Suicide
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the act of designedly destroying one's own life. To constitute suicide, in a legal sense, the person must be of the years of discretion and of a sound mind. The law of England treats suicide as a felony involving the forfeiture to the crown of all the personal property which the party has at the time he committed the act, including debts due to him; but it is not attended with forfeiture of freehold or corruption of blood. The body of the selfmurderer was required to be buried without Christian rites in the open highway or cross roads, and a stake was thrust through it to mark the public detestation. This law was repealed during the reign of George IV., and the only consequences now are forfeiture of goods and deprivation of Christian rites. The burial may take place in a churchyard, but between 9 and 12 P. M. Suicide was treated as venial by the Romans, and was esteemed a virtue in certain cases, by the Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers. Valerius Maximus, who wrote in the 1st century, states that a poisonous liquor was kept publicly at Massilia, and that it was given to such as presented themselves before the Senate and procured its approval of the reasons which prompted them to get rid of life. Suicide is often set down as furnishing positive evidence of insanity. The law of England treats suicide as a felony; and those who commit suicide are held to be sane and responsible, unless there be clear evidence to the contrary. Suicide, however, is a very frequent result of insanity, more especially in Christian countries, and the verdict generally given by coronors' juries is that the person destroyed himself while in a state of unsound mind; not so much, however, from the fact of insanity being thereby established, as that any other verdict would distress the surviv ing relations and friends of the deceased. Suicidal mania or insanity may be defined as a perversion or reversal of the natural instinct of love of life, leading to its destruction. Suicides are more numerous in cities than in town and country life. The chief causes for suicide are vice and crime, madness, delirium, alcoholism, poverty, and moral suffering. In the United States insanity is the leading cause.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it could still describe suicide as a felony in England, with forfeiture of goods and burial denied Christian rites except between 9 and 12 at night. Parliament ended all of that with the Suicide Act 1961, which abolished the crime of suicide entirely (attempting it had until then brought prosecution), and the Church of England now permits ordinary funerals. Medically the framing has also inverted: rather than a 'suicidal mania' or a perverted instinct, suicide is now treated as an outcome of treatable conditions, above all depression, with national prevention strategies and crisis lines such as the American 988 number launched in 2022. The old claim that suicides are 'more numerous in cities' no longer holds in the United States, where rural rates now run well above urban ones.
Written for this edition, 2026.