It is instructive to compare the statistics of crime in general with those of suicide; such data as are found in “Recherches sur le penchant au Crime,” by A. Quetelet, illustrate this matter; he gives the figure of a curve showing the amount of crime at different ages of life. This curve rises from almost zero at ten years of age to nearly its maximum at 20, quite its highest point at 23, and then falls evenly to half its height at 45; thence evenly to 70, when it is at a similar position to 15 years of age, and thence evenly to zero at the age of 100 years. These proportions are found to exist at the present time in our own country. Among women the maximum falls a little later in life than among men, viz., at 30 years of age. Of crime in general, one woman is convicted to four men.
The seasons disclose a peculiar proportion; in summer there are most crimes against the person, fewest against property; in winter, fewest crimes against the person, most against property.
Officials and professional men are more prone to commit crimes against the person than against property; labourers and mechanics commit more crimes against property than against the person. Celibacy contributes 60 out of 100 criminals. It seems tolerably certain that one-half of insane persons, two-thirds of the poor, and three-fourths of all criminals are persons who have drunk to excess.
I add in this place, figures shewing the present decrease of crime in England and Scotland, to which reference was made in the preface. This diminution may be, in some part, due to an increase of the police force, and to the greater efficiency of these officers. If these be the real causes of the improvement, and not increased morality, the reason why the suicide rate is not decreasing becomes explained, because, as I point out elsewhere, the police are almost powerless to control the perpetration of suicide.
The number of persons committed for criminal trial in 1882 was 15,260; this shews a diminution of 381 upon the average of five years precedent. In Scotland, 2,692 persons were committed for trial against 2,859, the average for the five years immediately preceding. The total number of “persons of bad character known to the police” in England is also diminished in 1882, being 38,966, against 39,161 in the previous year, and compared to 46,877 in the year 1872.
Sir John Lubbock has lately called attention to the diminished amount of English crime at the present time, and attributes it to the spread of education. Mr. Justice Smith has also spoken on the same point, but hesitates to assign education as the cause of the improvement; he mentions another remarkable point, that the highest rates of criminal violence are associated with the population earning the highest wages, chiefly through the greater amount of alcoholic liquors so consumed.
Suicide certainly has points of difference to other crimes of violence; the wicked ones of earth are not those who specially practice it. Education checks crime, although under the influence of increased mental tension self-sacrifice is more rife; alcohol increases crime and suicide also; this I believe to be due to the fact that habitual alcoholic excess lessens the controlling power of the conscience, and renders the mind less able to withstand the tension induced by development.
The prevalence of suicide is every day attributed to the progress of immorality; I associate it as much with the development of thought.
Savages, implacable in their hate, ferocious in their vengeance, and atrocious in their pleasures, do not commit it, although they kill their old people, and do not hesitate to drink from the skulls of their enemies. It was not common among any of the great nations of old until they became cultivated intellectually. Compare Regnault on Mental Alienations.