The Northern Guardian. — 1893-09-01 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

TIRED AND WEARY.  THIIRI has been an epidemic of suicides lately. This has led a London doctor to analyse 100 cases. HlB results, though interesting in themselves, do not in any way show to the world how to reduce this sad state of things. The old truth is once more brought forward that it is worry and not work which kills. Men who are free from worry can work early and late without materially affecting their health, but the unfortunate man who is harassed by business or domestic troubles soon tails a prey to grim death. Some cannot wait for nature to take her course—they assist her with gun, poison, or knife, and thus end abruptly all earthly troubles. Suicide is a strange thing. The per son who commits the deed appears to be both weak and strong, absurd though it sounds. It is weakness which leads people to think of doing away with themselves, yet there must be strong determination in the character to pull the trigger. take the poison, or inflict the cut.  The medical man already referred to says that out of a hundred recent eases of suicides he finds that 64 were those of males, and 36 those of females. The disparity may be accounted for in some degree by the fact ! that the struggle for life presses more hardly upon men than upon women; but it is remarkable that out of 289 suicides which were committed by Prussian school children from 1883 ,to 1885 inclusive, 240 were committed by boys, and only 49 by girls. The medical investigator thinks the explanation is that the masculine nature, though less impetuous, is more resolute that the feminine. This conclusion is perhaps borne out by the fact that few women shoot themselves or choose any other violent death, but for the most part drown themselves or take poison. There is also the fact that women as a rule can struggle against adversity better than men, and we verily believe that the love and cheerfulness shown by women to their desponding husbands have often saved them going to a suicide's grave. The doctor then proceeds to deal with the question of ages, and we learn that the suicides varied from the tender age of nine to the ripe old age of four score years, but the great majority were between thirty and sixty—the very prime of life. Pecuniary difficulties and distress accounted for twenty-five cases, manifest pre-existing insanity for seventeen, disappointed love for seven, alcoholism for four, and horror of the gutter for only three, while five foreign cases were ascribed to political trouble, eight cases to deliberate preference for death, four to ennui, and one to disgrace. Three were sequels of murder, and the remaining twentyfour were of uncertain motive. The writer does not think that all suicides are insane, but he is of the opinion that the majority undoubtedly are. Of one case he cites the particulars as furnishing a good subject for the moralist. "A man who had previously lived in modest circumstances , came into £300,000, and built himself a grand place. But he did not enjoy it; and, remarking to a servant that he was lonely and unhappy, and wished himself back again, he took a pistol and blew his brains out." This is undoubtedly a strange ease. A larger number of the suicides arc owing to loss of money than to the sudden acquisition of untold and undreamt of wealth.