New-York tribune., 1875-09-02
TIE pRETALENCE OF SUICIDE.


ally large number of suicides which have
occurred in this country during the last two
months. We have suicides of the young and
the old, of both sexes of the rich and the
door: and for all reasons known or cODjec-
turcd. A girl, for instance, only 10 years old,
takes a fatal dose of arsenic in Saginaw,
Mich, on account OF ill-trcatment by her
father; married woman in Berks County,
Penn, browns herself and" her three children;
young man in Richmond, Ind, poisons him
self "rather than submit to arrest for stealing
ga watch :" q cOultcsan i'll Cleveland takes
opium after "a carOuslmg time" but is saved;
in Eau Clare, Wis, there is case similar to
that in Bcrks County, Penn, of woman who
browns herself, taking two children into the
water with her, one of whom happily escapes;
in Boonton, n. j., an Irishman locked up fol-
drunkenness hangs himself; at Trenton, y. D.,
man attempts suicide by throwing himself
in front of a locomotive this being his second
attempt to accomplish the deed M precisely
the same way at LeavenwOrth an unknown
girl, probably suicide, is found floating in
the river; at Burlington, VT, gunsmith
shoots himself on account OF the loss
of his property in LeavcnwOrth, again,
Door and needy Pole shoots himself after an
evening cheerfully spent i'll card-playing and
in drinking; young girl, stranger, dies
from strychnine administered by herself at a
public house in Council Bluffs in BechcrtOwn,
Mass, two young girls poison themselves with
morphine; to-day our columns contain re-
markablc story of the suicide of an Italian
artist and the mOurnful chapter might be con-
sdcraby prolonged. But we have given cases
enough to show that during the Summer there
has been o marked tendency to sef-destruc
ton.
This may be referred to atmospheric influences,
to sympathetic mania and the force of example,
and to the want of employment encountered
by persons of small means dependent upon
daily labor What one wretch does to escape
from the misery of living, another will be
likely to do under the same circumstances, and
with such precedent to follow. The love OF
life should DO strong in very young
person, but, on the other hand, he may
have no conception of the Importance OF
death. In a moment of williul passion or
dcspondency, he follows a sclfdcstructive inn
pulse just as he might be obstinate in doing
ANYTHING else which he ought hot to do.
Suicide is often the desperate refuge of the
week and helpless, who feel that they have
been wronged, and who have at command
10 other method of revenge. In many
instances, the act is one of NOR
bid, physical impulse, sometimes, though
not always, amounting to positive mania. If
we consider the large number of these who
live on with no desire to live, but who are
restrained from laying violent hands upon
themselves by moral and social considerations,
we shall find that the number of those who
yield to the wicked impulse of telo de Sc is
comparatively small There is nothing
more remarkable than the bravery with
which the majority of mankind en-
counter misfortune, disappointment, want,
the loss of character, of caste, OF friends, and
that fortune of chronic ill-health which is the
hardest of all. Sometimes, it is true, there il
generated an Indifference as to what may arrive
next but usually hope remains unextinSuished
and the instructive love of life survives a
thousand distresses. So it would still more
generally if We were accustomed in all cases
to consider the nature of suicide accurately.
The sympathy which the community feels
for the victim of his own violence, nisleads it
into an underestimate of the real weakness of
the deed. We suspect that the suicide must
have been impelled by an extraordinary degree
of courage. We are thus blinded to the real
cowardce which makes up part of every
case of self-murdcr. The manliness is in liv-
ing. The valOr is in endurance to the end.
Suicide is dishOnOrable; and we think that it
would not be very difficult to make it unpopular.
The old common law tried to do this by va
rous brutalities of burial but these, in the
nature of things, had bat little influence; and
now they are properly abandoned. STILL the
current of public opinion against suicide may
be strengthened, if the moraists of the pull
pit and the press, upon all proper occa
sions. speak Of it as decd dis