Foreign Literature.
Desfontaines, in the Supplement du Dictionnaire de Trevoux, 1752, first uses the term “Suicide” in French Literature.
Duverger de Haurane, Abbot of St. Cyran, the patriarch of the Jansenists, wrote in 1608, a treatise on Suicide, speaking of it as equally permissible with the right of fellow men to execute judicially: he adds, “A man may kill himself for the good of his prince, for that of his country, or for that of his relations.”
Maupertuis, Pierre de, approved of its commission when life becomes wearisome. See “Œuvres,” 1752.
Montaigne, Michel de, “Essays:” these have much information of an historical character. See Lib. II. cap. iii., “The Custom of the Isle of Ceos,” also many references to the death of Cato.
Montesquieu, who, in his “Lettres Persanes,” written in the character of a Persian gentleman resident in Europe, speaks of Suicide with favour, yet does not mention it by this title; in the 74th letter he gives a complete apology for it. See also his “Esprit des Lois” for other remarks on the crime. To this author is due the credit or discredit of the observation that England is the classic land of Suicide.
Voltaire, in his “Commentaire sur L’esprit des Lois,” approves of suicide, and does make use of this term; but in others of his works he condemns it; in short, he appears to have been undecided in the matter. It is narrated of him, that he and a friend contemplated and decided one evening on committing the act, but Voltaire had altered his mind in the morning.
Madame de Stael, in her youth, wrote an Essay approving of Suicide; but, later in her life, wrote “Reflexions sur le Suicide,” 1813, in which she recanted many of her opinions. She remarks that some suicides are a matter of duty; such are the deaths in a forlorn hope on the battle field; others were honourable as those of Cato, Decius, Codrus, and Regulus. Again, she says, “to prefer death to guilt is a suicide of duty, and such were all martyrdoms.” She discards the doctrine that the suicide is a coward; he is a man who has conquered even “the fear of death.”
Rousseau, J. J., wished that it were permissible; He called it, however, “un vol fait au genre humain.” See Nouvelle Heloise. He is said by some authorities to have caused his own death by taking arsenic.
Lamartine condemns the practice (see his remarks on the death of Cato) in the “Cours de Litterature.”
Elias Regnault says, “It is for man the highest expression of his liberty.”
Falret, J. P., “C’est un acte de délire.”
Rivarol, Antoine, “L’orgueil est toujours plus près du suicide que du repentir.”
Chateaubriand, François A., “Les suicides sont toujours communs chez les peuples corrompus.”
La Luzerne, C. Guillaume, “La religion enleve au suicide l’excuse, le prétexte, la sécurité, que lui donne l’incredulité.”
Taine, H. “Quand la douleur est extrême l’homme se réfugie, dans tous les asiles, jusque dans le suicide, jusque dans la folie.”
Sainte Beuve, the poet, wrote, under the pseudonym of Joseph Delorme, an apology for suicide, in verse.
Prudhomme, “La communauté aboutit par toutes ses voies au Suicide;” and again, “Le suicide est une banqueroute frauduleuse.”
L’Abbe Bautain, “Le suicide est à la fois une grande absurdité, et un grand crime.”
Girardin, E. de, “Bonaparte a declaré que tout soldat qui se tue, est un soldat qui déserte.”
I venture to add here three other French references to the word:
Prudhomme, “La proprieté est le Suicide de la Société.”
Balzac, “Qu’un homme batte sa maîtresse c’est une blessure mais sa femme c’est un Suicide.”
Martin, A., “Le celibat est en même temps le véhicule de la débauche, le scandale du monde, et le suicide du genre humain.”
St. Marc Girardin. “Le suicide n’est pas la maladie des simples de cœur et d’esprit, c’est la maladie des raffinés et des philosophes.”
Goethe, Johann W. von., in his novel “The Sorrows of Werter,” exalts suicide, as the end of one’s existence. The suicide of a young man named Jerusalem suggested to the author the composition of this work, which has been definitely the cause of suicides, among whom was Fraulein von Lassberg, who drowned herself. The author himself attempted the act.
Foscolo, Ugo, d. 1827, the Italian poet, imitated Goethe’s “Werter” in his “Ultime lettre di Jacopo Ortis,” and in a similar strain discourses on the unpleasantness of life, and the advantages of ending it when desirable.
Beccaria, C. Bonesana, in his “Crimes and Punishments,” written in Italian, but which has been translated into almost all European languages, decides in these words; “Suicide is a crime which seems not to admit of punishment, for it cannot be inflicted but on the innocent, when it would be unjust, or upon an insensible body, when it would have no more effect than scourging a statue. Its only punishment is after death; it is in the hands of God alone; but it is no crime with regard to man.” See Chapter XXXII.
Morselli, Enrico. “Il Suicidio.” Of this great statistical work, and the opinions expressed therein, Legoyt, A., in his treatise, remarks, “he maintains a certain tolerance of Suicide, and is well content to look on it as a natural fact, governed by a law of human nature, precisely similar to the laws of Marriages, Births, and Deaths.” See “Le Suicide,” 1881, p. 98.
[CHAPTER V.]
CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE.
By English law Suicide is of the Felony of Murder, inasmuch as it is the murder of one of the subjects of the sovereign: it is a murder committed by a man on himself. There is authority for saying that there is no such offence as self-manslaughter. Regina v. Burgess, Leigh and Cave, 258. It is suicide, or “felo-de-se,” not only to kill oneself with deliberation, when in right mind, and of years of discretion, but also to kill oneself accidentally when performing a felonious act; such as attempting to kill another. But if a man is killed at his express desire by another, it is not suicide, because in law the request is illegal and void, though the latter is a murderer. Yet if one persuade another to kill himself, and he does so, it is suicide, and also murder in the adviser: see R. v. Dyson.
