The Wiltshire family of a toddler who died from meningitis after doctors wrongly diagnosed him with flu today hit out at the hospital which treated him.

Jacob Fogg, the 22-month-old grandson of former Marlborough Mayor Nick Fogg and his wife Edwina, died from the disease only 24 hours after doctors told his parents Edward Fogg, 29, and Emma Rosen, 27, he was not seriously ill.

The couple had taken him to the accident and emergency department of the Whittington Hospital in North London on the evening of October 15 after he became feverish and drowsy at their Crouch End home.

But after a three hour wait, the toddler was diagnosed with flu and the parents were told he could be looked after at home.

By the next morning Jacob's condition had deteriorated further and he was returned to the hospital where he was diagnosed with meningitis. He was taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital, where he died at 4pm that day.

Edward, 29, whose family lives in Oxford Street, Marlborough, said: "We are sure that if the symptoms that we had been pointing out had been recognised and Jacob had been treated for suspected meningitis much earlier, he would have had a more than 90 per cent chance of survival.

"If the hospital had reacted differently our precious, beautiful little boy would in all probability still be with us today."

Nick, 58, shared his son's anger and called for the hospital to admit it had made a grave error.

"We are all appalled by what happened and now we have discovered the hospital has a track record of incompetence," he said. "There also seems to be a culture of denial which only serves to make things worse the hospital seems to want to just write off our anger as grief, but that is not fair.

"We are a very close family and at the moment we are concentrating on supporting each other through this terrible tragedy.

"Jacob was an astonishingly bright young boy and we will miss him dreadfully."

In a statement the hospital said: "The symptoms of meningococcal disease are notoriously non-specific in the early stages of the illness.

"Tests were carried out on Jacob and did not indicate that he had a life-threatening infection.

"The accident and emergency department at the Whittington Hospital is in good physical condition."

The hospital has an unenviable reputation for patient care scandals and controversy.

In April, a 32-year-old man with pneumonia waited for more than a day for a bed. In the same month, a 98-year-old woman was left waiting 18 hours in a side room in accident and emergency and a mother of two died after she was given the wrong type of blood during an operation.

In October 1998, the Whittington apologised after an inquest heard an 89-year-old heart attack victim died after being left unattended for more than two hours in a cubicle.

The nursing sister had tried to hide the error by changing the arrival time.