The suburban citizen., 1901-03-16
SUICIDES OF CHILDREN
LARGE NUMBER OF VICTIMS FUR
NlSHED BY THE CITIES.

| Pl-iful Case OF n Little New York Girl
Who Was Weary with the Burdens
of Premature Womanhood-A Lack of
Endurance and Fortitude.
One instance after another of self
inflicted death of children have caused
a slowly increasing interest to trace
the cause and find a remedy, and at
last awakened a sense of duty con-
cerning the incredible state Of mind
and morals which these young suicides
demonstrate as existing in our day
and generation, writes a correspond
ent of the New York Post.
There is something so at variance
! with human nature, as well as so abb
horrent to all sane thought, in the will
! ingness Of a child to kill itself, that
the natural impulse of the hearer is to
disbelleve the fact. The almost ire
sistible desire to make some effort to
remove the conditions which move
such tender creatures to destroy them
selves, might have better hope Of good
result had records been kept and the
subject been approached more scien-
tifically, with data parentage, race and
all the testamentary statistics which
could help theory and suggest rene
dies. Unfortunately none Of these
have been retained.
Cities unquestionably provide the
larger number of these victims but in
the majority of instances noted the
circumstances have not been those of
! either extreme want or misery. Many
of the cases which have been reported
have been pupils of the public schools,
and there has been a questioning
thought in this connection: Gould the
schools helpy'i The idea is not that
! the schools are in fault, but that their
large congregations of children, com
ing out Of sordid unenllghtened homes,
might afford the most vital Opportu-
nity to plant new ideas Of what it
means to live and die and what should
bind a child to its home.
Perhaps the instance which finally
forced the writer to make this appeal
was this.
A child, a little girl, one Of those pa
thetic creatures whom we know as
Little Mothers" was, at eleven years
of age, quite creditably heading the
household of her widowed father.
There were three younger children;
they are reported as having been
clean and watched over with that eX-
traordinary combination of vigilance
and good sense which is common to
these premature guardians of their
brothers and sisters. She is not spoken
of as morbid or abnormal in any way.
She appeared to be bearing her burden
after the wonderful manner of her
kind. One day she asked her father
If he would please come home early;
"by 3 O'clock" she said.
Three o'clock was impossible to him,
but he came as soon as he could, and
when the door opened to his hand,
there lay the Little Mother" dead
upon the floor. The bit of paper left
for him said in purport-unfortunate-
" the words are not preseryed-"l
cannot bear the responsibility Of car
ing for the children. l cannot bear to
go on any longer, so 1 am going to kill
myself"
She was tired Of living, weary with
the burdens of premature womanhOod
and unquestionably poisoned in
thought and judgment by reading, so
easily accessible, of how tired men and
women took their impious ways out Of
this world 1t would be impossible to
express the vivid clearness Of the pic
ture left upon the mind by the brief
paragraph printed in the medley of
the days news" Poor little tired
girl, lying dead in her clean print
gown; brave enough to kill herself
and wholly ignorant of the majesty Of
life or the enOrmity of death,
Her innocence, her good record Of
duty done, her stricken father, all
have kept her apart from the rest;
from the girl who threw her life away
because she could not go to a party;
OF her who drowned herself because
she had been properly reproved; or the
lad who hanged himself in his fathers
barn apparently in a spirit Of retalia-
ton to some wound to his pride.
We hear Of frightful endings to the
lives of young men and women of at
least American birth, if not Of Ameri-
can parentage, but there is almost in
variably an attendant revelation Of the
breaking of the moral law which has
rendered the conditions of life abnOr-
NAL. With these this appeal has no
direct connection, though they prima-
rily have been educated where inhu-
ences could have been brought to bear
on mind and conscience and heart,
which would have gone before, and
closed the gates against evil passion
and disgrace.
There seems to exist a fundamental
lack of endurance and fortitude; de-
sire, however trivial must be gratified
or the young spirit rebels to the ex-
tent of taking itself out of the atmos.
phere of discipline. Out of certainly
ten cases which have been noted-to
be conservative in the absence of
data, we will say within a year-with
the exception Of the little mother