CHAPTER XII.
SUICIDE IN CONNEXION WITH MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE.
The importance of medical evidence—The questions which medical men have to consider in these cases—Signs of death from strangulation—Singular positions in which the bodies of those who have committed suicide have been found—The particulars of the Prince de Condé’s case—On the possibility of voluntary strangulation—General Pichegru’s singular case—The melancholy history of Marc Antonie Calas—How to discover whether a person was dead before thrown into water—Singular cases—Admiral Caracciolo—Drowning in a bath—The points to keep in view in cases of suspicious death—Was Sellis murdered?—Death from wounds—The case of the Earl of Essex.
Medical men are frequently called upon in our courts of law to give evidence in cases where it is doubtful whether persons found dead were murdered or committed suicide. The questions involved in these judicial inquiries are of great public importance, and it is the sacred duty of medical men, for the sake of their own characters, and for a much higher consideration—for the ends of justice, to make themselves thoroughly conversant with all the evidence which can be brought to bear in the elucidation of such important questions. Our criminal annals are replete with illustrations in which individuals accused of the atrocious crime of murder have been saved from a dreadful and ignominious death by medical evidence. Cases also are recorded in which death has been ascribed to suicide, but which after investigation have been proved to have been effected by other hands. In doubtful cases of this description, the evidence of the medical man is of the highest importance; without it, in the great majority of cases, justice would be defeated.
In the cases of persons found hanging, two questions naturally suggest themselves to the mind:—1. Whether the individual was suspended before or after death. 2. Whether it was an act of suicide or murder. It is possible, and such cases have occurred, that a person may have been hanged up after having been murdered, or may have endeavoured to destroy himself by firearms, or by cutting his throat, and suspend himself afterwards, not being able to effect his purpose in any other way. In the first case we might mistake murder for suicide; and in the second, suicide for assassination. The following are the signs of death from strangulation:—The countenance is livid and distorted; the eyes protrude, and are often suffused with blood; the tongue projects and is wounded by the teeth. If the rope be placed below the cricoid cartilage, the tongue will protrude; but if it presses above the thyroid cartilage, the tongue will not be seen in the position described. It was formerly the generally received opinion that persons who were hanged died of apoplexy; but the experiments of Sir B. Brodie and other physiologists clearly prove that death is owing to suffocation. The livid or depressed circle which the rope is said to make round the neck is pronounced by M. Klein to be an uncertain sign; he saw fifteen cases of suicide in which it was not discovered. Remer, of Breslaw, who has recently directed his mind to the consideration of this important point, found, out of one hundred cases of persons who died from strangulation, eighty-nine with sugillation on the neck in an evident manner. In addition to the signs mentioned, others have been enumerated. The fingers are said to be found bent, the nails blue, hands nearly closed, with swelling of the chest, shoulders, arms, and hands.
If the body be not suspended, but touches, more or less, the ground or floor, while the cord is not tight enough for the purpose of strangulation, and there be no manifestations of any other means of death, there can hardly be room to doubt as to self-murder. It is true that the mere resting of the toes takes away but little of the character of suspension, but we may meet with stronger cases. A few years ago, a man, aged seventy-five, destroyed himself at Castle Cary, in the morning, by fixing a cord round his neck while sitting on the bed-side, and leaning forward till his purpose was accomplished. His wife, who had for years been bedridden, and was therefore not likely to have been very fast asleep, was in the room during the transaction, and knew nothing of what was going on. A prisoner hung himself in a gaol by fastening the cord to one of the window-bars, and pushing himself away from it with his arm.
Persons have both wounded and hung themselves. This may be effected by placing the cord in a wrong position, which would protract the person’s sufferings, and compel him to struggle and make violent efforts to kill himself. Ballard relates, that a young priest, having first cut his throat to a certain extent, hung himself with his robe.[69] In cases like these there can be little difficulty in ascertaining the real cause of death.
In a memoir published in a French journal,[70] there are related several instances of self-destruction by hanging, where the bodies were found in the most extraordinary positions and attitudes. A man was discovered in a granary hanging by a cotton handkerchief, made fast to a rope which stretched across; the knees were bent, so that the legs formed a right angle backwards; the feet were suspended on a heap of grain, over which the knees hung at a distance of a few inches. A prisoner was found suspended in a vertical position, with his heels resting on a window-stool. An Englishman, a prisoner in Paris, hung himself in his cell, which was an apartment with an arched roof, and at the lower part of it was a grated window, the highest part of which was not near the height of a man. Nevertheless, he hung himself to this grating, and was found almost sitting down, with his legs stretched out before, and his hips within a foot and a half of the ground. Another case is related of a man whose attitude was similar to the case first described. He had suspended himself to a large iron pin driven into the wall to support the bed-curtains, and his feet, bent at a right angle, rested on the bed, while his knees approached it within a few inches. A female suspended herself so low that, in order to accomplish her purpose, she was obliged to stretch out her legs, one before resting on the heel, the other behind resting on the toes. A female was found stretched at the foot of her bed, the legs, thighs, and left hip lying on the floor; the upper part of the body was raised, and suspended by a cord fixed to the neck, and fastened to the hospital bed.
A patient in La Charité was found one morning hanging by the rope which was attached to the head of his bed. He had fastened this by a loop round his neck, but his body was so retained, that when discovered he was on his knees by the side of his bed.