So also if two persons agree to commit suicide together, and one succeed and one fail, the survivor is guilty of murder, for aiding and abetting a suicide. See R. v. Russell, and R. v. Alison.
To constitute felo-de-se, the deceased must die within a year and a day of his self-inflicted injury, and must have been in his right mind, yet in the interval he cannot in law purge his offence by repentance. See 1 Hale, P.C., 412. Persons obviously insane frequently kill themselves, yet it cannot be denied that persons are frequently found self-slain, who have never shown any sign of mental derangement.
To avoid a verdict of felo-de-se, it should be shown by the evidence that the deceased had not arrived at years of discretion, or else was suffering from unsoundness of mind; in the adult the consent of the will to a self-inflicted action should not be denied until disproved.
The argument by which jurors are supposed to be influenced, viz., that no one in his senses would commit that which is the very negation of a law of nature is, in fact, an aggravation of the offence. If tenable it would excuse every criminal from blame, and would apply the more powerfully in proportion to the intensity of the crime.
To murder a mother, or a daughter, is as much repugnant to a sensible man, as to murder himself; but if none but lunatics could commit such crimes, no one would be culpable at all.
And, therefore, by the law of our land, if a lunatic even murder himself in a lucid interval, he is felo-de-se, as much as any man, and if he murder another man in a lucid interval he is as much a murderer as any other man. See 1 Hawkins, P.C., cap. ix., ss. 2 and 3.
At the present time, the absence of a sound mind in cases of self murder, is the constant presumption of jurymen, who by avoiding a verdict of felo-de-se, commit an amiable perjury, to save, as they say, the reputation of the deceased among his survivors.
Now at one time the English law prescribed for the suicide an inglorious burial in the highway, with a stake driven through the body; and the vicarious punishment of his friends by the forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the Crown.
No definite legal authority can be given for this form of burial; Blackstone does not mention it.
It was abolished in 1823 by 4 George IV., c. 52; by this statute no Coroner should issue a warrant for the burial of a suicide in any highway, but it was enacted that the corpse should be buried privately in any churchyard or burying ground between 9 and 12 at night without any religious rites.
This enactment has been further amended by Acts 43 and 44 Victoria c. 41, and 45 and 46 Victoria, c. 19 (1882), which provide that the body of a suicide may be buried either silently, or with any such orderly, or Christian religious service at the grave, as the person in charge of the body thinks fit, or I would add, can procure.
There is of course no clause compelling any minister of religion to perform any definite burial service.
But I have no doubt that in such cases there would be no difficulty in finding some clergyman to use forms of prayer at the grave, which would be satisfactory to the relatives. The law was formerly evaded as follows: if it seemed likely that a verdict of felo-de-se would be found, the inquiry was adjourned, and in the meantime the body was buried under a warrant from the Coroner.
In the time of the legal author Bracton (1260), a person committing suicide to avoid conviction for a felony, forfeited his lands and goods; other suicides forfeited their goods only.
This distinction was lost sight of in the time of Staundforde, who wrote in 1570.
The law of forfeitures in other respects remained the same until 1870, when forfeitures for felony were abolished by 33 and 34 Victoria, c. 23.
Whilst such disabilities existed, it was perhaps a kindness of juries to misrepresent the manner of death, and to find that all suicides were of unsound mind; but now that these disabilities, both of forfeitures, and usages of contempt to the corpse, have been taken away, there does not seem to be any necessity to refrain from finding a verdict “according to the evidence,” which a Coroner’s jury is sworn to do; at least, more accurately, a Coroner’s jury is sworn to give a verdict “according to the evidence, and the best of their knowledge and belief,” thus giving a greater freedom in investigation than is given to jurymen in a criminal court.
Stevenson, in Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” remarks, “It is to be hoped that these recent enactments of the Burial Laws will do away with many absurd verdicts of ‘Temporary Insanity;’” and Chitty, J., 1834, adds, “If juries were more often to find verdicts subjecting parties to some ignominy, in cases where there is no pretence of insanity, the apprehension of such a result would tend to prevent the frequency of the act.” (Med. Jurisprudence, cap. ix. sec. v.)
There are still some authorities who think that evidence of insanity could be found in all cases, if only sufficiently investigated. See “Journal of Mental Science,” April 1861. I feel bound to say this is to me only an amiable fallacy.
Several cases have come under my personal notice where deliberate suicide has been committed by persons of the clearest intellect, who have never shown any one symptom of mind failure, who were not even eccentric, and yet who chose to sacrifice their life in this world and risk their eternal future, just to avoid a passing annoyance. Such a choice may show, if you like, a weakness of mind, but is not what our Text Books teach us to understand by the expression Lunacy.
Gibbon, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” c. 14, remarks, “Whenever an offence inspires less horror than the punishment awarded to it, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham remarks that jurors do not hesitate to violate their oaths, and so meet the interference of law, by finding suicides to be “non compos.”
The frequency with which Coroners’ juries return a verdict of “Suicide whilst in a state of temporary insanity,” is less a proof of the connection between suicide and lunacy, than a sign of the futility of the existing laws relating to the crime of felo-de-se.
The commission of suicide does, no doubt, raise the question of insanity, but in such cases the issue should be tried, not decided offhand. The reports of the following criminal trials may be consulted for further information on the subject of the association of suicide with crime.
In Regina v. Gathercole, 1839, the prisoner attempted to drown himself; another man jumped into the water to save him, but lost his own life in the attempt; G. was convicted of Murder.
In Regina v. Fisher, 1865, a man and wife agreed to die together; both took opium; the wife died, the man by vomiting was saved; he was convicted of murder, although he had once been in an asylum.
