Right-to-die pensioner has assisted suicide

A PENSIONER who championed the elderly's right to choose when they die herself took the option of travelling to Switzerland for an assisted suicide, it has been revealed.

Friends At The End (Fate), a Glasgow-based right-to-die group, have released the goodbye message she wrote to family and friends. Nan Maitland, 84, a founder of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (Soars), died on 1 March. She was not suffering from a terminal illness, but had arthritis.

The mother of three, who was separated, said her life involved "more pain than pleasure" and travelled with two colleagues for the doctor-assisted death.

Her goodbye message read: "By the time you read this, with the help of Fate and the good Swiss, I will have gone to sleep, never to wake. For some time, my life has consisted of more pain than pleasure and over the next months and years the pain will be more and the pleasure less.

"I have a great feeling of relief that I will have no further need to struggle through each day in dread of what further horrors may lie in wait. For many years, I have feared the long period of decline, sometimes called 'prolonged dwindling', that so many people unfortunately experience before they die.

"Please be happy for me that I have been able to escape from this, for me, unbearable future."

"Mrs Maitland, a former occupational therapist, lived in London.