Mercy killer faced probe

The previous month Derek Humphry, who lived near Chippenham, had given an interview to publicise a new book.

Mr Humphry, 47-year-old journalist, had openly admitted helping his wife, who had cancer, to end her life three years earlier.

We said: “The Director of Public Prosecutions is considering whether Mr Humphry should be prosecuted for mixing the lethal mixture of drugs and painkillers.

“His honesty could send him to prison for up to 14 years.”

Mr Humphry said: “I heard from the Wiltshire Police yesterday that they wanted to interview me. The time has not yet been fixed but it will be some time next week.

“If the DPP decides to prosecute, I shall plead guilty and ask the court for mercy. My plea will be one of mitigation and justification.”

The book, Jean’s Way, went on to be an international bestseller. There was no prosecution, and Mr Humphry later settled in America with a new wife, Ann Wickett.

It was there that they went on to help Ann’s elderly parents to kill themselves with drug overdoses. Ann herself committed suicide in 1991, some time after she and Mr Humphry divorced.

Mr Humphry, now 85, remains active in the voluntary euthanasia movement.

Another person who has been mentioned in Rewind before is Henry Masters.

Earlier in the 1970s the teenaged daughter of the Stanton Fitzwarren architect and landowner had become involved with the Unification Church, the controversial faith begun by Sun Myung Moon.

Her parents were so impressed that they not only joined but donated their estate – only for the daughter to leave the faith and later condemn it. Mr Masters, who later headed for America with his wife, was accused of evicting his brother-in-law from a farmhouse because he did not share the church’s beliefs.

This week in 1978 Mr Masters gave the Adver an interview in which he put his side of the controversies.

He insisted that his brother-in-law had been evicted only because he declined an offer to move from a large farmhouse to a more modern property.

“Regretfully,” he said, “ we sought and obtained an eviction order so that the people working on the farm would not be housed in cramped conditions.

“Today I feel a great satisfaction in seeing the farms at Stanton run by our enthusiastic young people as a Christian co-operative.

“For me, giving my property like this was not such a big thing. I had always thought that I held the property in trust and that it belonged to God.

“Now I see it being used in His service.

“My daughter and brother-in-law are entitled to hold their opinions but I am sorry that they do not respect our deeply-held convictions which we share with the members of the Stanton community.”

On an entirely different note, we also ran stories about two artists.

One was Robert May, who sent our letters editor three illustrations for a book he was completing. Older readers at the time would have recognised the views, but 38 years on they have passed from living memory. They show the York Road, Drove and Whale Bridge crossings.

Mr May, by then living in Swansea, wrote: “I thought you might be interested in publishing the drawings enclosed, which I drew entirely from memory from my boyhood days in Swindon.

“I lived until 1925 in the end house of Rosebery Street near the old canal, and the bridges form an interesting record of the waterway which is now Fleming Way.”

The images appeared in a book by Mr My, called I Was There. We are unable to find a copy in our archive.

Another artist featured that week was John Stroud from Moredon, a 28-year-old pricing clerk who’d been painting for seven years and had produced more than 50 portraits of women. Some were from his imagination, but he also painted celebrities including Shirley Bassey, Kate O’Mara and Joanna Lumley.

People who saw the images found the eyes especially striking.

“It’s true,” he told us. “People are really drawn into the paintings because of the eyes.

“Some people have been deeply affected by them. Some think they are beautiful and others find them evil.

“I couldn’t sell any – it would cheapen my art. I keep all my paintings except the odd one I give away.”

The main film at the ABC cinema in Regent Street – these days the Savoy pub – was Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Swindon branch of a worldwide group called the Aetherius Society responded by putting some publicity material on a notice board outside the auditorium.

The society, which still exists and has a website, aetherius.org, believes in global co-operation with extra-terrestrials it refers to as gods from space.

Its theology in 1978 included a ruling cosmic Parliament on Saturn, flying saucer manufacture on Mars, and the Biblical Christ having been Venusian.

Local publicity officer Chris Perry told us: “Close Encounters is marvellous cinema but it is purely science fiction.

“But the Aetherius Society have confirmed the existence of flying saucers and discovered their religious significance.”