In Regina v. May, 1872, a young man who had aided a youth to kill himself was tried for the crime, and the same ruling was laid down by the judge, that to aid or abet is murder.
In Regina v. Dyson (Russell and Ryan, Criminal Cases), two persons agreed to kill themselves together; one survived, and was held to be guilty of murder.
The true doctrine of the English criminal law would be perhaps, as follows: If suicide affords any presumption of insanity, it is of insanity at the moment only, and even then, if not supported by other evidence, it is not enough to deprive the person of imputability. See McAdam v. Walker, 1 Dow, Parly. Cases, 187. Felo-de-se is a crime, and a person is innocent until found guilty.
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen writes: “Suicide may be wicked, and is certainly injurious to society, but it is so in a much less degree than murder. The injury to the person killed we cannot estimate; the injury to survivors is generally small. It is a crime which produces no (public) alarm, and which cannot be repeated.”
“It would therefore be better to cease to regard it as a crime, and to provide that any one who attempted to kill himself, or who assisted any other person to do so, should be liable to secondary punishment.”
Whether it be true that the injury to survivors is generally small is, perhaps, open to question; especially in cases where the suicide is the sole means for the maintenance of others, a wife and family, for instance; in such a case, if suicide be not a crime, it is at least a cowardly neglect of duty.
The modern French view of the disabilities of suicide is shown by M. J. Tissot, in Le Droit Penal, 1860, vol. 2, p. 48; he discusses the aspect from which suicide should be viewed by law: “the penalties should be fixed with regard to justice, decency, and custom; they would not fulfil the first condition if they injured innocent survivors, nor the second if they tended to dishonour humanity by ill-treatment of the remains.”
“It should suffice to refuse an honourable funeral, the customary burial ceremonies; this punishment would be privative only. The citizen who flees his country is not honoured in his departure.” And in “La Manie du Suicide,” he says, “the funeral should be private, as if society, religion, and family, were blushing at the disgrace.”
For ancient French laws on Suicide, see Laverdy, Code Penal, cxi., &c.
In the German Strafgesetzbuch, article 216, we find, “If a person is induced to kill another by the express and serious request of the person killed, he shall be imprisoned for not less than three years, and not more than five years.”
No mention is made of suicide proper, in old German codes.
In the Bavarian and Saxon Codes suicide is not mentioned: but up to 1871, it was the Saxon law that the bodies of suicides should be sent to the schools of anatomy for dissection.
In the Austrian Code, there is a proviso that the suicide shall be buried by certain officials, but not in a churchyard.
The Prussian Code forbids any injury to the corpse; there are to be no marks of respect at the funeral; if the suicide be committed to avoid punishment, the executioner is to bury the body.
The French Law is very remarkable; M. Hélie states it thus: “La loi n’a point incriminé le suicide. Le fait de complicité est il punissable? La negative est evidente.”
In the United States suicide has never been a crime against statute law, nor have there ever been any burial barbarities in cases of suicide; but any one accessory to a suicide is guilty of murder as a principal.
The English Draft Penal Code proposed to make the abetment of suicide a special offence, subject to penal servitude for life, as a maximum punishment.
The attempt to commit suicide was to be punished by two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
[CHAPTER VI.]
CIVIL JURISPRUDENCE.
The civil branch of the jurisprudence of our subject is more complex than the criminal. Life assurance companies naturally object to have to pay sums of money for suicidal deaths, when these are proved to have occurred in persons who have never shown any mental derangement, and who may have had reasons for providing a considerable sum of money for their families, even at the expense of forfeiting their own further concern in this world. Such fraudulent suicides have taken place, just as some men have not hesitated to risk being judicially executed for murder, committed to obtain sums of money and other valuables.
Our English Judges have, unfortunately, not been unanimous in their decisions respecting the forfeiture of insurances by voluntary death; and the assurance companies have further complicated the matter by the insertion of peculiar clauses in their policies, and by using alternative phrases, meaning suicide, which the law courts have held to infer different notions.
It has always been the custom to insert in policies of life assurance the proviso that the death of the assured by suicide should render the policy void. This was understood to mean that felo-de-se voided the policy.
But it became the constant practice of Coroner’s juries to find that persons who had been proved to have destroyed themselves were suffering from “temporary insanity”: they thus avoided a verdict of felo-de-se; hence arose the necessity of an understanding whether or not “Suicide whilst insane” did or did not vitiate a policy. In equity, of course, such a death should not do so, because the death occurs without the voluntary determination of a healthy mind, and no one can contract himself out of the possibility of some day losing his reason.
The difficulty might never have arisen, but for this unfortunate straining of the word insanity to cover all cases of suicide.
On the Continent, in many States, this injudicious mode of regarding suicides does not exist; when madmen kill themselves, their madness is registered; and when persons whom no one has ever noticed to be unable to manage their affairs, and whose mental state has not been disturbed, until they have preferred death to life, on account of some loss or annoyance, their voluntary deaths are registered as such. In those states unseemly squabbles between assurance companies and executors are quite rare.
To dispute and refuse payment, however, was found by the companies not altogether a profitable business, because such cases gave rise to much discussion and more misrepresentation, and the litigating company was apt to be avoided by persons about to choose a company to insure with.
Several cases which appeared to be attempts at fraud have been the subject of investigation in courts of law. See reports of the suits of Borrodaile v. Hunter, 1841; Schwabe v. Clift, 1845; Isett v. The American Insurance Company; and The St. Louis Insurance Company v. Graves.
