Cases are reported where injuries were inflicted or poison given, and the subject was afterward hanged to avert suspicion. Most of these cases are those of murder either by strangulation or suffocation (Cases 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 74).
Sometimes hanging is accidental. Children and even older persons play at hanging successfully. Taylor mentions the case of a boy who witnessed a hanging and afterward tried the experiment himself to ascertain the sensation, and caused his own death.
Tardieu[882] relates the case of a man, T., age 37, of small stature, feeble constitution, very thin, of sinister face, eyes hollow but lively, cunning nose and mouth, who meeting a man aged 81, learned that he had some trouble with his leg and promised to cure him. The old man lived alone. T. told him to buy a strong cord as thick as his little finger and one and one-half yards long, and keep the whole thing a secret. T. would see him at his room at 7 P.M. The old man became suspicious and had T. arrested. The investigation showed that already T. had made away with three old men by hanging, who were known to be opposed to suicide. Their bodies showed no trace of violence. Two others had escaped when the cord was passed around their necks.
Tardieu gives a number of cases of suicidal hanging which were falsely attributed to criminal violence, in which the pressure of public opinion joined to circumstances improperly explained by inexpert physicians caused deplorable judicial errors.
ILLUSTRATIVE CASES.
Suicide.
1. Harvey: Indian Med. Gaz., 1876, xi., p. 2.—Man, age 30. Found hanging by turban to bars of cell door; slip-knot around neck; heart beating feebly; died in about a minute after being cut down. “The point of suspension was forty-seven inches from the ground, the position of the noose twenty-eight inches, and the feet were forty-two inches away from the door supported on the toes.” Experiment showed that the turban could not have borne the full weight of the body. He died from strangulation.
2. Ibid., p. 3.—Insane man, age 60. Put his neck in a V-shaped fork of a tree and let his body swing. A broad abrasion found on each side of neck. Scalp, brain, and membranes much congested; reddish serum in lateral ventricles; two ounces clear fluid in pericardium. Lungs congested; all the heart cavities contained blood.
3. Ibid., p. 5.—Woman, age 28. Two marks of ligature on neck; one deep and circular passed up behind left ear; the other passed from the circular mark behind, crossed it on either side under lower jaw, thence up to chin. Appeared at first to be a case of strangulation following hanging; but the two marks were finally explained, that after the body was taken down it was ordered up again until the police should arrive.
4. Ibid., p. 5.—Man, age 45; first cut his throat and then hung himself. “He had probably only just had time to hang himself before dying.”