SELF-MURDER.
Among the preventible deaths which every year carry off more of our citizens than the most savage war, suicide ought to be attended to with strenuous and patient care.
“Do you call suicide a preventible cause of death?” a hundred voices will probably ask. They will say that the self-destroyer usually does his last deed when nobody is thinking of such a thing; and that it would be cruel to blame his family and friends for a calamity which they have at the moment no reason to apprehend. May be so: but still we may be justified in treating of suicide as a preventible kind of mortality. Let us look at some of the leading facts.
According to the coroners’ returns, the cases of suicide inquired into in England and Wales were, in 1856, 1314. In 1857, they were 1349. In 1858, they were 1275.
The first remark of some readers will be that they thought there had been more: and of others, that they had no idea there had been so many. But all will probably go on to remark on the uniformity of the proportion of suicides to other deaths in three consecutive years. The proportion would be found no less regular in thirteen years, or in thirty. This circumstance ought to set us thinking whether so regular a phenomenon must not have some steady cause. Men in society always end by obtaining control over steadily -operating influences; and therefore we may hope to get the mastery over the causes of suicide, and nearly put an end to that mode of dying.
In order to do this, we must rouse ourselves into a mood of common sense, such as few persons but physicians and managers of lunatic asylums are accustomed to entertain in the presence of this tragic subject. There are many reasons why we should feel awe-struck and overwhelmed with some kind of delicate feeling or other when cases of suicide occur or are discussed. The old Romish belief that the viaticum was necessary to save the departing soul, caused the death of the most innocent suicide to be regarded with horror and dismay: and far worse was the thought of the eternal destiny of the conscious self-murderer. His burial in unhallowed earth, with a stake driven through his body, was a shock to society, and a bitter disgrace to his family: and the anguish of those past times has been so far perpetuated as that every countenance still becomes grave, and every voice sinks into solemnity when there is mention of any one who has raised his hand against his own life. Again, there is still a prevalent reluctance in society to advert to the subject of insanity. There is still an inability among the great majority of people to regard insanity as disease, in the same way as the maladies which affect other organs than the brain; and in almost every case of suicide the coroner’s jury declare the act to have been done in a state of insanity. The insanity is considered a milder imputation than a design to perpetrate the act: but it is still felt as a grievous imputation, and one which induces awe-struck silence, and a desire of oblivion, rather than any practical study of such cases with a view to putting a stop to the practice of self-murder. Thus we go on in ignorance: and while we indulge in old prejudices and ill grounded sensibility, a thousand lives will be thrown away every year which a more reasonable and healthy habit of mind in ourselves might save. This seems to me a very serious consideration.
Young people always set out with supposing that self-destroyers are persons of acute feelings, who cannot endure the hardness of the world, or bear the misfortunes which have befallen them, by their own fault or otherwise. This viewr is so constantly confirmed by works of fiction, and by the traditions which have come down from ancient times, that we cannot wonder at it: but it would be a great blessing if the rude and disgusting truth were thoroughly known and appreciated that, in the great majority of cases, the self-destroyer has injured his brain by drink or other excess; that, in others, the sufferer is a coward, or the mere victim of passion, or crazed by selfishness. Most people would be exceedingly surprised to learn how many of the thirteen hundred self-destroyers in any year were profligates, black- guards, cowards, and miserable egotists, who had brought their brains into such a state that they could not control their actions, nor bear pain of body or mind. So many emotions of awe and tenderness are naturally and necessarily roused by any tale of wilful death that it seems to be harsh, coarse, and light-minded to say what I have said. While quite understanding, and even sympathising with, this kind of recoil, I must say that the truest reverence for human life, and the highest order of sensibility, will be that which shall go the straightest way to work to diminish the practice of suicide.
The true story of any coroner’s register, told in full, would bring us all into a mood of common sense, with no little danger of the most exalted sentiment being turned into strong indignation against the victims who had spoiled the happiness of so many people besides their own. Let us take any such register, in any district in the kingdom, and see what we shall find between any two dates. Here is a specimen of what is always going on, though it is not everywhere that so many self-murders happen in a single neighbourhood within a very few years.
A. was an agricultural labourer of a very superior kind. He was a model of physical strength, and might earn large wages from the quantity of excellent work he could do. He had a wife somewhat his superior in station and cultivation. No children. A comfortable dwelling; a kind landlord. No disease or misfortune, nothing amiss, till he and his wife took to drinking. On his landlord’s death he was excused long arrears of rent, but received notice to quit — altogether inevitable under the circumstances. His wife being absent, in a temporary service, the dwelling was observed to be closed one day. A. was found hanging in a closet.
B. kept an inn, with good command of custom; took to drinking, and threw everything into disorder; at one time hanged himself, and was cut down in time; at another time cut his throat, but not quite fatally: on which a lady was over-