Kate Spade

Jill Bennett

Nora Noel Jill Bennett - who was born on December 24th, 1931, in Penang, Straits Settlements, in what is now Malaysia - was a British actress, and the fourth wife of the playwright John Osborne.  After her birth in the British overseas territory, Bennett returned to England as a child with her British parents, where she was educated at Prior's Field School, a girls' independent boarding school in Godalming, Surrey.  After training at RADA, Bennett made her stage debut in the 1949 season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and her film debut  with a small part in the 1951 murder-mystery film The Long Dark Hall starring Rex Harrison.  In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bennett - who was then in her late teens and early twenties - was the live-in partner of the American-born British actor, Sir Godfrey Tearle - who was in his sixties.  In 1956, she appeared in the American film Lust for Life - starring Kirk Douglas - about the painter Vincent van Gogh; and in 1960 played opposite Stanley Baker in British crime drama, The Criminal.  

Chris Morgan

Christopher Morgan - who was born on July 29th, 1952, in Cardiff, Wales, U.K. - was a Welsh journalist and television- and radio-presenter. Educated at Cardiff High School, and at Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan, he was the oldest of four children born to parents who were both bank cashiers. Following sixth-form, Morgan attended the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he stood as a Labour Party candidate for the local authority, as well as becoming treasurer of the National Union of Students. After graduating with a Master of Theology degree in 1976, he moved into the media the following year by joining the BBC's Religious department. In 1978, he began training as a journalist at BBC Wales, working as a reporter and presenter on both radio and television, eventually becoming one of the main presenters on the flagship BBC Wales news programme, Wales Today. A committed Anglo-Catholic Christian, Morgan was a close friend of the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and was best man at Williams's wedding in 1981. Moving to London in 1990, Morgan became a reporter for Thames News and TV-AM; whilst also, for seven years between 1990 and 1997, presenting the Radio 4 Sunday-morning programme, Sunday, which focused on religious and moral issues. Morgan was appointed Religious Affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times in 1997, a post he held until his death. From the year 2000, he began contributing to a number of television news programmes on religious affairs, and appeared regularly on BBC News 24, Sky News, and CNN. In 2005, Morgan's mother - to whom he was very close, and whom he telephoned at least three times a day - passed away. Without a wife or children to depend on for support (Morgan never married), he began to become quite depressed, although he seemed to keep much of his sadness to himself, and managed to maintain a facade of competent professionalism. However, by 2007, Morgan began to suffer from bouts of depression, for which he sought psychiatric help, even being sectioned at one point. He became more reclusive, often not returning phone calls or e-mails. In the Spring of 2008, Morgan contributed a couple of articles to The Sunday Times, this return to productivity leading friends to believe he was returning to some measure of good health. Sadly, his recovery was shortlived, as - on the afternoon of Friday, May 30th, 2008 - Morgan's body was found by British Transport Police on the track at Kings Langley railway station in Hertfordshire, having been in collision with a Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston train. His death was ruled a suicide. Chris Morgan was 55 years old.

Rachel Roberts

Rachel Roberts - who was born on September 20th, 1927, in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales - was an award-winning Welsh actress.  The youngest of two daughters born to Richard (a church minister) and Rachel Ann Roberts, she studied at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before beginning work with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950.  She made her film debut in the 1953 Welsh-set comedy, Valley of Song.  In 1955, Roberts married the actor Alan Dobie, but they divorced in 1960.  That same year (1960), she won a British Academy Film Award for her performance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and in 1963 won a further BAFTA and an Oscar nomination for her role in This Sporting Life.  In 1961, Roberts married the English actor Rex Harrison in Genoa, Italy.  The marriage was tumultuous, with both partners engaging in excessive drinking, as well as engaging in public fights.  Harrison later left Roberts, and they divorced in 1971, with Harrison going on to marry Roberts's former best friend, the British socialite, Elizabeth Rees-Williams.  Devastated by her divorce from Harrison, Roberts moved to Hollywood in 1975 in an attempt to put the failed marriage behind her, subsequently appearing in supporting roles in several American films, such as Foul Play in 1978.  In 1976, she won a Drama Desk award for her performance in the Alan Bennett play, Habeas Corpus, and in 1979 she co-starred in the LWT production of Bennett's The Old Crowd.  Roberts's final British film was Yanks, directed by John Schlesinger, in 1979, for which she received a Supporting Actress BAFTA.  Roberts had become known within the entertainment industry for her eccentric behaviour, that seemed to stem from her alcoholism.  She had a habit of imitating a Welsh Corgi when intoxicated; and once, at a party thrown by the actor Richard Harris, she attacked the actor Robert Mitchum on all fours, chewing his trousers and champing on his bare skin, saying, "There, there".  In 1980, Roberts tried desperately to win back Harrison, but it was a hopeless case, as by this time he was married to his sixth and final wife, Mercia Tinker.  By 1980, Roberts was living on-and-off with a Mexican man twenty years her junior, Darren Ramirez, although the relationship was largely platonic as Roberts had become obsessed with winning back Harrison.  On November 26th, 1980, Roberts's body was found by her gardener - lying amongst shards of broken glass on her kitchen floor - at her home in Los Angeles.  Initially attributed to a heart attack, Roberts had in fact fallen through a decorative glass divide between two rooms, after swallowing a strong alkali, as well as barbiturates and alcohol, as detailed in her posthumously-published journals.  Roberts was cremated at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory, with her journals becoming the basis for No Bells on Sunday: The Memoirs of Rachel Roberts.  In 1992, Roberts's ashes - along with her friend, the actress Jill Bennett (who took her own life in 1990) - were scattered on the River Thames by director Lindsay Anderson during a boat trip.  The event was included in Anderson's BBC documentary film, Is That All There Is?  Rachel Roberts was 53 years old.

