The Sun. — 1863-08-13 (London, England)

THAMES.  THE SUICIDE MANIA.—Four women were brought up this day, charged with attempting to commit suicide. Three of them, who had undergone a week's imprisonment, were brought up on remand. Esther Duncan, a respectable married woman, 25 years of age, quarrelled with her husband, and attempted to drown herself in the Wapping lock, or entrance, of the London .dock. Mary Flinn, 28, made a similar attempt at the Old Gravel-lane swivel-bridge; ana Mary Ann Harris, 34, sought a watery grave at the Glarais-road bridge of the London-docks. Mr. Woolrych said the Rev. Mr. Sephson, a kindhearted and zealous clergyman, who was the chaplain of the Clerkenwell House of Detention, had forwarded him a letter stating that he talked with the three women, and they were very penitent and expressed their sorrow for what they had done. They had also promised not to repeat the attempts on their lives. The prisoners had each been guilty of a very wicked act. It was a sin against Heaven to commit suicide, and the law treated it as an offence of a very aggravated nature to attempt self-de.truction. The chaplain had given the prisoners good advice, and he hoped they had profited by it. These continual attempts to commit suicide were very dreadful and shucking and to humanity. One woman quarrelled with her husband and straightway proceeded to the dock entrance; another, Harris, was intoxicated ; and the third, Flinn, was disappointed in obtaining work. He hoped tlie prisoners would never make such rash attempts on their lives again. He then ordered them to be discharged. Alice Laybury, aged 30, a married woman, of No. 7, Albion-terrace, White-horse-lane, &goo, was charged with attempting to drown herself in the Regent's Canal.  A young man named Joseph Staley, carpenter, of No. 1, Rhodeswell-terrace, Rhodeswell-road, Stepney, saw the prisoner walk into the canal. The water only reached over her ankles. She hesitated a moment and then plunged into deep water. Staley jumped into the cattal after her, and brought her out. She was insensible, and it was some time before she exhibited any signs of life. Mr. Woolrych complimented Staley on his courage, and remanded the prisoner fora week.  PATRONISING} TEE PooIt•—ilow often have heard the unfortunate working man lectured, as he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal dove lopment, strictly literal as to his Catechism, :and called by Providence to walk all his days in a station in life represented on festive occasions by a mug of warm•milk-andwater and a bun I What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding I If his sledge-hammers, his spades and pickaxes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines the horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and ho the baby who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, more impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to, times innummerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying—" Let me alone. If you understand me no better than that, sir, and madam, let me alone. You mean very well, I dare say, but I don't like it, and I won't come here again to have any more of it."—Charles Dickens in " 411 the Year Bound."