Denton Examiner, Audenshaw, Hooley Hill and Dukinfield Advertiser. — 1877-03-17 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

CURIOUS FRRNCR SUICIDES. The Daffy News publishes an It rnc I interest': 'le, three columns long, on suicides iro', 1 details concerning those crimes. It relates th'art'iL9 ,etler day a French boy of eight years old destroyed hioielf, telling his sister gravely before he died, "Je , g then he threw himself into the turbid ne veui Pa. mbir des reproches4 (I do not choose to be scoldes.4l; water. A' (~,,,ok maid from Bretagne who had been blamed by her ~,istress dosed her kitchen door with a loud bang, and io`unced angrily out of the world, suddenly stabbing lawself to the heart with a curving knife. One Josephine B. a pretty little Maid of 17 summers only, who lived but ten days since in the Faubourg Montmartre, killed herself by jumping from an attic window. She lived just long enough to explain that "she wished to annoy her stepmother." On the 23rd of feet month is young Frenchman, of good family, called on his sweetheart in the Rue de Constantinople, wrote some letters, and then shot her; after which he committed suicide. There was no apparent cause for this proceeding; but one of his letters contained a request 1 that 'he should not be removed from his sweetheart's house tall carried to the grave." In fact, he desired to lie in state there after a fashion, though she was a woman of no character. On the same day one M. Arrancey destroyed himself by charcoal fumes. He was a turner by trade, who lived comfortably on a third floor in the Passage St. Fiacre, and he left two neatly-written letters on a table beside him. Therein he mentioned, in wellchosen language, that "he had felt a desire to commit suicide for the previous six months." Ile had also prepared some printed invitations to his own funeral, folding and addressing each of them to his friends and acquaintances with much cure; and he left a paper of instructions to his family, acquainting them that he had pronounced a general pardon on mankind. In so doing he compared himself to Christ in the Garden of Olives, when he prayed God to forgive his persecutors. After this burst of religious enthusiasm this self - contradictory turner solemnly enjoined hie kinsfolk to have him buried "without any of the rites of the Church." Suicides in France (the correspondent goes on to say) increase in number at a regular rate of percentage every year, and it is now clearly ascertained that they are subjected to certain fixed laws in the same manner as other obscure forms of mental disease. The larger part take place in countries where life is thought easy and happy, as in the kingdom and duchies of Saxony, in the smaller German States, and in Denmark. Suicides, in spite of our inclement climate, and much loose talk about the dispiriting effects of spleen in a murky atmosphere, are less common in England than in France; for trastworthy statistics have conclusively proved that there are 110 cases of self - murder in France for every sixty - nine cases which happen in England. Suicides are less frequent in Spain, which is, perhaps, of all European countries the most ignorant and superstitious. There are only thirty female suicides to every hundred men who destroy themselves. The greatest number of suicides occur in summer, the fewest in mid-winter. Out of 23,304 French suicides, 8413 died by strangulation, 4656 by drowning, firearms disposed of 2462, and poison of only 281. Drowning is less frequent in winter than in summer, as though some suicides sought a luxury in death, and wished to taste it. Mr. Edmand Douav shows the steady rise in the number of French suicides by figures which demonstrate that whereas, from 1826 to 1830, the average number of suicides in France yearly was 1739, from 1661 to 1865 it was 4661. It had doubled between 1828 and 1852—a period of only twenty-four years. Dr. Brierre de Boismont went minutely into the details of 4595 cases of suicide, and ascertained that among them were 697 persons of ample and independent fortune ; 2000 persons who earned a handsome livelihood in trades or professions; 256 persons in pecuniary difficulties; 159 who were comparativelyruined, considering their circumstances with regard to their previous position; 760 poor persons; 464 who were utterly destitute; and 310 whose position could not be precisely fixed. Likewise the state of education among French suicides Rises a severe shock to established notions. Other French physicians have discovered that suicides belong to the class of epidemics, , and is often found in the French army. It is enough 1 for a single soldier to hang himself in barracks or to I shoot himself in his sentry-box for the same drama to be repeated day after day till the regiment is removed to another garrison. Another fearful truth revealed to science tells that suicide is hereditary. Persons of the same family have killed themselves at the same age, in precisely the some manner, and in the same places as their fathers and grandfathers did before them. Very deserving of investigation too are the scenic effects which invariably surround a French suicide, and which are anxiously preserved under every kind of discouragement. It may be remarked that no Frenchman ever leaves the world quietly of his own accord, and he would be extremely annoyed if it were suggested that he might put himself to death privately. Thus, when he commits self-murder he either chooses a public place where his remains; will create immediate interest, or he dresses for his Dart with consummate skill, and dies with his dog tooling mournfully on, a picture of his betrothed premed to his bosom, and an open letter on the floor or table. The fine sayings helping to reconcile that vanity which is the French master passion to death would fill whole libraries. "I have,' writes a tailor of Bordeaux to his surviving family, "forced Death to obey me. It is a proof of my superiority over destiny." "My body," observes a watchmaker's assistant when penning his last reflections on earth, "embarrasses me, therefore I put it off."