Prison Life.
Prisoners have a higher suicide rate than civilians at liberty, especially if we consider attempts at suicide.
It is usual to make a distinction between convicts whose fate is settled, and prisoners arrested, and untried, or at least not convicted. For instance, Morselli gives for
| England: | Prisoners, | 1,100; | Convicts, | 350, |
| France: | „ | 750; | „ | 80, |
as the relative rates of voluntary death.
Female prisoners give a very high rate in Denmark and Italy, and suicides of females are more numerous than those of males in the prisons of these two states.
More than half of Prisoner Suicides are of men and women convicted of crimes against the person.
The longer a prisoner remains in a convict prison, the less is the tendency to suicide; most prisoners become used to the mode of life under a year of confinement.
Solitary confinement produces a greater suicide tendency than associated imprisonment, and the systems of mixed prisoners.
From a return of English local prisons, just issued, I find there were in 1883, only ten cases of suicide, of whom only one was a female. This return did not include the great convict establishments; with respect to which I may add that successful attempts at self-destruction are very rare, and statistics are not directly available.
In the prisons of Italy, the frequency of suicide is greatest in prisoners of between twenty-one and thirty years; that is at an earlier age than among people at large; it is found to be more often attempted by countrymen than by town dwellers; another reversal of data.
Nearly half of all cases occur in the first year of confinement. Two-thirds of the prison suicides had always been reported as “well conducted.”
Only twenty-three per cent. of the cases occurred in criminals having a shorter sentence than three years.
So far as I can learn, all these points are, broadly speaking, equally true with regard to prisons in England.
[CHAPTER XII.]
SEASONS AND TIMES.
It is an old, old story that the destinies of man are governed by the sun, moon, and planets; but modern science rather scouted the ideas of the astrologers and Chaldeans; to suicide is due the honour of reintroducing the connection. Morselli says, with regard to the sun, “It is in fact well known that the number of these violent deaths varies according to the position of the earth and the sun. In the season of the year in which the earth is in aphelion there is a maximum, of suicide; when in perihelion the minimum is attained.”
The result of a large collection of statistics shows, however, that the maximum suicide rate occurs in summer 88 times out of 100, as opposed to winter; in spring the maximum occurred 9 times in 100. As to the minimum, it occurs in winter 88 times out of 100, and only 12 times in autumn out of the same number of observations.
As to the months, in a general way, suicide increases from January to July, and then decreases again, month by month, to the end of the year. Reckoning by cities only, instead of by states, the results are a little upset, but in 11 cases of large numbers, 9 maxima fell in May, June, and July. The number of cases of mental disease has been observed to vary in similar months, reaching their maximum in the heat of summer.
The following Table of “Death Rates of each Season” may be compared with the foregoing remarks on the “Seasonal Suicide rate”:
| ── | Spring. | Summer. | Autumn. | Winter. | Total. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 110 | 96 | 95 | 99 | 400 |
| France | 117 | 88 | 86 | 109 | 400 |
| Holland | 88 | 91 | 126 | 95 | 400 |
| Austria | 115 | 82 | 91 | 112 | 400 |
| Italy | 88 | 105 | 100 | 107 | 400 |
From these figures it will be apparent that the greatest mortality in England falls to spring, and next to winter; or exactly opposite to the tendency of suicide. In Italy only do the maxima of general mortality and suicide coincide in the hotter two quarters of the year.
It is not so much the actual hot weather which seems to increase the number of suicides and the amount of lunacy, nor the actual cold weather which seems to check the number, as it is that the onset of hot weather seriously affects the human system in such a way as to upset the equilibrium of mind function, and to suffer mental motives to derange the intellect.
In these considerations the spring is reckoned as consisting of March, April, and May, and the other seasons accordingly.
I do not find that these seasonal peculiarities are very marked in the suicide rates of this country taken alone, not in London at any rate; for example, I subjoin the figures obtained in Central Middlesex for two years.
| ─── | 1883. | 1884. | ─── | 1883. | 1884. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spring | 30 | 24 | Autumn | 20 | 15 |
| Summer | 23 | 37 | Winter | 22 | 26 |
The Annual Reports of the Registrar General do not throw any light on this question, nor, I may say, on several other somewhat fanciful investigations into which foreign observers have led the way.
Morselli states, “it is most probable that the moon exercises more or less influence on suicides as it does on madness and epilepsy, which are generally aggravated at the time of the waning moon (full moon and second quarter).”
“The influence of the moon would be more sharply felt by men than by women, particularly at new moon.” This last, it seems, is the conclusion drawn from the labours of the modern astrologers of Prussia.
But from the statistics given by himself for 1869, it appears that 255·8 and 258·8 per 1,000 occurred respectively in the moon’s first quarter and last quarter, against 246·8 and 238·6 per 1,000 in the new moon and full moon quarters; no very marked difference.
