Healthy ex-nurse, 75, kills herself at Swiss clinic – because growing old is ‘no fun’
Mother of two spent years caring for frail elderly, then decided she’d rather die than suffer their fate
A HEALTHY 75-year- old former nurse took her life at a Swiss suicide clinic after saying she could not bear growing old.
Gill Pharaoh – who had specialised in nursing the elderly – said old age was not ‘fun’ and that she preferred euthanasia to becoming ‘an old lady hobbling up the road with a trolley’.
In an interview before her death, she complained that her life was in decline as she was no longer enthusiastic about gardening, did not enjoy late dinner parties, and she had issues with tinnitus.
While acknowledging that these were ‘comparatively trivial’ complaints she said she wasn’t prepared to go further ‘downhill’.
‘I do not think old age is fun. I have gone just over the hill now. It is not going to start getting better,’ she said.
‘I have looked after people who are old, on and off, all my life. I have always said, “I am not getting old. I do not think old age is fun”. I know that I have just gone over the hill now.’
Miss Pharaoh died on July 21 at an assisted dying clinic called Lifecircle in Basel, becoming one of 250 Britons estimated to have used liberal Swiss suicide laws since 2003. She was among a growing number who have killed themselves – helped by people both in Britain and in Switzerland – while suffering from no terminal or serious medical condition.
Her death provoked anger among right-to-life campaigners. There were also questions over why supporters of assisted dying seem to be able to ignore prosecutors’ guidelines on assisted suicide without facing charges.
Miss Pharaoh was a supporter of the group run by the struckoff doctor known as ‘Dr Death’, Michael Irwin, which presses for liberalisation of assisted suicide laws. Dr Irwin has repeatedly helped those who wish to die end their lives at clinics though no one has been prosecuted in Britain for helping someone to die in a Swiss suicide clinic.
Miss Pharaoh lived with her partner of 25 years, former company director John Southall, in a £1.7million detached five-bedroom house in Pinner, northwest London. She had written about a visit to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, last year when she accompanied an elderly man with motor neurone disease who wished to die.
She admitted in the interview given to the Sunday Times before her death that her daughter Caron, also a nurse, had ‘struggled’ with her decision. She also said of her partner Mr Southall: ‘It is not his choice at all and my kids are backing me, although it is not their choice.’
Miss Pharaoh wrote two books on caring and family illness, and the late Labour Left-wing champion Tony Benn – who nursed his wife Caroline through cancer – contributed a foreword to the book on managing illness. Miss Pharaoh, whose mother had been ill for many years, wrote online in her blog that ‘old people are a burden on society’.
She wrote: ‘I watched my own mother become demented. Had there been a pill available at the time, I would gladly have put her out of her misery. I do not intend to follow that path myself.’
Dr Irwin, whose group is called Society for Old Age Rational Suicide, admitted he helped Miss Pharaoh with her plans to die and acknowledged holding talks with the Basel clinic’s founder in London this year.
The law on assisted suicide was transformed in 2010 when then-director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer introduced guidelines at the request of law lords. Broadly, these say anyone who helps a suicide out of compassion is unlikely to be prosecuted. However prosecution is more likely if the individual who helps in death is motivated by something other than compassion, if they helped more than one person to die or if they are part of an organisation that helps with suicide.
Mr Starmer chose not to prosecute Dr Irwin in 2010 following a death, because of his age – then 79 – and as the DPP considered the courts would not order more than a nominal punishment.
Lawyer Andrea Minichiello Williams of the Christian Concern group said yesterday: ‘Dr Irwin appears to be in flagrant breach of the DPP’s guidelines. This case is deeply shocking.’
Details of Miss Pharaoh’s death were revealed in advance of a Private Member’s Bill put forward before Parliament by Labour MP Rob Marris, proposing allowing someone with a terminal illness who is determined to kill themselves to get help from a doctor to do so.
Comment – Page 18
‘I have gone just over the hill now’