THE "BIGHT TO DIE"

Evening Star, Issue 17087, 4 July 1919, Page 6

THE "BIGHT TO DIE"

CORCttJEB. AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. A verdict of " Suicide during temporary insanity " was returned at all inquest at Lc.wisham on April 24 on the body oi Edward William Banks, aged 58, of BrookdnJo road, Oatford, formerly a shop assistant, who was found dead, hanging by a cord in a bathroom on Tuesday mornAlice Bishop, the wife of a butcher's manage.'', livina at the same place, said that she had looked aiter tho man, who had been a cripple since 1917, when ho had a leg amputated just below the knee. He suffered a great deal of pain, and was afraid he would lose the otner k-y.. hand was also partly paralysed. He had taken a great interest lately in newspaper articles and correspondence on the "right to die" controversy. He bad spoken to her about it, and on the morning or his death he pointed out to her an article in the 'Daily Express.' The Coroner: Do vou mean to say that he thought that he had the right to die by his own hand, or that the doctor ought to be empowered to do something? Tho Witness s In the absence of that power he thought he had tie right. _ The coroner's officer produced a cutting of the newspapor which he found on the dead man's desk folded in such a way that it exposed the column on tho subject. In the desk was an unsealed letter, in -which. he said: —"I consider myself a burden; but thank all those who have been so kind to me during my trouble. I feel I must go, and the end is not far distant." Dr William Shears, of Catford, *xpressed the opinion that, in consequence of the pain which he had recently suffered, the man's mind had been affected by reading the newspaper articles. 'ilie Cftroner asked the witness if ha thought that doctors should be empowered to take life in incurable cases, and t-ha doctor replied that lie would not do it. It would ih■•'!••■■ ■ ""it responsibility on the medical profession. The cutioners more or less? In summing- up the Coroner referred t-<t the articles in the 'Daily Express,' and said that printed beside them was a reoort.of an inquest held by one of his colleagues. There "was no such thing as the "right to die." Man did not make his own life, and had no right to take away what ho did not make. He quite agreed with the doctors when they that they would not take tho responsibility of having to deprive a iellow human being of his life. The only man who had that responsibility at the present time was the public executioner If he were a medical practitioner he would absolutely decline to do such a thing, and he doubted whether the Legialatura would ever carry such an idea into practice.—London 'Times.'