190 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nity of woman from self-destruction in the past has depended 

 greatly upon the relatively less harassing part she has taken 

 in the struggle for life. To-day it is different. Now woman 

 occupies the fields of art, literature, finance, and even politics, 

 and, as she goes deeper into these vocations, she must expect to 

 suffer the consequences. Already it is noticeable that feminine 

 suicide is not now entirely due to the sentimental causes of dis- 

 appointed love, desertion, and jealousy, but to those trials of 

 a more material order such as have led men to the act of self- 

 destruction. 



Imitation far exceeds any other of what are called "trivial 

 causes " of suicide, and asserts itself more in woman than in man. 

 It is much more common than is supposed. When self-destruc- 

 tion becomes epidemic, as it sometimes does, its prevalence very 

 largely depends upon imitation. It is said that many years ago 

 the wail of Thomas Hood over The One More Unfortunate 

 brought many a sentimental person to a watery grave in the 

 Thames. And in our own day the vivid representation of suicide 

 upon the stage under conditions appealing forcibly to the imagi- 

 nation has been known to be followed by the self-imposed death 

 of persons whose conditions resembled closely those of the suicide 

 in the drama. 



The daily papers are largely responsible for this class of sui- 

 cides. It can scarcely be doubted that the general diffusion of 

 newspaper reports familiarizes too much the minds of the people 

 with suicide and crime. A single paragraph, a chance expression, 

 a cause given which resembles that of the circumstances sur- 

 rounding the reader, seizes the imagination, and in a morbid 

 excitement the desire to repeat the act is born. Newspaper re- 

 ports further promote suicide by inflaming the passion for the 

 notoriety which will be conferred upon the perpetrator through 

 their accounts of the act. 



Has city life any influence over the proportion of suicides ? 

 This question must be answered in the affirmative. Where the 

 population is dense and the laws of health are neglected, where 

 dirt is common and vice flourishes, where the poor are concen- 

 trated, and where fortunes are made and lost in a day, will always 

 be found the highest rate of suicide. It is in the poorer districts 

 of our large cities that suicide is most frequent. In these dis- 

 tricts the deprivations of light and air, the poverty, the diseased 

 conditions about them, render the poor moody, morbid, and de- 

 spondent, and raise in their minds a feeling that life is not 

 desirable. 



What can society do to prevent suicide among the poor ? The 

 obvious method would be to render their conditions more enjoy- 

 able by giving them ampler provisions for pleasure and recrea- 



