January 12, 1999

The strictures of a bizarre religious sect drove a man to his death 15 years ago. Monica Porter recalls the case of David Beech, undone by a packet of cigarettes.

THE inquest into the death of a member of the ultra-strict religious sect, the Exclusive Brethren, ruled that he committed suicide because of the 'guilty secret' he harboured.

David Beech, 48, had been furtively smoking for 20 years, despite the habit being banned by the Brethren's rules.

When his wife found a packet of cigarettes in the airing cupboard at home, she reported him to the cult's leaders.

As punishment, the couple and their three children were temporarily banned from the sect's close-knit social life. Friendship with 'outsiders' was forbidden by the Brethren, and the Beeches' exile led to the breakdown of their marriage.

Beech left his home in Cheadle, near Manchester, to stay with two formere sect members, David Shoto and his wife Eunice. But after a year of mounting depression, he killed himself by putting his head on a railway line.

Mrs. Shoto told the inquest at Stockport how he read and reread a text on the evils of smoking by formere Brethren leader Jim Taylor. It said smoking 'brings in what smoke is -- darkness and blackness. It is filthy and against the spirit of God'.

"The poor man was driven to desperation,' she concluded.

The Shotos said Beech had once been a 'witty, lively man who liked performing George Formby songs to entertain his friends'.

Beech's wife Diana denied that it was pressure from the sect which led to his suicide. 'He simply felt that he hae been deceitful and could not continue.'

The Brethren is still making pronouncements against our various 'sins'. In recent years, the 10,000-strong cult branded computer technology 'the work of the Devil' and banned members' children from using computers at school lest they be corrupted by their 'satanic influence'.

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