Employment.

With regard to the business of one’s life, it has been noticed that professions and trades, which by habits, physical and mental, bring women near to men, often tend to raise in an extraordinary degree the inclination of women to kill themselves.

It is a matter of the greatest difficulty to procure statistics sufficiently reliable of the numbers of each profession and trade, to couple with the numbers of known suicides of each trade and profession, for the purpose of obtaining a “professional suicide rate.”

Italian statistics show that the rates are higher in those trades which are concerned with luxuries, and lower in those whose products command a more regular market, such as are necessaries.

Goldsmiths, jewellers, makers of arms, scientific instruments, toilet necessaries, musical instruments, &c., give a higher rate than that of builders, weavers, spinners, tailors, glovers, &c.

Nuns, convent maids, and lay sisters, all numerous classes in Italy, give very few suicides.

In the higher walks of education the rates are all higher. Men of science, doctors, lawyers, military men, and the governing officials, all are very prone to self-destruction.

In those counties of France where there is the greatest attention paid to trade, agriculture, and commerce, the suicide rate is the highest; in counties where the development of business is slight the rate is lower.

And, further, it is almost universally true that the states that have most perfect railway systems are those which have the largest average of suicide.

Now, all countries having a largely developed trade are liable to commercial depressions; these are constantly followed by waves of increased lunacy and more numerous suicides; and note that these effects follow not immediately on a crisis, but after a little interval.

At the crisis the majority of minds are strung up to the needed effort: it is the loosening of the tension that upsets the mental equilibrium; the exhaustion following prolonged exertion. Similar to these commercial waves are the effects of war, increased prices and taxation; it was not the bad years of the Crimean War that gave the heaviest voluntary death rate, but the two years after.

In Austria the war of 1858-9 was effectual in the increased rates of 1860-61.

In France suicides and lunatics were more numerous in 1872 and 1873, not in the years of the war, 1870 and 1871.

Legoyt gives the following analysis of suicides: Middle classes and outcasts, 596 per million; liberal professions, 218; industrial classes, 128; tillers of the soil, 90 per million.

I subjoin a Table, borrowed from Lisle, shewing the employment in more than 50,000 cases of suicide in France.

Table of 52,126 French Suicides arranged according to Occupation.

──	Male.	Female.	Total.
I.─Of Slight Education:
Shepherds	276	32	308
Woodcutters, charcoal burners	54	6	60
Agricultural labourers	12,179	3,681	15,860
Beggars and vagabonds	335	115	450
Prostitutes	0	53	53
Mechanics in Wood	1,729	72	1,801
Mechanics in Leather	377	27	404
Mechanics in Iron	1,437	64	1,501
Mechanics in Cotton, Silk	1,339	463	1,802
Mechanics in Stone	1,079	48	1,127
Other mechanics	541	91	632
Porters, Commissionaires	368	6	374
Sailors	311	9	320
Drivers of carriages, vans	468	7	475
Domestic servants	1,270	1,204	2,474
II.─Of Better Education:
Bakers, confectioners	373	29	402
Butchers	265	24	289
Furniture dealers	259	28	287
Hatters	102	21	123
Shoemakers	639	46	685
Hairdressers	164	8	172
Tailors	644	780	1,424
Laundry workers	73	221	294
General shopkeepers	1,233	289	1,522
General travelling dealers	314	62	376
Inn-keepers	741	159	900
III.─Of SUPERIOR EDUCATION:
Wholesale dealers, bankers	382	12	394
Merchants’ clerks	441	27	468
Artists	194	25	219
Clerks and copyists	276	2	278
Students	118	2	120
Public officials	1,187	23	1,210
Professors and teachers	169	32	201
Military and Navy men	2,826	4	2,830
Lawyers and doctors, &c.	427	16	443
Persons owning property	2,693	808	3,501
IV.─
Without business	1,106	2,012	3,118
Unknown employment	2,741	2,447	5,188
	39,302	12,824	52,126