The Weekly Gazette for Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool and Cleveland District. — 1880-07-24 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

SUICIDE IN BIRMINGHAM. FELO DE SE, AND MIDNIGHT BURIAL.  A. barbarous vetdict like the one returned on the death of poor Metcalfe at Middlesbrough has this week startled the civilisation of the capital of the Midlands. An old prize. fighter, named Charles Hemming, who was awaiting his trial on a charge of stealing a watch and chain, committed suicide on Sunday by throwing himself over the balustrade in the Birmingham goal. He fell 40 feet. At the inquest the prison surgeon said that when deoesitied fell be broke his collar bone. The immediate came of death was compresaion of the brain. Deoeased had told him he had been drinking heavily before his oommittal. The balustrade railing was three feet six inches high.— The Deputy Coroner, in summing up, said the evidenoe was sufficient to show that the damaged had deliberately thrown himself over the railings of the balustrade. The most Important point for the jury to consider PIPS as to the state of deceased's mind at the time he committed the act.—After about ten minutes' consultation together the foreman of the jury said they bad agreed to the %testi verdict :—" The jury find that the was in his proper serums at the time he committed the act, and therefore it is a verdict oijeto de se. They also think it ought to be an instruction to warders in all cases to fasten the doors of °ells themselves, e,nd, In the neat 'place, that the railings of the balustrade ought to be carried up to a • sittilioient height to prevent the recurrence of a similar case. They are also of opinion that te'mptation was offered to prisoners to dommit suicide, seeing the oppor. tunity , so close at hand." The body I was interred at Witton Cemetery just before twelve o'clock on Tneeday night.; Scarcely five hours had elapsed after the jury had returned their verdict of fete de se when the remains of the deceased were committed to the grave, quietly, almost clandestinely, and without any funeral oeremony being performed. The body of the deceased, having been formally viewed by Inspector Willis, was placed in a plain oak coffin bearing no insoription plate, was placed in the hearse, and was driven to the cemetery, which was reached at half past eleven o'clock. Including about ten or twelve persons who had followed it from town, there were altogether not more than forty people present, most of whom were inhabitants of Witten. The procession stayed for a few moments at the lodge of the cemetery until Inspector Willis had read the Coroner's warrant to the clerk of the cemetery. Afterwards the hearse was driven to the unconsecrated ground, where a grave had been prepared. The coffin was taken out of the hearse, and was immediately lowered into the grave. About twenty persons had • gained admission into the cemetery, and had gathered round the grave. The shovelling in of the earth upon the coffin was devoid of any ceremony, and there was no excitement manifested. The burial fee of 7s, which was paid on Tuesday night at the grave, is included in the Coroner's charges, but the coffin on this occasion was supplied by the prison suthorities. Neither the wife of the deceased nor any of the relatives were preterit at the cemetery. Commenting on t iis case, the Bir• mini/horn Daily Hai/ says :—" Is this Law ?" '. Ay, marry is't ; crowner's , quest law." And a strange, repugnant, old world law it is. The harsh and uncharitable principle involved in the verdict of fele de se, and the barbarous consequences it involves, are "survivals" of an age when the pathology of. suicide was leas understood than it is now, and when priestly Intolerance was dominant In the land. In this more enlightened age it strikes with a discordant note upon our scientific theories and our humanitarian views. The comparative rarity with which juries resort to it is a sufficient proof of th repugnance they feel to handing over the dead body of a poor wretoli who has rushed unbidden to the judgment seat of his Maker to the impotent vengefulness of a barbarous law. Now and then some sapient dozen of men, veto think themselves competent to solve offhand those mysterious problems of mental disease which often baffle the shrewdest physicians of the mind, recall to us that the " orowner's quest law" of fete de se, with its vindictive punishment of a corpse, is still sanctioned in civilised England. It is true that we do not now bury the body of a felo de cc at form cross roads, with a stake driven through it; but sufficient of odium is retained in the form of a midnight burial shorn of all religious rites to make the inter ment at onoe brutal and ignominious. In the case of Charles Hemming the man was a prisoner awaiting his trial, and the jury seem to have thought it a very undesirsble thing that he should escape through the meshes of the law altogether. So the sinful old robber and prizefighter was found to have thrown himself over the staircase while of sound mind, and the grim anomaly of the finding received its counterpart in the barbarous disabilities of the hasty burial at Witton. The whole story is a stain upon our oirilieation, a stupid anachronism, an episode out of harmony with scientific investigation, a miserable relic of ignorant and bigoted times."  T lie Gams