The Ritz Hotel, London 300 people were evacuated to the nearby May Fair Hotel following a fire alarm in the hotel. No one was hurt in the blaze, which started in the basement casino kitchen's extraction vents. The Ritz casino only suffered "minor damage". Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was convalescing at the Ritz when she died following a stroke on 8 April 2013. There has been criticism because the Ritz has not paid any corporation tax since being taken over by the Barclay twins. The accounts indicate that the profitable hotel uses a series of tax reliefs to reduce its corporation tax
The Ritz Hotel, London of the Ritz", met with Sir Bracewell Smith in Park Lane Hotel to complain about the standards; Smith himself dined at the Ritz and informed them that it was quite satisfactory. Several suicides also darkened the reputation of the Ritz in the postwar years, including that of horse trainer Peter Beatty from the sixth floor window in October 1949, and that of French gangster Baron Pierre de Laitre, who strangled love interest Eileen Hill to death in his second floor room in March 1953 when she refused to marry him, before killing himself by stuffing a silk sock down his