heard to comment, “Dear me! that is a pity!” her sympathies being with his wife.
C. was a farmer and grazier: had good land, and enough of it, good stock, sufficient capital, in short, was free from pecuniary care, as far as the world could see. He was an eager angler, and sufficiently provided with amusement. He took to drinking. His sheep strayed, and were the pest of fields and gardens in the early spring before the grass grew. He became ashamed to meet the complaints of his neighbours, and to show his cankered face among them. He slunk away to the meadows with his rod and line, or shut himself up with his bottle. He became occasionally wild with the horrors of delirium tremens, and then permanently despondent. He was watched and nursed very carefully: but one day blood was seen oozing out from under his chamber-door — he had cut his throat with his penknife.
D. was an active, cheerful -tempered young woman, affectionately treated by her family. She became variable in spirits, and was believed to dread desertion by her lover. She went out one day, without any remark or act which could excite particular notice, and was next seen dead in the water — her umbrella being on the bank: “Found drowned,” as the compassionate verdict declared.
E. was not without a vigorous and absorbing pursuit. He was, besides being a farmer, a poultry-fancier. But he took to drinking, and one day his body was seen floating, under circumstances which left no doubt as to how it came into the water.
F. was an old gardener, who had enough — by such work as he could yet do, together with his wife’s property — for comfort at home, if the home had been an amiable one. He might still have earned fair pay: but he was lazy and pleasure-loving. He was trying to keep upon his feet in the road when he should have been plying his scythe or pruning-knife. After a time, it became understood among the neighbours, when utensils were missed from backyards and sheds, and when fruit disappeared from gardens in the night, that the pilferer might be pretty well guessed at; and, when the talk became more open, he was found one day to have gone away. He had not gone many miles. At a town where he went occasionally on business — perhaps to sell vanished bill-hooks, blacking-brushes, or rare strawberries — he was found hanging in a closet. His most intimate friend and drinking companion was
G., a postillion, so clever and full of local knowledge that he could make almost any amount of money during the travelling season of the year. Yet he could not pay the rent he had guaranteed for his daughter, or any other debt; and he, like G. , was at last ashamed to show his blotched face in the place where every one had been well-disposed towards him. He drank all night after hearing of F.’s suicide, and in the early morning went to the stables. A little time after some one saw a pair of legs in an odd position, and went to see. G. had hanged himself.
H. was pitied, and let alone by the men on the farm on which he lived. He was considered weak; he had never married; and his father was well to do; so he went out as much as he liked with the stock, and no more. Whether he would have been weak as a sober man, there is no saying. He was not sober; and a feeble despondency took possession of him. He was perpetually saying that he would not be seen any more, and bidding people good-bye; so that at last every one called it “his way,” and paid no attention to it. For once, however, it was said in earnest: he was not seen any more alive, and he had bid some of them good bye when he went out with some cattle. He wa3 found lying at length in a brook, too shallow to have drowned him, if he had not turned his face resolutely under water.
Is this enough, from one neighbourhood, within a few brief seasons? It is enough for my purpose, whether this coroner’s register relates to the north, south, east, or west of England. Of all these cases, there is only one which in any degree answers to the sentimental view of suicide: that of the young woman. The others all subjected themselves to disgusting and tormenting disease of brain, liver, and skin by a habit of intoxication.
This may remind us, that the thirteen hundred deaths in a year are those only in which the verdict of the coroner’s jury declares the case to be one of suicide. Coroners, physicians, and registrars are of opinion that a large amount of self-murder passes unrecognised, and is called illness or accident. Another noticeable circumstance is, that wherever there are suicides from drink, there is a large mortality from the same cause, so wilfully incurred that it is virtual suicide, though no coroner’s court may sit over the corpse. If the number of men and women who died intemperate — died of intemperance persevered in in spite of all imaginable warnings — in the locality of these suicides, and while they were going on, were added to the avowed self-murders, the disgust of inquirers would be almost lost in horror: so many innkeepers in five years; so many shopkeepers, so many artisans, so many labourers, till the churchyard is so crowded that the wonder is where the next series of suicides will find room — the verdict of insanity entitling them to a grave in consecrated ground.
Thus does a minute study of any district discourage every romantic association with suicide, and point to preventible causes. So do all the general facts of the case.
For instance, nearly three men commit suicide to one woman. As there is no such disproportion in the subjects of what we may call natural insanity, we may attribute the majority of male suicides to the habit of men to incur the artificial insanity caused by intemperance. It is too true, that many women are intemperate: but custom and opinion restrain the vice to a very small proportion of the sex; and it is observable, that the sort of women who so drink — the low population of our cellars and rookeries, and the outcast class — are precisely those who commit nearly all the suicides on the list.
Another general fact is, that the proportion of suicides regularly corresponds with the seasons of the year. The greatest number is in the early part of summer; next, in the opening of spring;