In the first case, a clergyman jumped off Vauxhall Bridge into the Thames and was drowned; in his case the policy stated that it should be avoided if the assured should “die by his own hands.” At the trial, Erskine, J., told the jury the policy must be void if the deceased jumped into the water, intending to kill himself, and knowing that this action would kill him; he also left it to them to say whether the deceased could, at the time of his death, distinguish right from wrong. The jury became confused, for they found that the deceased threw himself off with intent to destroy himself, and also that he was not capable of deciding right from wrong. The verdict was entered for the defendants, that is, that deceased was felo-de-se. On Appeal, the case was argued before four judges in 1843; they, however, differed in opinion; three judges held that it was felo-de-se, and one that the assured was temporarily insane, and that his death was due to an insane uncontrollable impulse.
This matter in dispute arose again in 1845 in the case of Schwabe v. Clift; the deceased drank sulphuric acid, and died, when clearly insane. The jury returned a verdict of death during insanity, intending thereby to say that the policy should not be void. In this policy the term used was “suicide,” and the judge, Cresswell, held that this word meant felo-de-se. On appeal, this judgment was reversed, the judges again differing; the majority held that the clause meant “intentionally killing himself,” whether in a reasonable state of mind or not; the minority were of opinion that disease of the senses, or the reason, leading to suicide, was not intentional death, nor such as ought to cause a forfeiture.
This decision of the judges was of great importance, and led the companies to alter the wording of their policies, for under the old system any one who in an attack of delirium during a fever, or after an accident, should jump out of a window and kill himself, would thereby forfeit his policy; the public could not put up with this dictum, which if law, is not the equity of the case.
Some companies inserted clauses which provided for compromises of such claims; others definitely stated that any voluntary death should avoid a policy, but reserved to themselves the right to return a part of the policy value, calculated up to the day of death.
At the present time, however, policies, which in theory are avoided by suicide, are almost always practically paid by the companies, in full, or nearly so, unless there be any reason to suspect the existence of a fraudulent intention on the part of the assured.
It may be broadly stated that now, in 1885, the companies have almost all agreed to make assigned policies indisputable.
The following axioms will be found of great value:─
When the assured, being himself beneficially interested in the assurance, dies a felo-de-se, public policy requires that the contract be rendered void. And the same holds good of those who claim under the assured, should he have assigned it, whether for valuable consideration or not. Bunyon, p. 74.
But when the assured is but the nominee of the assurer, and has no beneficial interest in the insurance, neither equity nor public policy require the insurance to be avoided; still, this point has not been judicially fixed. Pope, p. 351.
When the suicide is insane, the policy is not avoided, unless by special condition of the policy. See Horn v. Anglo-Australian Ass. Co.
A condition may be inserted that if the policy be assigned to a third person, and in favour of that assignee or those claiming under him, such shall not be void; and the Courts have decided that the insuring company may be the assignee. See White v. Brit. Emp. Ass. Co. 7 L. R. Equity, 394.
If a condition were inserted that the policy should not lapse, even if the assured killed himself when of sound mind, and when beneficially interested, it would be void in law from public policy.
A condition supporting the insurance, in the event of suicide during insanity, whether the assured were beneficially interested or not, would not be void in law.
A condition, avoiding the policy in case the assured should “commit suicide,” “die by his own hand,” or “perish by his own hand,” includes all cases of voluntary death, whether the person be sane or insane, and whether beneficially interested or not so. See Borrodaile v. Hunter; Clift v. Schwabe; Dufaur v. The Professional Ass. Co.
For more detailed information consult Bunyon, and Pope. (See Bibliographical Index). See also the Appendix.
I pass from life assurance to one or two other questions, which are sometimes raised by the occurrence of suicide. The records of English Law will furnish numerous instances in which the existence of unsoundness of mind is not proved by the fact of subsequent self-destruction.
The point has mostly arisen for argument in cases where it is desired to set aside a marriage, on the ground that suicide quickly following matrimony is evidence that there has been an absence of a sound mind, able to make a marriage contract; or when suicide has immediately followed the making of a will; in these cases also it has been argued that the mere fact that suicide has taken place is proof of mental disease, and conclusive reason for setting such a document aside.
Persons desirous of full information on these topics should consult the reports of the cases here mentioned, viz.:─
McAdam v. Walker, 1 Dow. P.C. 148; in this suit the marriage was upheld, although the bridegroom killed himself the same day.
Burrows v. Burrows, 1 Hagg. Eccles. Rep. 109. In this case the will of the testator, who destroyed himself, was upheld, although the act was committed only three days after signing the will.
In the suit of Chambers v. Queen’s Proctor, 2 Curt. 415, the will was held to be good, although suicide was committed the day after the signature of the will, and notwithstanding that it was proved by evidence that the testator had suffered from delusions three days before death.
Steed v. Calley, 1 Keen, 620, Regina v. Rumball, in 1843, and Regina v. Farley, in 1844, are other instances of the existence of insanity not being held to be proved by subsequent suicide.
[CHAPTER VII.]
PRESENT SUICIDE RATE AND INCREASE.
It is a matter of the greatest difficulty to obtain recent statistics of the actual numbers of suicides, either in our own country, or in the Continental States.
Each nation has its own methods of obtaining these statistics, and its own modes of tabulation, and those variations render it very difficult to procure figures for comparison.
But beyond this hindrance to accuracy lies the deeper one, that whatever may be the State under consideration, even when we have obtained the authentic numbers supplied by Government, we may rest assured that these numbers fall very far short of the actual totals. In very many statistics in which scientific and medical men are interested, they are only confronted by the difficulty of want of accuracy of observation, but in this matter to want of accuracy is added intentional misrepresentation.
Relations, friends, and I must add family doctors, will all frequently combine to slur over the self-done something which is the essence of the death cause.
