Morning journal and courier., 1881-06-07
Tuesday Morning. June 2. 1881.
soMETaTNa ABOUT SUICIDE

The chaplain of Clerkenwen prison, Lon
don, Mr.. J. w. Horsley, has in the course of
his exceptional career come in contact with
several hundred persons who have attempted
suicide and failed. In England an arrest al
ways follows an unsuccessful attempt, and
from 1868 to 1877 900 cases were committed
to the care of the chaplain at Clerkenwen
Mr.. Horsley has recently given to the world
some facts concerning 800 of these cases.
More than one-half were women, 1873 females
to III males, and the same proportion held
good for ten years, TAG males to 1867 fe
u ales being remanded to the prison for at
tempts at suicide from 1868 to 1877. Mr..
Horsley assumes from this that suicide is
specially female crime, :" but the truth seems
to be that many more men than women really
succeed in killing themselves. Attempts at
suicide, without the smallest intention of
committing it, are extremely common among
certain female class, and Mr.. Horsley
notes ''the sham attempts of city girls" as
swelling the record against their sex. Of the
800 sample cases o-thirds of the men were
unmarried and SO per cent. of the women
married. Nearly one half of the cases-124
fall between 20 and 80 years of age, the
period most chosen by suicides, the decade
from 80 to 40 standing next Of the 300;
1873 attempted to commit suicide by drown
ing, favorite method with those who do
not succeed Suicides by dro wning in crease
in the warm weather, hot August Mr..
Horsley notes, furnishing twice the usual
average "The difference of the tempera-
k,,ra of he he SEboS po11oh 10
do with the matter" which is doubtless true,
though that person who intends to commit
suicide should care about little cold is very
curious. Poison was used in only one-sixth
of the 800 cases, and shooting was not a ia
vorite. Nearly wo-thirds, 1888, of the cases
analysed by Mr.. Horsley were due to drunk
enness, and he gives one horrible page in his
notebook in July, 1878, when in % success
sive cases of attempted suicide 25 were the
result of drink.
In what he says concerning the causes of
suicide Mr.. Horsley lays serious RESPONSE
bility on ''the sentimental glamour thrown
over suicide" by some poets and novelists.
"I distinctly assert, for example" he says,
''my belief that the poem of T. Hood, The
Bridge of Sighs,' written for the sole pur-
pose of evoking charity for the despised has
yet, with certain class, tinged suicide with
a halo of romance and afforded justifca-
ton of cowardice and crime to the unreason-
ing and hysterical.' And he believes that
punishment of attempts to commit suicide
would decrease them. On this point he says
''Hysterical girls make demonstrations on
the Thames embankment and pail of water
over their fin ry would often be more efica-
cious as deterrent or cure than the notorie-
ty they gain (and perhaps SEEK by apprehen-
sion. I firmly believe that if it became the
exception instead of the rule for attempts at
suicide to escape period of hard labor, the
numbers of such attempts would at once and
to remarkable extent diminish. He is
probably right in this. AS the Springfield
Republican well says: ''The present attitude
of society On this subject is wholly irration-
al. It assumes to treat as crime what it
rarely Furnishes as one Either suicide should
be deeu. ed crime, as it is at law, or not, and
in this, as in all other crimes, nothing but
insanity should stand in the way of punish
ment. To a vast number of people who
know nothing on the subject and have never
come in contact with cases of attempted sui
eide, it will seem ridiculous to attempt to
lessen suicide by punishment; but the world
holds many morbid weaklings who try sui
eide as they try everything else, halfway,
and the certainty of ignonIinious punishment
would hold them in check and save weak
step whose worst consequences are felt by
the victim who lives. The purely ethical
side of suicide the law is not called on to
consider; on this as on SO many other
points, the present generation is witnessing
strange weakening of the old standards of
right and wrong"