MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (New York Times News Service) — Lady Sarah Consuelo Spencer-Churchill, a volunteer worker who was a cousin of Winston Churchill, died on Friday in Middletown. She was 78 and lived in Old Lyme, Conn. Her family said she died during surgery.
Lady Sarah was a sister of John George Vanderbilt Henry Spencer-Churchill, the 11th Duke of Marlborough. She was a granddaughter of the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt, whose marriage to the ninth Duke of Marlborough ended in divorce.
Lady Sarah raised funds for battered women and other charitable causes in Connecticut. She paid for a church and did volunteer hospital work in Jamaica.
During World War II, she did war work as a mechanic in a London factory. She came to the United States in 1945.
She was a volunteer for the Heart Fund, the Kidney Foundation, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Southampton Hospital on Long Island, and Just One Break, a nonprofit placement agency for the disabled.