Morality.
The morals of a state cannot fail to have a deep and lasting effect on the amount of crime and madness, and hence on the suicide rate. But it is by no means easy to prove by statistics the actual rate of influence; the social customs and modes of life are so very various, and the different laws of each state with regard to moral sins are so different. At the same time it cannot be denied that several important nations, among whom the virtues of social family life are specially studied, have a very high suicide rate, such as the Germans and Danes.
The average of suicide is found generally to run hand in hand with that of the ratio of total crime. Crime has increased for many years in all European countries except Britain and Holland. Suicide has increased in all except Norway and Russia, and but slightly in England and the Netherlands. Where there is an average annual increase of suicide, there is almost always seen a synchronous increase of crime.─Morselli. Still some countries with very small suicide rate have a very large proportion of crime, as Spain and Italy, which have an average of one convict to 8,130 inhabitants; while Denmark has one convict to 110,474 inhabitants, and England has one convict to 132,791 inhabitants.
It has been found that in respect to the departments of France, the maximum of homicides occurred in connection with the minimum of suicides.─Despine.
Also in Italy, in those districts where crimes against property predominate, suicides are more frequent than in those divisions where crimes of blood are frequent.─Morselli.
Parent Du Chatélet remarks that the suicide rate of prostitutes is very low. Brierre de Boismont estimates the proportion supplied in Paris by registered fallen women as 1-240 of all cases. This author also states, of his series of French cases, that 40 per cent. were persons who led bad moral lives, either drunkards, gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, or persons living in adultery.
The proportion which falls to those who are in health, and lead regular lives, is very small; whilst those who begin life in health, and pander to their vices and appetites, abandon themselves, as statistics definitely show, to a prospect of poverty, disease, and crime; to the prison, the asylum, the hospital, and to a suicide’s grave.
And it is not only open vice that lowers the tone a man may even keep all the conventional rules of morality, and yet fall in this manner, if he neglect and ignore a cheerful acquiescence in those high moral aspirations, which alone make the idea of a self-sought death an evil to which nothing on this side of the grave can compare.
There need not be any difficulty in understanding that lack of moral training, and imperfect and improper education, foster suicide; for it is obvious that men will be more prone to sin, if they have had their consciences weakened by bad advice, loose habits, and the companionship of persons who take a light view of wickedness, and only sneer at self-improvement and goodness.
A system of “laisser aller,” and “don’t care,” are stepping stones to suicide; self-restraint and active efforts after perfection lead one daily farther from it.
Aristotle, in the “Ethics,” Lib. 3, cap. 7, and Plato, in his “Phædo,” remark that “Suicide is committed to avoid evil, and not because it is honourable.”
The suicide judges that the possible evil after death is less than the trouble he has now to bear; hence it is clear enough that the best preventive is to fix on the crime the character of an evil much greater than any that can happen to a man naturally.
Although it has been shewn that the spread of education is followed by an increased amount of self-destruction, yet, if a large number of suicides be analysed, the ratio of one-fifth only are well educated; but then it must be remembered that only a small fraction of the population is educated at all thoroughly. It is the spread of an unsound system of partial education, the tasting of the Pierian spring without drinking deeply, which poisons the mind; mere fragmentary, rudimentary instruction unballasted by the requisite amount of moral and religious teaching. The mere ability to read is, I think, liable to become a great curse unless most carefully used, for it is only too common to find that those who can only read, only read what they had much better have left unread; such as sensational tales, the criminal trials in the daily papers, political squabbles, and narratives of suicides. There could be no stronger prompting influence and determining cause of voluntary death to many an ailing and tempted sufferer than the perusal of such literature.
In “Aurora Floyd” and “Lady Audley’s Secret,” two novels of high standing, suicide is suggested definitely as a remedy for trouble, at least twelve times.
Ch. Elam writes, “The great publicity given to the minutiæ of atrocious crimes in the public press is undoubtedly a fruitful source of crime. Dove, who poisoned his wife, confessed, after his conviction, that the idea had been given to him by study of the case of Palmer, at Rugeley.”
[CHAPTER XI.]
URBAN AND RURAL LIFE; EMPLOYMENT; ARMY, NAVY, AND PRISON LIFE.
The suicide rate of any great city is found to be higher than the rate of the rural district around it, and this statement is true of every country. Many causes contribute to this increased rate, besides the mere density of population, which however may be considered to have of itself an influence to make suicide more frequent.
Statistics do not shew that the proportion increases with the total population of the urban district; in London, for example, although the total population is so much greater than that of Brussels, yet the suicide rate is much lower.
Urban life only tends to exaggerate the general inclination of a people; as Morselli puts it,─“the suicide rate is high in the rural districts when it is so in the towns; in the latter, on the contrary, it becomes lower in proportion to the general average.”
Town life is powerful to modify the human will, and the feelings and acts of mankind, but it will not neutralise all the other social and individual influences.
The most important difficulty in making correct estimates of the suicide rates of cities, is the uncertainty as to where the line should be drawn to separate the town from the country; for it is obvious that if these have different rates, the proportion for the town may be rendered high or low accordingly, whether the line be drawn through the suburbs, or beyond the farthest of them. Cities more than villages contain the two extreme states of riches and poverty, both of which tend to a voluntary death: in cities the struggle for existence is much sharper than it is amid the scattered population of villages, and together with this point is the collateral one of mental strain and excitement existing when not required for merely procuring a living.
The ratio of suicides in several cities, calculated in the year 1883, is here given, with reference to a million of inhabitants:─Paris, 402; Copenhagen, 302; Stockholm, 354; Naples, 34; Rome, 74; London, 87; Vienna, 287; Brussels, 271; Berlin, 170; St. Petersburgh, 206; and New York, 144.
In London, Buckle tells us, there has always been a higher rate than in the rest of England. During─
| 1846-50 | they were | 107 | per million |  | England, | 66 |
| 1856-61 | „ | 100 | „ | „ | 65 | |
| 1861-70 | „ | 88 | „ | „ | 66 | |
| 1872-76 | „ | 86 | „ | „ | 69 |
These figures show about one-third more suicide in London than the country. The same proportion holds good at the present time.
The Middlesex portion of London has always had a higher percentage than either the Kent or Surrey portions.
In Berlin the suicide rate was stationary in 1860-1872; indeed, decreasing in 1870-1872, but a large rate compared to the country around; in 1860 the relative numbers were 160 for the city to 100 in the country.
Legoyt calculates the suicide rate of the United States as 32 per million; and New York City, for the year 1876, as 142 per million.