THE MERCIFUL MOTHER

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 104, 26 January 1935, Page 18

THE MERCIFUL MOTHER

Right To Kill Her Son

For thirty years Mrs. May Brownhill, of Westminster Drive, Burn Bridge, I’annal, near Harrogate, devoted herself to her imbecile son. Then one day she was told that if she did not undergo an operation she could not live for longer than six months. . . .

To go to hospital would mean that Iter boy would have to be cared for by strangers. She “put him to sleep” with aspirins and gas At. the West Riding Assizes, Leeds, she was condemned to death for murder.

To her plea of "Not guilty” she had added, simply, “1 did it in mercy.” The jury were absent only five minutes. The verdict was guilty. .The foreman said: — “We wish to make the strongest possible recommendation to mercy.”

The son’s existence had been a living death, said a doctor, but his death had been painless. “This differs from all other murder cases,” pleaded Mr. Norman Birkett. “In place of hate there is undying devotion. That is the strange paradox of this ease

“There was once a great plea made to a court: ‘Arrest the law a little. Do a little wrong to do a greater good.’ ” Then the judge: “The time may come—we don’t know —when it may be the law of this country that an imbecile, an idiot, may be sent to a merciful death. “That is not the law at the present time, and neither you nor I have the right to make laws. “We have to take the law as it is, always remembering that in other and higher hands .mercy may be extended. “No person in this country has the right to take the life of any other human being because he or she thinks it would be better for them to die.” The judge put on the black cap . . pronounced sentence of death . . . and told the jury that their recommendation to mercy would be sent, to the proper authorities.

The rest of the story can be told in a few words . . . Mrs. Brownhill, a frail, hard-work-ing little woman of sixty-two. was charged with killing her son Denis, aged thirty, by gassing him on the night of September 17.

The prosecutor, Mr. Harold Sutcliffe, spoke like a defender:

“Everything had to be done for the sou. It was the mother who did it.

“Mrs. Brownhill was ordered to undergo a serious operation. She said she would not mind, only for Denis. Ho was tiie problem.” Ono morning Denis did nor appear. Mrs. Brownhill said to the family doctor: “1 have just put Denis to sleep. “I gave him a hundred aspirins and placed a gas tube in his mouth.”-

Denis was found dead in bed.

Since her committal, said Mr. Sutcliffe, Mrs. Brownhill bad been successfully operated on. “The story,” said .Mr. Sutcliffe, “commands the sympathy and pity of all.

“But it is no answer to the charge to say that life had been taken for love.

“Life is sacred. Doctors have no rigtt to take it. “It is not for a parent—even a mother—to judge.” Neighbours gave evidence. . . . Miss Janette Sugden . . . “Mrs. Brownhill was a most wonderful mother. Denis was her only thought,”

Miss Kate Suddick . . . “Mrs. Brownhill was devoted to Denis, and had looked after him without relief, even sleeping with one eye and one ear open. She never took a holiday.” Mr Charles D’Oyly Grange, senior surgeon of Harrogate Royal Hospital, was the only witness for the defence. ,He told Mrs. Brownhill that she must undergo an operation. She asked. “How loug shall I live without an operation?” Ho told her six months.

“She seemed to disregard her own paiu. Her only concern was what was to become of her son.” And when the foreman of the jury delivered the verdict Mrs. Brownhill stood with head erect. Her gloved hands lightly clasped the rail of the dock.

She said, “I did it in mercy.” And with those words she was taken' below. She walked, as she has lived, without assistance.

Mr. Bernard Shaw said to a “Sunday Express” representative:— "A law authorising a competent authority to put such people as suffer the miseries of Mrs. Brownhill’s son to a merciful and painless death is long overdue.

“Have you ever visited a lunatic asylum? If you had you would be overcome by the horror of it. “Idiots and hopelessly incapacitated people are serving life sentences for sins they have never committed. “If people’s lives are going to be taken this way, I say do the job properly and give them a painless death. It is infinitely preferable to the living death they are compelled to endure. “The law should have the courage to do this. The judge had no alternative but to sentence Mrs. Brownhill to death. Clearly it can hardly bo left to the private judgment of any particular person.

“There are a great many people at. present who, in my opinion, are such an unqualified nuisance that they should be put out of the way. “Such people are more trouble than they are worth. Many of them do little else but breathe.”