With regard to days, Brierre de Boismont finds in regard to Paris that the number of suicides in the first ten days of a month exceeds the number of the last twenty; and, stranger still, the two first days of the month also give the largest numbers: this does not occur in England, nor in London alone.
As to week days, among men the beginning of the week is most fatal; Monday highest, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, and Saturday the fewest.
Among women also peculiarities come out, but they are different; Saturday has still the fewest, the Thursday and Friday are very high, Monday and Tuesday low, but Sunday has the highest number of all.
And now with regard to hours and times of the day, darkness seems to be preferred to daylight. But according to a rather complete set of tables, which I reproduce here, giving every hour, night and day, I find that from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., about noon, and from 2 to 3 p.m. have very much the highest numbers. The rate diminishes almost regularly from 3 p.m., through midnight to 3 a.m., when the lowest number is reached.
Brierre de Boismont arranged this Table; it refers to 1,993 cases observed in Paris.
| 1 a.m. | 51 | 1 p.m. | 79 |
| 2 a.m. | 49 | 2 p.m. | 117 |
| 3 a.m. | 45 | 3 p.m. | 144 |
| 4 a.m. | 50 | 4 p.m. | 89 |
| 5 a.m. | 70 | 5 p.m. | 86 |
| 6 a.m. | 102 | 6 p.m. | 67 |
| 7 a.m. | 102 | 7 p.m. | 89 |
| 8 a.m. | 126 | 8 p.m. | 69 |
| 9 a.m. | 104 | 9 p.m. | 69 |
| 10 a.m. | 110 | 10 p.m. | 62 |
| 11 a.m. | 81 | 11 p.m. | 44 |
| 12 Noon | 123 | 12 p.m. | 65 |
[CHAPTER XIII.]
SEX, AGE, AND SOCIAL STATE.
The relative proportion of suicides exhibited by the sexes is one of the data in connection with our subject that received the earliest attention, and from such early observations, until the present time, the proportion has been remarkably constant in our own country, and throughout Europe.
Three males to one female is the prevailing rate shown by the majority of states reckoned in their entirety. In urban districts, and in the great cities the female proportion is increased, and averages one woman to two men. The Spaniards form the most notable exception to the average, female suicide even in the rural districts of Spain being abnormally frequent; Italy, which resembles Spain in many peculiarities, is not similar in this respect.
As a reason for the predominance of male suicide, attention is called to the fact that the struggle for existence falls at the present time, and always has fallen chiefly to the men of a state, the typical female mind, it should also be remembered, is more capable of accommodating itself to change of circumstances, and is also more marked by powers of self-sacrifice, than the male intellect.
The more prominent causes of male suicide are the vices, money troubles, and tædium vitæ; whilst females are more often driven to take their lives by the passions, mental weaknesses, remorse, and shame.
It is a peculiarity of female self-destruction that Sunday is very frequently chosen as the day for its commission; on the other hand, males avoid Sunday very markedly.
In Geneva, an old notification, dated 1777, was recently found, stating that two out of three voluntary deaths in the city were those of men.
In the decennial period 1861-70, the proportion of 293 males to 100 females was found in England and Wales; but in the 10 years 1871-80, the rate for males had increased up to 306, to 100 females; since then, however, the female rate has again gone up, being in 1882 not less than 100 women to 278 men.
The Registrar General calculated in 1880 that the chance of a male infant dying by suicide in England, was 1 to 211, and of a female so doing was 1 to 578.
The female rate for England has always been higher than that of many continental states.
With respect to London, in 1878 the proportions were 2·5 to 1; and in 1881, the female rate was less; 3·03 men to 1 woman.
In Paris, of late years, the female rate has been very high; 1·2 male to 1 female.
Scotland shows a high female rate.
The present proportions of the European countries are: France, 79 to 21; Italy, 80 to 20; Prussia, 82 to 18; Spain, 71 to 29; Saxony, 77 to 23; Russia, 80 to 20; Holland, 78 to 22; Ireland, 78 to 22; and Scotland, 72 to 28.
For the United States of America, the estimated numbers are 79·25 to 20·75.
For the English colonists in Australia, 82 to 18 is the estimated proportion.
As an illustration of the trifling causes which sometimes lead to the act, I may mention that Drs. Georget and Falret have both stated in medical journals that French women have frequently committed suicide, only because they have happened to lose their personal charms of appearance.─Burrows.
The female sex contributes a considerable number of cases dependent on child-birth; these are of two classes: suicide during the course of the mental failure, the puerperal mania, so well known to occur at times in pregnancy and after parturition; and those saddening cases of self-destruction occurring as a sequence to the mental anxiety and shame, depending on pregnancy and child-birth in single women, who are constantly being seduced under promise either of marriage, or at least of maintenance, and then deserted by men whose malevolence is only equalled by their lust.
Simple hysteria is also the cause of a small percentage of female suicides; the amatory passion being usually primarily at fault.