Bob Carlos Clarke

Robert Carlos Clarke - who was born on June 24th, 1950, in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland - was an Irish photographer, who was best-known for his highly-stylized erotic images of women.  From a fading aristocratic family, and the son of Charles Carlos Clarke and his much-younger secretary Myra Dora Lynn, Clarke was sent to boarding school in England, which he hated.  On returning on one occasion from school to Ireland, he found his place in the family home had been usurped after his mother had given birth to a younger brother, Andrew.  Bob didn't like having a sibling rival, and would abuse his brother, including nailing him into a box and pushing him downhill.  (Andrew died of a heroin overdose in 2008.)  At the age of sixteen, Clarke broke up with a girl who had threatened to kill herself if he did so.  Clarke charmingly send her a letter containing a bullet and a note saying, "This one's on me."  After school, and a brief spell in Belfast, Clarke enrolled at Worthing College of Art in West Sussex in 1970.  Around this time, he began photographing nudes for "Gentleman's" Magazines.  Whilst at college, Clarke met Sue Frame, a part-time model; the pair married in 1975.  By 1975, he had enrolled at the London College of Printing, and that same year graduated with an M.A. in photography from the Royal College of Art.  Frame was Clarke's muse for nine years, but it was after only two years of marriage that Sue realised he was having an affair with Lindsey, who would become his second wife, as well as "dabbling" with other women.  Sue Frame claimed that Clarke said about her: "I will kill you first before you leave me."  Frame soon divorced Clarke and moved to South Africa, the two never meeting again.  In 1992, Lindsey gave birth to Clarke's only child, Scarlett, and Lindsey became his second wife in 1997.  Lindsey later described Carlos Clarke as, "amoral".  Carlos Clarke's career took off in 1980, when he produced the photographs for a book of Anais Nin's erotic stories, Delta of Venus.  A series of glossy coffee-table books followed through until the early 2000s, and he became renowned for his portraits of celebrities, as well as producing advertising campaigns for Levi's, Smirnoff, and Volkswagen.  In 1990, he produced a book, White Heat, featuring the then-largely-unknown chef Marco Pierre White looking like a rock star in his white-hot kitchens.  Apparently, in the late-1990s, Clarke began to become disillusioned with himself and his career.  He saw the recent innovation of digital photography as a threat to the skills he had spent decades honing.  By September of 2005, Clarke was behaving oddly.  His wife would often find he had gone missing from the flat they shared with their daughter; she sometimes found him sitting in his van, muttering darkly about suicide, and admitting, "I don't know what I'm doing."  In March of 2006, Lindsey persuaded Clarke to check into The Priory Clinic for psychiatric treatment.  After two weeks, he seemed to be improving.  However, on March 26th, 2006, Clarke walked out of The Priory, and took himself a mile to The White Hart Lane level-crossing, near Barnes, south-west London, where he threw himself under the passing 10.53 Windsor to Waterloo train.  Bob Carlos Clarke was 55 years old.

