A mother has made legal history after she won a High Court case to end the life of her severely disabled 12-year-old daughter.
Nancy Fitzmaurice was born blind and suffering from hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicemia, which left her unable to talk, walk, eat or drink.
Her quality of life was so poor she depended on round the clock hospital care and was fed, watered and medicated through a tube at London’s Great Ormand Street Hospital.But when a routine operation left her screaming in agony her devoted mother, Charlotte Fitzmaurice, who had given up work to look after her daughter, made the heartbreaking decision to end Nancy’s life.
In a landmark case Great Ormand Street fought on behalf of Charlotte, and dad David Wise, to give her the right to die
A statement given to a judge explaining why her daughter should no longer suffer Charlotte, 36, said her daughter longed for peace.‘My daughter is no longer my daughter she is now merely just a shell,’ she wrote.
‘The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be peace.’
Justice Eleanor King at the High Court of Justice read Charlotte’s moving plea and instantly declared it was in mother and daughter’s best interests to withdraw fluids she needed to survive.Summing up she said: ‘The love, devotion and competence of her mother are apparent. In her own closed world she has had some quality of life. Sadly that is not the case now.’
Little Nancy died in hospital on August 21.
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(Selorm) | 
(Nana Kwesi)