But, were it even possible to avoid this source of error, there are others which also obscure our calculations; for example, of the total number of bodies found in our rivers, lakes, and ponds, and on the sea coast, a considerable number are never identified at all; and of those which are identified, in a considerable number of cases more, no evidence will be forthcoming which will be sufficient to prove by what means the deceased got into the water.
It then becomes necessary either to provide a valueless column of figures named “Found Drowned,” or else some official has to allot the cases by sentiment to suicide, murder, or misadventure, at his discretion.
As a proof, if any be needed, of the necessary inaccuracy of estimates regarding suicide totals, and the proportion which drowning bears as a means to the other means used, I add the numbers published in a Parliamentary paper for 1882-83 of the dead bodies found in the Thames, in the Metropolitan district.
- In 1882 there were found 284
- In 1883 there were found 260
- ──
- Together, 544 violent deaths.
Inquests were held on all these cases, and the best evidence obtainable was produced.
The verdicts were─
| Accidental death in | 242 | cases. |
| Wilful murder | 2 | „ |
| Suicide in | 59 | „ |
| Found drowned, i.e., no opinion offered in | 241 | „ |
And again, in a recent year, from a total of 40 corpses found in the Regent’s Canal, in the London district, 22 were returned as “Cause of death not known”; and of 46 corpses found in the River Lea, 19 were also stated to have been “Found Drowned.”
The eminent authority, Brierre de Boismont, confesses, after a long investigation of some thousand suicides, purporting to be the total for Paris for a certain number of years, as follows: “One may then, without any fear of being inaccurate, estimate the number of suicides committed, as almost double the number of suicides registered.”
The following table will be found to give the latest calculations of the actual number of suicides per million of inhabitants in the different European States; and will shew the estimated increase or decrease during the stated number of preceding years.
| Year. | Country. | Number of Suicides | Increase per Million. | Term of Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1880 | Portugal | 16 | 3 | 5 |
| 1880 | Spain | 19 | 2 | 5 |
| 1883 | Ireland | 24 | 6 | 5 |
| 1878 | Russia and Finland | 35 | Dec. 1·2 | 6 |
| 1881 | Italy | 44 | 7 | 5 |
| 1881 | Scotland | 48 | 11 | 5 |
| 1880 | Holland | 51 | Stationary | 10 |
| 1882 | England | 74 | 7 | 10 |
| 1875 | Norway | 75 | Dec. 33 | 13 |
| 1879 | Belgium | 90 | 22 | 5 |
| 1877 | Sweden | 101 | 15 | 5 |
| 1880 | Bavaria | 102 | 11 | 5 |
| 1877 | Austria | 144 | 24 | 3 |
| 1880 | Hanover | 150 | 10 | 5 |
| 1877 | Prussia | 168 | 34 | 4 |
| 1880 | France | 216 | 56 | 5 |
| 1881 | Switzerland | 240 | 25 | 5 |
| 1878 | Denmark | 265 | 32 | 5 |
| 1878 | Saxony | 469 | 170 | 5 |
In an endeavour to make an accurate estimate of the suicide rate of the various states, and the relative increase in the rates, we are met by the further difficulty that the periods of observation vary much in length; in Holland, for example, there was no formal collection of numbers until 1869; on the other hand, in Sweden, the amount of suicide has been estimated ever since 1750.
An enormous decrease may be observed in the figures relating to Norway; it may be due to the very stringent laws relating to intoxication, and to the regulations placed on the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks about twenty years ago.
The calculation of the averages of the various countries is performed by the formula used by Professor Bodio: x = 100 × (a′∕a-1)1∕n: in which a´ = the number of suicides in the last year: a = the number of suicides in the first year of the series: and n = the number of years of observation.
The following table from Legoyt is interesting, but the data are not so recent as in the foregoing list, and hence do not coincide:─
Table showing the Difference in the Rates of Variation per cent. between Population and Suicide from 1865 to 1876.
| Country. | Population. ── Variation. | Suicide. ── Increase per cent. on Total Numbers. |
|---|---|---|
| England | 14·6 | 27·1 |
| Austria | 9·2 | 66·5 |
| Bavaria | 5·2 | 18·4 |
| Belgium | 7·0 | 64·4 |
| Denmark | 12·1 | 12·2 |
| France | A loss | 17·3 |
| Italy | 10·5 | 15·1 |
| Norway | 8·1 | 14·3 |
| Prussia | 6·7 | 49·0 |
| Russia | 11·0 | 47·0 |
| Saxony | 18·8 | 58·4 |
| Sweden | 7·6 | 24·0 |
| Switzerland | 6·5 | 63·6 |
| Ireland | A loss | Stationary. |
| Finland | 5·3 | Stationary. |
As a general résumé of the consideration of the amount of Suicide, it appears that the civilized States of Europe (with three exceptions) show a gradual and uniform increase of Suicide rate; and that even since the beginning of the century self-destruction has increased, and still goes on increasing, more rapidly than the increase of population, and to a greater extent than the general death-rate.
From a consideration of the general statistics of various countries estimated annually, with regard to actual numbers and percentage of Suicides, we conclude that like similar statistics applied to subjects of a totally unvolitional nature, they vary from year to year and from country to country. But the variations in the two classes, of voluntary and involuntary incidents, do not range together constantly; in fact, the statistics of the continental observers seem to show that, if we class together
| Suicide |  | |
| Homicide | as VOLUNTARY ACTS, | |
| Marriage | ||
| and | ||
| Illegitimate Births | | |
| Deaths | as INVOLUNTARY ACTS, | |
| Accidental Deaths | ||
and compare a period of several years in several countries, the greatest variations occur very rarely in suicide. Suicide, then, varies less than Illegitimate Births, Deaths and Accidental Deaths. Births have varied the least. It is a curious fact that illegitimate births, the general mortality, and accidental deaths, have often offered greater variations from the average, although the human will has no power over them, than suicide, homicide, and marriages which are voluntary actions.
