.
Tom was left in a corridor for 36 hours, undiagnosed with a serious condition called encephalitis, which causes inflammation of the brain and requires urgent medical treatment.
He was eventually diagnosed a week after he first attended A&E, but due to the brain damage which had already occurred, Tom never recovered and died weeks later.
"No one should go through what Tom went through," said Julia.
But ITV News can reveal that coroners have issued dozens of formal warnings about the deadly risks of ‘corridor care’ and hospital overcrowding in England in recent years.
The health secretary has admitted that delivering on his promise to eradicate ’corridor care’ by 2029 will not be an "overnight fix".
Research by ITV News has found that since 2020, the government and hospital trusts have received 27 formal documents from coroners calling for action to prevent future deaths linked to a lack of hospital beds.
But over that period, long waits in emergency departments have soared.
In January 2020, around 2,800 patients in England waited more than 12 hours in A&E to get a hospital bed.
By January this year, that figure had rocketed to more than 70,000 – the highest on record.
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