The Anatomy of Suicide

by Forbes Winslow

In 1832, at the west end of the town, a man was found hanging in his room, with his knees bent forwards and his feet resting upon the floor. He had evidently been dead for some time, since cadaverous rigidity had already commenced. The manner in which this man had committed suicide was as follows:—He had made a slip knot with one end of his apron, (he was a working mechanic,) and having placed his neck in this, he threw the other end of the apron over the top of the door, and shutting the door behind him, he had succeeded in wedging it in firmly. At the same moment he had probably raised himself on tip-toe, and then allowed himself to fall; in this way he died. The weight of his body had apparently sufficed to drag down a part of the apron, for it seemed as if it had been very much stretched.

In October, 1833, a gentleman who was employed as an assistant in a respectable school in the neighbourhood of London, was discovered by some of his pupils, one morning, in a sitting posture, on a dark part of a staircase of the house. Upon examining further, it was ascertained that he was completely dead, and that he was suspended to the banisters by a cravat firmly tied round his neck. The deceased had evidently made two similar attempts at self-destruction before he succeeded, as part of a silk pocket-handkerchief and his braces were found suspended to other parts of the banisters. It seemed scarcely possible to those who discovered him that the deceased could really have accomplished suicide by hanging in such a situation, for his body was resting entirely on the stairs, and, making every allowance for the slipping of the ligature by which he was suspended, still his feet must have been throughout in contact with the stair.

There have been few medico-legal investigations of late years which have excited greater interest than the case of the Duke de Bourbon, in France.

On the 27th August, 1830, the duke was found suspended in his bed-room, in the chateau of St. Leu. An inquest was held the same morning on the body, and from the evidence of the witnesses, as well as from the reports of the physicians and surgeons who examined it, a verdict was returned to the effect that the duke had committed suicide in a fit of temporary insanity. This event did not excite much notice until the contents of his will were made public.

The deceased, it appears, had made his will in favour of the Baroness de Feuchéres, a female who had lived with him for some years, bequeathing to her the whole of his immense estates, and leaving the Duke d’Aumale, the youngest son of the king of the French, residuary legatee. The Princes de Rohan, heirs by collateral descent to the deceased, thus finding themselves deprived of an expected inheritance, attempted to set aside the will, alleging that undue influence had been exercised over him. The cause came on for hearing before the First Chamber of the Civil Tribunal of Paris, in December, 1831, and excited considerable attention, not so much in consequence of the dispute concerning the validity of the will, as of the question which was raised during the trial,—whether the duke had committed suicide, or whether he had been murdered, and afterwards suspended, in order to defeat the ends of justice.

The facts of the case, collected from the procés verbaux, are as follows:—The deceased had naturally partaken of the alarm which had diffused itself throughout France in consequence of the events of the revolution of 1830. Some of his most intimate friends declared that, for some time previously to his death, his mind had been filled with the most gloomy forebodings as to what this new order of things would bring about. On the morning of the 27th, his servant went, as usual, to his bed-room door about eight o’clock; but receiving no answer on knocking, he became alarmed. Madame de Feuchéres then accompanied the valet to the door of the room, which was fastened on the inside; and receiving no reply after calling to the duke in a loud voice, she ordered it to be broken open. On entering the apartment, the body of the deceased was found suspended from the fastening at the top of the window-sash by means of a linen handkerchief, attached to another which completely encircled the neck. The head was inclined a little to the chest; the tongue protruded from the mouth; the face was discoloured; a mucous discharge issued from the mouth and nostrils; the arms hung down; the fists were clenched. The extremities of both feet touched the carpet of the room, the point of suspension being about six feet and a half from the floor; the heels were elevated, and the knees half bent. The deceased was partly undressed; the legs were uncovered, and had some marks of injury on them. Among other points of circumstantial evidence, it was remarked that a chair stood near the window to which the deceased was suspended, and the bed looked as if it had been lain on.

The medical witnesses, who examined the body soon after its discovery, stated that they found it cold, and the extremities rigid, from which they inferred that the deceased had been dead eight or ten hours. This would have fixed the time of his death at midnight of August 26th. The body underwent a second examination, a report of which was furnished to the legal authorities, on the following day. Five medical men were present at the inspection; and they gave it as their opinion, from the post mortem appearances—1st, that the deceased had died by hanging; and, 2ndly, from the absence of all marks of violence or resistance about the person or clothes of the deceased, and other facts, that he had destroyed himself. They considered that the contusion on one arm, and the excoriations observed on both legs, must have arisen from the rubbing of these parts against the projecting rail of the chair near the window. The mark on the neck of the deceased they described to be large, oblique, and extending upwards to the mastoid process.

General evidence was given to shew that the duke had meditated self-destruction, and had conversed about it with some of the witnesses. On the morning of the 28th, some fragments of paper, which had been written on, were taken from the grate of his chamber; these were carefully put together by one of the legal inspectors; and among a few disjointed sentences, indicating despair and a dread of impending danger, were the following:—“It is only left for me to die in wishing prosperity to the French people and my country. Adieu for ever!” Here followed his signature, and a request to be interred at Vincennes, near the body of his son, the Duke d’Enghien. It is necessary to observe, that no noise or disturbance was heard in the bedroom on the night of the deceased’s death.

On the other side it was contended that the duke was not unusually melancholy before his death; that the supposition of suicide was inadmissible in a moral point of view, and indeed was physically impossible, from the circumstances. One person argued that he could not have made the knots seen in the handkerchiefs; another, that he could not have reached so high above his head to have suspended himself, and that the chair could not have been used in any manner to assist him; while a third affirmed, that a person might be suspended in the position in which the body was discovered, without death ensuing. The circumstance of the door being fastened on the inside, was accounted for by supposing that the bolt had been pushed to from the outside. The duke had been heard to condemn suicide; he had made an appointment for the following day; and had attended to many little circumstances, such as winding up his watch the night previously, and noting his losses at play;—facts which were forcibly urged as being opposed to the supposition of his having destroyed himself.

To combat the medical evidence, it was assumed that the deceased was strangled or suffocated, and was afterwards hanged, by assassins. Several schemes were devised by the medical witnesses on this side of the question, to account for the manner in which the supposed murder was committed. According to some, a handkerchief might have been tightened round the deceased’s neck by one assassin, while another forcibly held his legs under the bed-clothes, by which the lesions already described would have been produced; or instead of being strangled by a handkerchief, he might have been suffocated by a pillow placed over his mouth.