Pioneering female stockbroker ends her life at suicide clinic

A champion of female emancipation who pioneered the right of women to join the Stock Exchange took her own life in an assisted suicide clinic, it was disclosed yesterday.

Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley, 82, was a successful stockbroker and a columnist and broadcaster on financial matters before her death in December. She had been told she was terminally ill and travelled to Zurich to end her life by drinking a mixture of barbiturates at the Dignitas clinic. She is by far the most high profile British client of the clinic, which has helped scores of terminally ill patients from the UK to end their lives over the past decade. She received obituaries in The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph last month which described her as a "vivacious, stylish and pretty" party girl, often to be seen in the London club Annabel's, as well as being an astute businesswoman who "struck fear into the hearts of every London broker determined to keep Throgmorton Street an all-male province".

Neither obituary mentioned the manner of her death. That only emerged yesterday in a report in The Herald newspaper in Scotland, where she lived with her second husband, Major Robert Rivers-Bulkeley, 92.

Demonstrating the same tough-mindedness as that which enabled her to breach a bastion of the male establishment 30 years ago, she arranged for her husband to be admitted to a residential care home a few weeks before her death.

Michael Irwin, a former GP and member of Friends at the End (Fate) which campaigns on euthanasia, said he had spoken to Mrs Rivers-Bulkeley a few weeks before her death. The organisation helped her obtain a copy of her birth certificate from Austria, the country of her birth, which is required by Dignitas, the clinic founded by the human rights lawyer, Ludwig Minelli.

"Minelli had asked me to contact her because she had wanted to go to the clinic alone and that was against their policy. Clients have to be seen by a doctor at the clinic and have to spend a night in Zurich and the clinic's view is that people have to have someone with them. I contacted her and persuaded her to take a friend, which she did. It was fascinating talking to her. She was completely in control of everything. She was the most determined person I have come across; a tough cookie."

Mrs Rivers-Bulkeley began her City career in the late 1950s and badgered the Stock Exchange to let her join until it relented in March 1973 ,and she became one of the first 10 female members admitted. Later she became a media star with a newspaper column and regular appearances on Woman's Hour and The Money Programme.Nan Maitland, 81, a Fate member, said the organisation was the only one in the UK that helped terminally ill people who wished to end their lives.

"The law in Britain should be changed so it is not necessary for people to travel abroad to receive this kind of help. It has been changed and is working successfully in several parts of the world - Oregon in the US, the Netherlands, Belgium and it has been de-criminalised in Switzerland. When life is no longer worth living I intend to go to Dignitas."

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