Ch. Elam writes, “The great publicity given to the minutiæ of atrocious crimes in the public press is undoubtedly a fruitful source of crime. Dove, who poisoned his wife, confessed, after his conviction, that the idea had been given to him by study of the case of Palmer, at Rugeley.”
[CHAPTER XI.]
URBAN AND RURAL LIFE; EMPLOYMENT; ARMY, NAVY, AND PRISON LIFE.
The suicide rate of any great city is found to be higher than the rate of the rural district around it, and this statement is true of every country. Many causes contribute to this increased rate, besides the mere density of population, which however may be considered to have of itself an influence to make suicide more frequent.
Statistics do not shew that the proportion increases with the total population of the urban district; in London, for example, although the total population is so much greater than that of Brussels, yet the suicide rate is much lower.
Urban life only tends to exaggerate the general inclination of a people; as Morselli puts it,─“the suicide rate is high in the rural districts when it is so in the towns; in the latter, on the contrary, it becomes lower in proportion to the general average.”
Town life is powerful to modify the human will, and the feelings and acts of mankind, but it will not neutralise all the other social and individual influences.
The most important difficulty in making correct estimates of the suicide rates of cities, is the uncertainty as to where the line should be drawn to separate the town from the country; for it is obvious that if these have different rates, the proportion for the town may be rendered high or low accordingly, whether the line be drawn through the suburbs, or beyond the farthest of them. Cities more than villages contain the two extreme states of riches and poverty, both of which tend to a voluntary death: in cities the struggle for existence is much sharper than it is amid the scattered population of villages, and together with this point is the collateral one of mental strain and excitement existing when not required for merely procuring a living.
The ratio of suicides in several cities, calculated in the year 1883, is here given, with reference to a million of inhabitants:─Paris, 402; Copenhagen, 302; Stockholm, 354; Naples, 34; Rome, 74; London, 87; Vienna, 287; Brussels, 271; Berlin, 170; St. Petersburgh, 206; and New York, 144.
In London, Buckle tells us, there has always been a higher rate than in the rest of England. During─