Hence it has been argued, that social actions dependent on human volition, varying as they do proportionally from year to year, do not differ from those observed in phenomena of a physiologic or organic nature. For a lengthened discussion on this subject, see Morselli, Rümelin, and Rhenisch: the former states, “The laws of social life are not sufficiently known to enable us to attribute the variations in suicide to one cause, such as human liberty, or free-will, different and opposite to those natural forces on which we make births and deaths to depend; for we have no positive grounds for giving different interpretations to similar phenomena, merely because variations appear in psychical facts.”─Il Suicidio.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE CAUSATION OF SUICIDE.
In considering this portion of our subject we shall be assisted by analogy, if we investigate the data of contributing causes, in a manner similar to that which is ordinarily pursued with regard to diseases, in textbooks of medicine.
I refer to the method of distributing these causes into two classes of predisposing influences, and exciting or determining causes.
It will be very necessary, however, to bear in mind that the onset of a disease is generally of a nature quite removed from the influence of the will; while, on the other hand, suicide is voluntary, the result of a distinct action, following a direct determination. It is the determination which is led up to by states of predisposition, whether they be cosmic, racial, or mental.
One large class, perhaps one-third of all suicides, are of a different nature; these are the effect of an insane act; the predisposition is lunacy; the determining cause is a delusion, hallucination, mania, or epileptic nerve storm.
The group of influences which we shall consider as predisposing, must in the case of insane suicides be considered as the predisposing causes of the unsoundness of mind.
And, again, the causes denoted as exciting, in these pages, are also the exciting causes of the insanity in most cases. From this point of view, the fact of Suicide is only an incident occurring in Lunacy.
The various forms of insanity, and their influence in promoting suicide, their treatment, and the means of avoiding the fatal act, will be referred to, later on.
M. Casimir Broussais, in his work “Hygiène Morale,” divides the causes thus:─
A. Circumstances independent of the will.
B. Voluntary causes.
In Class A. he recounts: individual organisation, heredity, sex, age, state of health, or disease, country, climate, seasons, historical epochs.
In Class B. he places employment, education, misery, loss of fortune, gambling, disappointed love, jealousy, domestic troubles, calumny, wounded self-love, failure of ambition, remorse, religious and political fanaticism, imitation.
M. Tissot, in his treatise on our subject, proposes the following arrangement of the causes of suicide:
1. Remote negative causes, such are want of religion and want of morality.
2. Remote positive causes; either physiological, moral, or physical.
3. Proximate physical causes.
4. Proximate moral causes, either public or personal.
But he adds, “many of these causes act concurrently; it is indeed rare not to find this to be the case.”
In Class 2 he places: Physiological, the power of reflection. Moral: idleness, bad company, gambling, debauchery, theatrical plays, evil imaginings, evil literature; and Physical: insanity, hypochondriasis, ennui, nostalgia, alcoholism, celibacy, with such data as climate, age, temperament, heredity.
To Class 3 he allots bodily diseases, pain, misery, privation, slavery, loss of fortune, fear of punishment, and envy.
In Class 4, under personal, he places, offended vanity, despair, remorse, suicide to expiate a fault, suicide to secure virtue or personal purity or honour, impatience to obtain the future life, and the vanity of dying for nothing. Under public causes he classes suicide to save public honour of a government, to avenge the disgrace of one’s country, to defend the honour of others, and suicide in despair of the state of public affairs.
Despine, in his Natural Psychology, vol. iii., pp. 74-132, divides Insane Suicides into four series:
I.─Death occurs from an act proposed by the delusion of delirium; as if a man should jump off a high place thinking he is able to fly. (Delirium.)
II.─Self-destruction from Lypemania, producing a state of such sorrow and fear that the sentiment of attachment to life is lost. (Melancholia.)
III.─Suicide is performed to obtain death, simply from the desire to die. (Suicidal Monomania.)
IV.─The sufferer is caused by his malady to be violent and to destroy someone, either himself or others. (Acute Mania.)
He then proceeds to study suicides, in persons of healthy mind, “sous l’influence d’un cerveau sain.” It is determined by passions which arise from noble and generous sentiments, whilst homicide depends on egotistical and perverse passions. He divides into three series the passions determining suicide:
I.─Those occurring during rage or violent passion, incompatible with free will.
II.─In such a psychical state, that the man morally free, does not decide by free-will. Placed between two modes of action, imposed on him by circumstances; and of which one is so repugnant to his feelings that he takes the other which is less repugnant, viz., suicide.
III.─In the state of moral liberty, in which the man decides on his action by his free will.
He then gives as causes, despair, ennui, alcoholism, religion, loss of honour, to escape execution, misery, self-sacrifice, and stoicism.
The older authors on Suicide only viewed it from a narrative and sentimental point of view, and it is only of late years that it has been the object of any scientific research; but now that a study of suicide, as a fact, has been instituted, it has fallen almost entirely into a statistical groove, to the neglect of research into the mental state and emotions of the unfortunate individuals who become victims. Suicide is an individual act, and this point is in danger of being lost sight of in a too absorbing study of general principles.
Most copious and elaborate investigations have been made into the proportional intensity of cosmic, telluric, climatic, and racial states, as causes of Suicide, to the neglect of the fact that men and women are not simply automatons, and that mental and moral causes act in different fashions on different minds more certainly than data of temperature, geological formation, and position of the sun. Than Morselli, no man has contributed more information on the subject of Suicide; but he is so far led on by his devotion to figures, that he actually assigns as a cause of suicide and as a factor in its prevalence, the relative position of the Sun and Earth, the alternating states of Aphelion and Perihelion!
