The causes of death among the assured in the Scottish Widow's Fund and Life Assurance Society from 1874 to 1894 inclusive / [Claud Muirhead].

  • Muirhead, Claud.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The causes of death among the assured in the Scottish Widow's Fund and Life Assurance Society from 1874 to 1894 inclusive / [Claud Muirhead]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    It is of some little interest to compare the means adopted to commit the fatal act by the English, Scotch, and Irish suicides:— Manner of Suicide. EuKliHli, Scotcli. Irlidi. Total. Firearms . . . • 25 5 4 34 Poison ..... 12 7 3 22 Drowning .... 14 7 1 22 Cutting throat 10 4 3 17 Hanging .... » 5 1 15 Eailway .... 4 2 i] Jumped from a height 3 ... 1 4 Stabbing .... . . . ... 1 1 Unspecified .... 2 3 1 6 Total 79 33 15 127 .... It is useless to speculate as to the circumstances and motives which lead Suicides to commit the fatal act. Often these are exceedingly trivial. At other times, rather than endure a life of misery, the result of family troubles, business worries, embarrassed circumstances, or disgust of life — possibly the result of melancholia—the man prefers to end it. If it be assumed that all those who make away with themselves were, as the coroner’s jury usually describe it, “of unsound mind” at the time they committed the deed,—and it is hard to believe that the man who has so far lost the natural instinct of self-preservation as to commit suicide is not, at the very least, temporarily insane,—then our statistics form a very strong argument in favour of the view that Insanity is on the increase among the community, a statement which has the support of the Eegistrar-General for England, But there is one remarkable feature with regard to those suicidal deaths which is worthy of observation, and that is the extraordinarily large number which took place in the early years of assurance. No less than 7‘087 per cent of the total deaths by Suicide occurred in the very first year, and 3’175 per cent in the second year. Twenty-two deaths by suicide were committed during the first five years of assurance, and of these 59 per cent took place during the first and second years of assurance. Of the total Suicidal Deaths there occurred— During the first year of assurance 9 deaths = 7*087 per cent of total Suicides. >5 second „ 4 J) = 3*150 third „ 2 M = 1*575 fourth „ 2 >5 = 1*575 fifth 5 = 3*935 Total in five years. 22 9) = 17*322 These facts raise the unpleasant suspicion that there was floating in the minds of some at least of these men, before they became members of the Society, some thought, however vague, of putting an end to the weary struggle between duty and the desire to have done with what was to them a miserable