Edward Downes after his health declined following a hip replacement. Lady Downes was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer that metastasised to her liver, and given only weeks to live. Lady Downes wrote a letter to family explaining that she had decided against treatment and that: Sir Edward, aged 85, and Lady Downes, aged 74, ended their lives by assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Zürich, Switzerland, on 10 July 2009. Although Joan did not want the children present, Dignitas encouraged it and "Ted and Joanie" were reported to be pleased when the time came. Their children issued a statement speaking of
Joan and Peter education of Peter and also of Joan, a child of Dolly's brother born out of wedlock and entrusted to them. Phoebe and Phyllis are devoted to the suffragette cause and undertake their guardianship with enthusiasm, but Lady Charlotte, "one of those large, ignorant, ruthless, Low-Church, wealthy, and well-born ladies who did so much to make England what it was in the days before the Great War," abhors their values. She schemes to christen Joan and Peter, then plots to remove the children from the faddish "School of St. George and the Venerable Bede," based on the ideas of Froebel and