Personal life and death[edit]

London was a cousin in the family of Tony Judt.^[23] He was an uncle of Ephraim London, and through Ephraim, grandnieces were Sheila Michaels, a remarkable activist in her own right, whom Ephraim never publicly acknowledged as his daughter,^[24] and Ephraim's nieces Harriet Fraad and Rosalyn Baxandall; their mother Irma was his sister.^[25]


London died on Sunday, June 6, 1926. As he was crossing Second Avenue at 15th Street, he was caught in the middle of heavy automobile traffic passing in both directions. London became confused and when he halted in the middle of the road he was struck by a driver of a car, suffering internal injuries.^[26] The driver rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where London's daughter was an intern. When she saw her father, London's only concern was that the driver not be punished. "It's not his fault", said London "and he is a poor man."^[27] London died at 10 o'clock that night at the age of 54, after physicians had labored for 11 hours to save him.^[26]


News immediately began to spread about the death of the beloved Congressman and crowds immediately began to gather in front of the hospital, the Londons' home, and the building of The Jewish Daily Forward newspaper.^[26] The next day, London's body was taken to the Forward building, where it lay in state while 25,000 men, women, and children filed past the casket, paying their respects.^[28] A funeral followed on Wednesday, June 10, one of the greatest mass displays of mourning in New York City's history, witnessed by an estimated 500,000 people.^[29] The streets were jammed with a procession of 50,000 people, as hundreds of thousands crowded windows and hung from fire escapes or stood along the procession route in a crowd jammed six people deep.^[29]


London's body was interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, New York, in the borough of Queens.^[30]