The Sun. — 1839-12-24 (London, England)

SUICIDE.  EFFECT OF IMITATION.—The following just remarks, confirmed by every day's experience, are extracted from an article on suicide by Mr. Forbes Winslow, published in the Medical Gazette A frequent cause of suicide is a perversion of the natural instinct of imitation. In some persons we witness an irresistible propensity to imitate others. The commission of a great and extraordinary crime to this day produces not unfrequently a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. Religious incidents have constantly been known to occasion similar events ; and what is remarkable is, that the scene or place of the first event seems to favour its repetition bylother persons approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before a particular gate in Paris, such a number of similar occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police posted a peremptory notice on the gate, " prohibiting any invidual from working miracles on the place in question." This had the desired effect, and miracles ceased to be performed. Some years back a veteran hung himself at the Hotel des Invalides on the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. • No suicide had occurred in the establishment for two years previously ; but in the succeeding fortnight five individuals hung themselves on the same cross bar, and the Governor was obliged to shut up the passage. If this principle of imitation is so strongly inherent in human nature,—if the publication of remarkable cases of suicide and atrocious instances of murder has so injurious an influence on the minds of others as to tempt them to the commission of similar offences, the conductors of the press ought certainly to exercise a little more discretion in publishing, with such minuteness, cases which ought to be concealed as much as possible from the public eye. The commission of one murder is often followed by others. Gall informs us of a man who, on reading in the newspapers the particulars of a case of murder perpetrated under peculiar circumstances of cruelty, was instantly seized with a desire to murder his servant, and would have done so had he not given his intended victim timely warning to escape. The English have been accused by foreigners of being the beau ideal of a suicidal people. The charge is almost too ridiculous to merit serious refutation. It has been clearly established, that where there is one suicide in London, there are five in Paris. In the year 1816 the number of suicides committed ha London amounted to 188 ; The population of Paris being some 400,000 less than that of London. From the years 1827 to 1830 no less than 6,900 suicides occurred— that is to say, an average of nearly 1,800 per annum ! The English, then, are not, par, excellence, a suicidal people. When the inhabitants of a country are industrious and prudent, the crime of self-destruction will be rare. Out of 120,000 persons who insured their lives in the London Equitable Insurance Company, the number of suicides in twenty years was only fifteen! The Irish are said to be the least disposed, of ail nations in the world, to commit suicide. Dublin and Naples are the two cities in which fewest suicides occur ; yet in both the poorer classes are poor indeed. Dr. Graves observes that an Irishman often murders his neighbour, but he has too high a sense of propriety to think of killing himself. The fact is, that the prevalence of murder prevents the necessity for suicide. The popular notion that more suicides are committed in the month of November than at any other period of the year, is founded on erroneous data. It has been clearly established that in all the European capitals, when any thing like correct data can be obtained, the maximum of suicide is in the months of June and July ; the minimum in October and November. It appears from this that the disposition has most to do with high temperature ; for it has been proved that when the thermometer of Fahrenheit ranges from 80 deg. to 90 deg., suicide becomes more prevalent.