Nicolette Powell

Nicolette Elaine Katherine Powell (née Harrison) was an English aristocrat and debutante, the first wife of the 9th Marquess of Londonderry, and later the wife of the musician Georgie Fame.  She was born in 1941, the daughter of the stockbroker Michael Harrison and his wife, the former Maria Madeleine Benita von Koskull, a Latvian baroness.  Following in her mother's footsteps, she was presented to the Queen as a debutante in 1958, the year this practice ended.  On May 16th, 1958, Nicolette married Alexander Vane-Tempest-Stewart at her parents' home of Netherhampton, and subsequently became known as the Most Honourable Nicolette Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the Marchioness of Londonderry.  The couple made their home at Wynyard Hall, and quickly had two daughters: Lady Sophia Frances Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, born on February 23rd, 1959; and Lady Cosima Maria Gabriella Vane-Tempest-Stewart, born on December 25th, 1961.  In 1965, Nicolette's father died, and it was around this time that she began a relationship with the singer Georgie Fame (real name: Clive Powell).  She gave birth to a son - James Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh - in 1969.  In 1971, it was discovered that the father of her son was Georgie Fame, resulting in Powell's husband divorcing her, causing significant unwanted publicity.  Powell's daughter Cosima later revealed that her own biological father may have actually been Robin Douglas-Home (nephew of the former Prime Minister, Alec), who committed suicide in 1968.  On February 25th, 1972, Nicolette married Georgie Fame at Marylebone Registry Office, and gave birth to a second son, James Michael, in 1973.  Nicolette Powell (or "Nico", as she was known) and her new husband lived quietly, out of the public eye, with Powell enjoying her role as wife and mother.  However, as her children achieved independence and left home, she became increasingly depressed, feeling, as her husband said: "...redundant because all her children had grown up and no longer needed her constant attention."  In addition, her elderly mother's mental faculties began to decline.  On Friday the 13th of August, 1993, Nicolette Powell parked her car near the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England.  After handing a note and her car keys to her two daughters, who were admiring the view, Powell plunged 250 feet to her death from the central span of the bridge.  Her suicide note said that she saw "no purpose in life" now that her children had grown up and left home.   A small group of mourners attended a brief memorial service for her in the parish church of St. Andrew in the village of Stoke Trister near Wincanton in Somerset, followed by a private cremation ceremony in Salisbury. Nicolette Powell was 52 years old.

Stuart Leary

Stuart Edward Leary - who was born on April 30th, 1933, in Green Point, Cape Town, South Africa - was a dual-code professional sportsman, who played soccer as a centre-forward, and cricket as an all-rounder.  Leary started his football career with Cape Town side, Clyde, before moving to English club, Charlton Athletic, in 1950, along with team-mate Eddie Firmani.  Making his debut in 1951, he became a prolific goalscorer, netting a record number of goals for the club: in total, Leary made 376 league appearances for Charlton, scoring 153 goals, until his departure for Queens Park Rangers in 1962.  At Q.P.R., he appeared in a further 94 league games, scoring 29 goals.  Leary played once for the England under-23 team in 1954, but was banned from playing for the full national team due to his foreign birthplace.  Leary had a parallel career as a county cricketer for Kent between 1951 and 1971.  A right-handed batsman, in first-class matches, he scored 16,517 runs at an average of 31.10, and took 146 wickets at an average of 33.80 with his leg-break bowling. Leary returned to South Africa after his sporting career ended.  Rumours circulated that he may have been homosexual, at a time when this was not widely accepted, particularly in sporting circles, although he had married, and then divorced, an older woman.  Fellow South African cricketer, Eddie Barlow, said that, at the time of Leary's death, he had, "...about five girlfriends on the go..."  In By His Own Hand, writer David Frith states that Leary had a fondness for resting his hand on a colleague's knee during team photographs; also, at the time of his death, three people who knew Leary apparently stated that he was concerned at the nationwide crackdown on juvenile vice, and that he was also worried he may have contracted the AIDS virus.  In 1985, Leary was replaced as coach of Western Province cricket team, and sometime thereafter began taking anti-depressant drugs.  Leary's body was found on Table Mountain near Cape Town on August 23rd, 1988. It was believed he committed suicide two days earlier, on August 21st, by throwing himself off a precipice.  He was 55 years old.

Screaming Lord Sutch

David Edward Such, who was born on November 10th, 1940, in Hampstead, London, England, was an English musician and serial parliamentary candidate.  In the 1960s, inspired by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, he changed his stage name to "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", despite having no connections to the peerage.  Such released a series of records throughout his life, with little commercial success, and despite a self-professed lack of vocal talent; he and his band The Savages had a horror-themed stage show in which Sutch would dress up as Jack the Ripper or appear out of a coffin. Sutch's 1970 album, Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends, was voted in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time.
Sutch appeared as an election candidate for various political parties in the 1960s and '70s, before forming the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983, and declaring himself leader.  In all, he appeared in 40 elections between 1963 and 1997, winning none, with his highest vote share being in the Rotherham by-election of 1994, when his party received 1,114 votes, for a 4.2% votes share.
Such had a history of depression, and committed suicide by hanging on June 16th, 1999, at his mother's home in Harrow, Greater London, England.  He was 58 years old.  At the inquest, his fiancee Yvonne Elwood said he had, "manic depression".  Such was survived by a son, Tristan Lord Gwynne Sutch, who was born in 1975 to American model, Than Rendessy.