I am under great obligation to continental observers, for in the ensuing pages I quote frequently from their statistics, viz., from Œttingen, Wagner, Falret, Quetelet, Brierre de Boismont, Drobisch, Legoyt, Lisle, and from Morselli of Turin, who supplies the most recent data.
Among predisposing influences will be mentioned, the effects of race, religion, education, and morality; together with those of climate, and the geographical peculiarities of a country.
The varying proportions exhibited by the differences of age, sex, and social condition; the effects of town as compared with country life, and the special characteristics of the military and naval services, and of prison life, will be described.
In respect to social life, mention will be found of the states of celibacy, matrimony, and widowed life; and also some special reference to suicide in childhood.
In our consideration of determining causes we shall be guided by the scheme of tabulation in use in many continental states, because it affords a better means of comparison between the several data, than if any independent arrangement were suggested. This scheme divides these final causes into three main classes, of mental diseases, bodily diseases, and moral or immoral motives, as follows:
A.─Mental Affections. See special Chapter; including Insomnia, Spiritualism, suicides caused by Imitation, and desire of Notoriety.
B.─Bodily diseases; Incurable diseases; pain, Alcoholism, Morphia habit, and the effect of Hereditary predisposition.
C.─Tædium vitæ, nostalgia, etc.
D.─Violence of the passions; jealousy, anger, avarice, disappointed love, spite.
E.─Effect of the Vices; libertinism, onanism, drunkenness.
F.─Domestic trouble, and anguish of the affections; loss of relatives, deluded hopes, dissensions at home, want of children.
G.─Financial losses; loss of employment, gambling, loss of law suits.
H.─Misery, want of home and food, and fear of such want.
I.─Fear, shame, and remorse; seduction, unmarried pregnancy, the haunting of a criminal’s conscience.
J.─Despair; this class is made to include unknown causes; to which may be added:
K.─Honourable motives, yet misdirecting conduct.
Beyond all the predispositions, and states of disease, as causes of a voluntary death, follow the consideration of the less tangible, but terribly effectual moral motives, which have been briefly tabulated. Volumes have been, and might still be written on the disastrous effects of ungoverned passions, and ill-regulated desires, and their consequences, guilt and shame, remorse and terror.
Volumes also might be contributed on the allied subjects of the misery and pain, always present with us, and near us, and which but few of us wholly escape contact with, or sharing. In these pages we must be content with a notice of only the most frequent of those troubles.
As before observed, the suicides of eminent men in ancient history were usually brought about by motives more or less honourable, if mistaken, but practically, in our times, the final causes of the act are of a less elevated character.
If we except the case of lunatics under protection, among whom the proportion of suicides is small, from the care with which they are watched, and the case of those in whom insanity bursts forth suddenly, and without any warning, the catalogue of motives given above will be found practically almost complete.
Brierre de Boismont gives the following classification of 4,595 cases which occurred in France, assigning the mental or moral determining causes.
But it is obvious that these tables must be taken cum grano salis, because of the impossibility of discovering in every case the true motive, and because of the coincidence of several causes in many instances.
- 652 Lunatics, about one-seventh of all cases.
- 405 Other diseases of body, incurable, or with intolerable pain.
- 530 Alcoholism.
- 361 Domestic troubles.
- 311 Sorrow, disappointment.
- 134 Remorse, and fear of the law.
- 306 Disappointed love.
- 237 Ennui.
- 277 Reverses of fortune, and cupidity.
- 282 Poverty and misery.
- 55 Delirium of acute diseases.
- 44 Gambling.
- 43 Want of occupation.
- 26 Pride and vanity; notoriety.
- 56 Indolence.
- 145 Hypochondriac and hysterical.
- 54 Jealousy.
- 121 Misconduct.
- 556 Motive unknown.
Kolb, J. F., in his work on the “Condition of Nations,” gives the following Table of Causation in respect to French Suicides; in a recent year, 79 per cent. were males, and 21 per cent. were females.
From a total of 5,922 suicides, 1,794 were caused by mental disorders, 855 domestic troubles, 837 bodily diseases and pain, 701 alcoholism, 688 poverty and misery, 235 violence of the passions, 229 remorse, and fear of the law, and 583 from motives unclassed.
Of 6,782 cases observed by Falret, the following proportions were calculated by him: Caused by misery 1∕7, loss of fortune 1∕21, gambling 1∕43, love affairs 1∕19, domestic troubles 1∕9, fanaticism 1∕66, calumny, wounded self-love, and failed ambition 1∕7, remorse 1∕27.
No attempt on a large scale has ever been made to tabulate English cases, as to causation.
The following Table arranged by M. Lisle, has never been equalled, for completeness, and for the large number of cases included in its scope.
French Suicides.─Lisle.
