No place to block the right to die with dignity

THE deaths of an elderly couple who threw themselves off a cliff in the seaside resort of Whitby is another tragic reminder of the need for an assisted dying law.

- PETE PHEASANT

Sad as it is that anyone takes their own life, it’s the manner in which they felt they had to do it that upset me most as the details emerged at an inquest this week.

David and Susan Jeffcock had sent a letter to their solicitor saying they intended to end their lives before they were found on rocks at the base of East Cliff, near Whitby Abbey.

The tragedy was discovered when a member of the public found a mobile phone and jacket at the top of a cliff and looked over the edge to see two bodies on the rocks below.

Eighty-year-old David had bone cancer and had been to a hospital A&E three times in the months leading up to his death, including for acute onset headaches and shortness of breath.

"I can only conclude he was in so much pain he didn’t want to keep deteriorating," his nephew, Kevin Shepherd, told the inquest.