The Anatomy of Suicide

by Forbes Winslow

A few years ago, a man, who had leaped from each of the three bridges with impunity, undertook to repeat the exploit for a wager. Having jumped from London Bridge, he sunk and was drowned. When the body was discovered, it appeared that both his arms were dislocated, in consequence of having descended with them in an horizontal instead of a perpendicular position. Persons have been discovered drowned with ligatures on their hands and feet, and the circumstance has naturally excited a suspicion as to whether they had committed suicide or had been murdered. Numerous cases prove that suicides do, occasionally, adopt such precautions, in order to ensure death. In June, 1816, the body of a gauging-instrument maker, who had been missing for some days from his home, was discovered floating down the Thames. On being taken out of the water, the wrists were found tied together and made fast to his knees, which were in like manner secured to each other. He had been deranged for two years. The cord was recognised as one which had been attached to his bed. He could swim well, and it was presumed that he had so tied himself, in order to prevent his using his legs and arms should his courage fail him after having plunged into the water.

A man, with his wife and child, was reduced to great distress. On a certain day, he took an affectionate leave of his family, declaring he would not return until he had procured some employment by which he should be able to buy bread for them. On the following day, he was found drowned in the New River, with his hands and legs tied. A card with his address was found in his pocket.

A gentleman was found in the Seine, at Paris, having his feet, wrists, and neck, tied with a cord. His neck, limbs, and hands, were bound by means of a rope with slip-knots, in order to put it out of his power to aid himself when in the water, and thereby to render certain the execution of his suicide.

In the year 1832, the body of Elizabeth Martin was found dead in the water. A man of the name of Bayley was accused of the murder. They had been quarrelling, and were seen struggling with each other at the banks of the pond. He declared that she had fallen in accidentally. Her face was found turned downwards towards the bottom of the pond, and one of her hands was found to be in her pocket. The judge properly observed, that if the woman had fallen into the water as the prisoner stated, that she would have, undoubtedly, taken her hand from her pocket for the purpose of extricating herself. The man was convicted of the murder, and executed.

There has been much discussion as to whether bodies sink or swim when thrown into the water after having been killed. Considerable discrepancy of opinion exists on this point. It has been maintained that strangled persons will float more readily than others, as many facts prove. Caracciolo, Admiral of the Neapolitan navy, was hanged by sentence of a court-martial. The body was committed to the deep in the usual manner; and thirteen days afterwards, while the king was walking on the deck of Lord Nelson’s ship, he suddenly exclaimed, with a yell of horror—“Viene! viene!” The admiral’s corpse, breast-high, was seen floating towards the ship. The shot which had been attached to the feet for the purpose of sinking not being sufficiently heavy. This phenomenon may have arisen from the evolution of gaseous matter, after the process of putrefaction had commenced, which notoriously renders the body specifically lighter than water.

The apparitions that appeared at Portnedown Bridge, after the Irish massacre, and which excited such commotion at the time, were accounted for in a similar manner. It appears that, about twilight in the evening, a number of spirits became visible; one assumed the shape of a naked woman, waist-high, upright in the water, with elevated and closed hands, and looking as awful a spectre as the most superstitious person would wish to behold. Various sounds were also heard proceeding from the river, which caused no little alarm. The sounds were mere delusions, but that bodies were seen floating upright in the water there cannot be a doubt.

“One day,” says Clarke, “leaning out of the cabin-window, by the side of an officer, who was employed in fishing, the corpse of a man, newly sewed up in a hammock, started half out of the water, and continued its course with the current towards the shore. Nothing could be more horrible; its head and shoulders were visible, turning first to one side, then to the other, with a solemn and awful movement, as if impressed with some dreadful secret of the deep, which from its watery grave it came upwards to reveal. Such sights became afterwards frequent, hardly a day passing without ushering the dead to the contemplation of the living, until at length they passed without exciting much observation.[73]

In October, 1829, a female, who was an in-patient of St. Luke’s Hospital, was found dead in the bath of the institution. It appears that, for some time previously, she had been permitted the privileges allowed to patients exhibiting indications of convalescence, and had obtained access to the nurse’s room, in which the key of the bath was deposited. One afternoon, she secretly possessed herself of this key, and then immediately proceeded to make arrangements for the accomplishment of her purpose. In order to deceive the vigilance of the nurse, who was accustomed to lock the patients up at bed-time, she took off her clothes and disposed them about the room, in the usual manner, as if she had undressed. She then made up a bundle to resemble the human figure, and placed it inside the bed, filling her nightcap with handkerchiefs. So accurate was the deception that the other patients, who slept in the room with the deceased, readily answered that they were all present. The lunatic, after these preparations, must have stolen cautiously down to the bath. She was found, the next morning, dead, lying stretched out with her face downwards. The water of the bath was not deep, and, indeed, it is presumed, she must have forcibly maintained the position in which her body was found, in order to have effected her purpose. The door of the bath-room was locked inside, and the key was found in the deceased’s pocket.

In a small village of Warwickshire, in the year 1800, a young gentleman suddenly disappeared on the evening previous to his intended marriage. After a lapse of some days, his body was found floating in a mill-stream, and it was generally concluded that he had committed suicide, though the cause for such a rash act could not be conjectured. Upon stripping the body, some marks of a suspicious nature were discovered upon the throat. A surgeon was sent for to decide whether death had taken place from any other cause than drowning, who, after a minute examination, gave it as his opinion that he had died by strangulation. Suspicion now fell upon a man of bad character, who had been seen the night the gentleman was first missed, running in great haste from the direction in which the body was afterwards found. He was apprehended, but, no evidence of guilt being elicited by the examination, was discharged, and the fate of the unfortunate young man remained buried in mystery. Ten years afterwards, the person suspected was convicted of sheep-stealing, and sentenced to transportation. While on board the hulks, he made a voluntary confession of having destroyed him, and declared that such was his remorse, and the horror of his conscience, that he earnestly desired to expiate his crime on the scaffold. He was tried for the alleged offence entirely on his own evidence, which was as follows:—

Upon the evening of the fatal event, he was stealing potatoes from a field-garden belonging to the deceased, whom he unexpectedly saw coming over the gate to secure him, upon which he jumped over the hedge on the opposite side, and ran across the field to make his escape. The gentleman pursued him, and being an active young man, nearly overtook him; upon which he (the prisoner) attempted to leap the mill-stream, but the bank on the other side giving way, he fell back into the water. The young gentleman, instantly plunging into the water after him, strove to secure him. A desperate struggle now ensued, and the deceased had at one time got the prisoner down under him in the water, by which he was half drowned. At length he succeeded in overturning his antagonist, and, seizing him by the throat, held him fast in this manner under water, till he seemed to have no more power. He then left him, sprang out, and made his escape.