| Causes. | Male. | Female. | Total. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Misery | 2,355 | 587 | 2,942 |
| Debts, business embarrassments | 2,809 | 195 | 3,004 |
| Gambling | 157 | 1 | 158 |
| Loss of employment | 237 | 26 | 263 |
| Loss of law-suits | 137 | 19 | 156 |
| Other losses | 332 | 59 | 391 |
| Fear of poverty | 264 | 55 | 319 |
| Reverse of fortune | 280 | 45 | 325 |
| Regret for loss of fortune | 63 | 17 | 80 |
| Unrealised hope of fortune | 53 | 12 | 65 |
| Nostalgia | 26 | - | 26 |
| Loss of children, position, &c. | 373 | 193 | 566 |
| Bad conduct and ingratitude of children | 137 | 74 | 211 |
| Sorrow for absent children | 20 | 20 | 40 |
| Sorrow for absence from family | 35 | 16 | 51 |
| Sorrow of children for ill-treatment | 159 | 72 | 231 |
| Parental squabbles | 110 | 26 | 136 |
| Jealousy between members of a family | 19 | 7 | 26 |
| Other domestic troubles | 3,355 | 1,242 | 4,597 |
| Disappointed love | 938 | 627 | 1,565 |
| Jealousy | 229 | 118 | 347 |
| Pregnancy, unmarried | - | 239 | 239 |
| Disgust with marriage | 35 | 18 | 53 |
| Remorse | 190 | 77 | 267 |
| Idleness | 76 | 4 | 80 |
| Debauchery | 1,569 | 233 | 1,802 |
| Drunkenness | 656 | 82 | 738 |
| Habitual roguery | 2,105 | 359 | 2,464 |
| Disgust with social position | 68 | 9 | 77 |
| Desire to avoid legal pursuit | 1,741 | 365 | 2,106 |
| Desire to avoid execution of judgment | 383 | 21 | 204 |
| Desire to avoid military duty | 266 | - | 266 |
| Desire to avoid calumny | 37 | 27 | 64 |
| Desire to avoid pain | 3,522 | 1,165 | 4,687 |
| Disgust of life | 1,547 | 374 | 1,921 |
| Hypochondria | 640 | 211 | 851 |
| Disgust of military life | 214 | - | 214 |
| Reproaches of employers | 106 | 41 | 147 |
| Sorrow for loss of situation | 53 | 24 | 77 |
| Rivalry in business | 8 | - | 8 |
| Insanity, general | 6,744 | 3,982 | 10,726 |
| Insanity, partial, or monomania | 603 | 244 | 847 |
| Idiocy | 510 | 307 | 817 |
| Cerebral congestion | 504 | 177 | 681 |
| Passion | 51 | 17 | 68 |
| Political excitement | 34 | - | 34 |
| Religious fears | 40 | 28 | 68 |
| Suicide after crime | 299 | 28 | 327 |
| Unknown cause | 5,121 | 1,354 | 6,745 |
| 39,302 | 12,824 | 52,126 |
[CHAPTER IX.]
RACE, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES, AND CLIMATE.
The inhabitants of the majority of countries are not at the present time so unique racially, as was probably the case at an earlier date. Races of men have spread themselves to contiguous lands, and have emigrated to other tracts of country; so that it is now much the reverse of usual to find a nation composed of any one race, or even of a very preponderating majority of one stock. The more nearly, however, that a state is thus constituted, the more obvious appears the fact that each race of men has a certain underlying “special rate of suicide.”
This rate, I say, underlies all the variations exhibited by the various portions of that race; which may be due to Climate, Religion, Morals, or Education.
The idea of a real Specific Ethnic Rate of Suicide is, I believe, due to Wagner of Berlin; and the more the subject has been examined, the more obvious the conclusion appears.
It may be compared to that principle adopted by modern chemists, that every elementary body has a definite specific rate of gravity; and indeed the simile may be carried farther still, for as the chemist by combining his elements can prepare a new body, having a different specific gravity rate, dependent on the rates of the original elements; so a country composed of a mixture of two races, exhibits a “Suicide Rate” different from the special rates of the constituent races, and intermediate between them.
Although it may not be practicable to prove these statements by a direct appeal to figures, because no case can be produced which is not, at any rate to some extent, complicated by considerations of a collateral nature, but yet the more deeply the matter is investigated the more true it will be found to appear. The statistics collected by Wagner and by Œttingen may be consulted in this connection.
The changes of rate produced by Race mingling can be studied, not only in countries where the process has been going on for centuries, but also in respect to recent movements of men. When Europeans emigrate, they are found to carry with them to their new home their peculiarities in regard to Suicide: the several races of Germans have a high rate at home, and on examination of the records of a country peopled by emigration, of New York, for instance, we find that the Germans there kill themselves more often than the Anglo-Saxon element, which has in its home a low suicide rate. During the year 1883, in New York there were 151 cases, of these no less than 70 were Germans; now the proportion of Germans in New York is certainly not seven-fifteenths of the population.
The Negro races in their original homes shew an avoidance of voluntary death, and they carry this characteristic with them into other lands: in the United States the relative proportion between the number of suicides, in coloured and white men, is about one to eighty.
The rate of suicide observable in a race is seen to be curiously associated with stature; the original inhabitants of Germany were tall and fair; these had originally a high rate, and descendants of this race shew the same peculiarity to-day. In proportion as these fair tall Germans infiltrate another country, just as certainly does the suicidal total grow. Morselli states that in Italy the rate increases from south to north, gradually, in proportion as the stature also increases, until the German states are reached. There is, however, another tall fair race, who have a low rate, the Slavonic; on the eastern borders of Hungary where these immigrate, the Hungarian rates are lowered.
In Europe the highest proportion of suicide is shewn by the Germanic races, and the two stocks, German and Scandinavian, divide the supremacy for the maximum rate.
The ne plus ultra of German purity in race is found in Saxony, and this kingdom has the largest suicide ratio of any country.
The height of Scandinavian purity in race is found in Denmark, and there also the ratio is very large, enormous, in fact: in Norway the rate was for very long also extreme, but the great severity of recent laws with respect to offences and to drunkenness have made an almost incredible reduction in the amount of suicide.
Our British population is of too mixed a blood to enable statistics to show much of value; but the ratio is much smaller in the Anglo-Saxon than in the German.
The Celtic races avoid suicide, as is seen by the low rates in Ireland and Wales.
The races of Slavonic origin show the lowest rates, with those of Asiatic Turanian origin, the Magyars, Finns, and Lapps.