For ancient French laws on Suicide, see Laverdy, Code Penal, cxi., &c.
In the German Strafgesetzbuch, article 216, we find, “If a person is induced to kill another by the express and serious request of the person killed, he shall be imprisoned for not less than three years, and not more than five years.”
No mention is made of suicide proper, in old German codes.
In the Bavarian and Saxon Codes suicide is not mentioned: but up to 1871, it was the Saxon law that the bodies of suicides should be sent to the schools of anatomy for dissection.
In the Austrian Code, there is a proviso that the suicide shall be buried by certain officials, but not in a churchyard.
The Prussian Code forbids any injury to the corpse; there are to be no marks of respect at the funeral; if the suicide be committed to avoid punishment, the executioner is to bury the body.
The French Law is very remarkable; M. Hélie states it thus: “La loi n’a point incriminé le suicide. Le fait de complicité est il punissable? La negative est evidente.”
In the United States suicide has never been a crime against statute law, nor have there ever been any burial barbarities in cases of suicide; but any one accessory to a suicide is guilty of murder as a principal.
The English Draft Penal Code proposed to make the abetment of suicide a special offence, subject to penal servitude for life, as a maximum punishment.
The attempt to commit suicide was to be punished by two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.