Del Shannon

Charles Weedon Westover was an American rock 'n' roll and country musician and singer-songwriter, best-known for his 1961 U.S. Billboard No.1 hit, Runaway. Born on December 30th, 1934, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.A., Westover had several jobs, and played guitar and sang in several bands, before changing his name to Del Shannon, whereafter he had his biggest hit with his co-written song, Runaway, which hit number-one in several countries. After several more hits, Shannon's career began to stall in the 1970s, partly due to his alcoholism; and, despite continuing to record and perform, he began to suffer from depression during the 1980s.  On February 8th, 1990, Shannon shot himself dead with a .22 calibre rifle at his home in Santa Clarita, California, U.S.A.  He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered.  He was 55 years old.

Peter Roebuck

Peter Michael Roebuck was an English cricketer, who was born in Oddington, Oxfordshire, England, on March 6th, 1956.  One of six children, his younger brother Paul played 22 first-class matches for Cambridge University, Gloucestershire, and Glamorgan.  Peter played, mostly-notably, for Somerset County Cricket Club between 1974 and 1991, a team he also captained.  Mainly used as an opening batsman, Roebuck played a total of 335 first-class matches for Somerset, scoring 17,558 runs at an average of 37.27 with 33 centuries and a highest score of 221 not out.  He also took 72 wickets at an average of 49.16 with his spin bowling.  In 298 one-day games, he scored 7,244 runs at 29.81, and took 51 wickets at 25,09.  Captaining Somerset for two seasons between 1986 and 1988, Roebuck became a controversial figure when he was instrumental in terminating the contracts of the county's two overseas stars, Joel Garner and Viv Richards.  The ensuing rumpus resulted in star all-rounder Ian Botham leaving the club for Worcestershire.  In 1988, Roebuck was one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year.  Whilst working as a commentator in South Africa in 1999, Roebuck met three young black cricketers, offering to coach them whilst they lived at his home in England.  He warned them beforehand that he would use corporal punishment if they broke his "house rules".  He caned all three 19-year-old men at different times on their clothed buttocks for misbehaviour, and in 2001 was given a suspended jail sentence for common assault.  After a ten-year spell playing Minor Counties cricket for Devon between 1992 and 2002, Roebuck moved to Australia, where he became a respected cricket writer and broadcaster.  He became an Australian citizen, and also owned a house in South Africa.  On November 12th, 2011, Roebuck was visiting South Africa to report on a cricket match, when police arrived at his hotel, desiring to speak to him about an alleged sexual assault on a 26-year-old Zimbabwean man.  Roebuck then returned to his hotel room, where he jumped from his sixth-floor balcony.  He subsequently died from severe head injuries.  He was 55 years old.

Brad Delp

Bradley Edward Delp was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, best-known as the lead singer of the rock band, Boston.  Born on June 12th, 1951, in Peabody, Massachusetts, U.S.A., to French-Canadian immigrants, he was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts.  Boston's eponymously-titled debut album was released in 1976, selling 20 million copies, and spawning the rock standard, More Than A Feeling.  A multi-instrumentalist - playing the guitar, keyboards, and harmonica - Delp also formed his own band, RTZ, in 1991.  From the mid-1990s until 2007, whilst he continued to perform and record with Boston, Delp also played in a Beatles tribute band called Beatlejuice, as well as writing songs for other artists.  Delp was married and divorced twice, and had two children with his second wife, Micki Delp.  He was a vegetarian for over 30 years, and contributed to a number of charitable causes.  Sometime between 11 p.m. on March 8th and 1 p.m. on March 9th, 2007, Delp commited suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, in Atkinson, New Hampshire, U.S.A.  He had connected a tube to his car exhaust, and lit two charcoal grills, causing his bedroom to fill with smoke.  He left a suicide note, proclaiming that he was, "...a lonely soul."  The reason for Delp's suicide has been the subject of contradictory news reports and various lawsuits.  Interviews conducted by the Boston Herald  alleged that lingering hard feelings from Boston's disbandment in the 1980s, and personal tensions between Delp and bandleader Tom Scholz, drove the singer to commit suicide.  Scholz denied these claims, but lost the defamation suits he filed in response.  Court documents from the trials detail Scholz stating that Delp was plagued by personal problems.  Other who knew Delp, stated that he wanted to quit the band, but felt caught in an ugly conflict between Scholz and former bandmembers.  Also, for two-and-a-half years before his death, Delp was housemates with Meg Sullivan, his fiancee Pamela's sister.  On February 8th, 2007, Meg found a hidden camera in her room.  On confronting Delp, he admitted to planting the camera, before sending her a series of e-mails pleading for forgiveness.  Delp pledged to admit his wrongdoings to his fiancee, but instead purchased the grills and tubing and committed suicide.  Pamela found his body in the bathroom on March 9th, surrounded by several notes, one of which read: "I have had bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide since I was a teenager...[Pamela] was my 'ray of sunshine', but sometimes even a ray of sunshine is no substitute for a good psychiatrist".  Brad Delp was 55 years old.