From a return of English local prisons, just issued, I find there were in 1883, only ten cases of suicide, of whom only one was a female. This return did not include the great convict establishments; with respect to which I may add that successful attempts at self-destruction are very rare, and statistics are not directly available.
In the prisons of Italy, the frequency of suicide is greatest in prisoners of between twenty-one and thirty years; that is at an earlier age than among people at large; it is found to be more often attempted by countrymen than by town dwellers; another reversal of data.
Nearly half of all cases occur in the first year of confinement. Two-thirds of the prison suicides had always been reported as “well conducted.”
Only twenty-three per cent. of the cases occurred in criminals having a shorter sentence than three years.
So far as I can learn, all these points are, broadly speaking, equally true with regard to prisons in England.
[CHAPTER XII.]
SEASONS AND TIMES.
It is an old, old story that the destinies of man are governed by the sun, moon, and planets; but modern science rather scouted the ideas of the astrologers and Chaldeans; to suicide is due the honour of reintroducing the connection. Morselli says, with regard to the sun, “It is in fact well known that the number of these violent deaths varies according to the position of the earth and the sun. In the season of the year in which the earth is in aphelion there is a maximum, of suicide; when in perihelion the minimum is attained.”
The result of a large collection of statistics shows, however, that the maximum suicide rate occurs in summer 88 times out of 100, as opposed to winter; in spring the maximum occurred 9 times in 100. As to the minimum, it occurs in winter 88 times out of 100, and only 12 times in autumn out of the same number of observations.
As to the months, in a general way, suicide increases from January to July, and then decreases again, month by month, to the end of the year. Reckoning by cities only, instead of by states, the results are a little upset, but in 11 cases of large numbers, 9 maxima fell in May, June, and July. The number of cases of mental disease has been observed to vary in similar months, reaching their maximum in the heat of summer.