A few hundred years ago suicide was not only illegal; it was thought to be self-murder and a heinous crime indeed. In Old English law the legal term for the crime was felo de see, Latin for ‘felon of himself’, and according to the law a suicide’s property was confiscated to the detriment of relatives, and a suicide was buried with a stake through the heart at night at a secret location with no mourners or clergy present. Someone who was not mentally competent, however, was not considered a felo de se, and as the 19th century approached coroners’ juries increasingly ruled self-killings to be the result of insanity, thus enabling relatives to inherit property. Even so, up until 1822 the property of a suicide could still be taken by the crown and throughout the 1800s attempted suicide was very much a crime.

Stories about suicides and attempted suicides, often sensationalised, were depressingly common in the 19th and early 20th century press and Londoners were considered especially prone to melancholy and suicide. Male suicides were more common than female but contemporary newspapers seemed to have had a particular fascination with suicides by young women.

In 1882 in Birkbeck Road, Tottenham, we read that one Mary Clarke drowned herself and her youngest child in a cistern, having tried unsuccessfully to drown her older children too. The verdict was murder and suicide while in “a state of temporary insanity”. Among the things distressing her was the vaccination of her child. Vaccinations were still relatively new and caused a great many concerns. There were similar concerns about the MMR vaccination in some circles not so long ago.

In 1914 Dorothy Pollentini was charged at Bow Street Court with attempting to commit suicide by coal gas poisoning as reported in the Western Daily Mail in a piece headlined: ‘Married man, single girl – attempted suicide by gas poisoning.’ The two were apparently found unconscious at a boarding house in Euston Road. The married man in question was one Edwin Hill aged 30. A remand was ordered. On regaining consciousness, Dorothy is quoted as saying to a police sergeant: “I am single, he is married. I haven’t a friend in the world so I don’t want to live.” But she eventually got over it and went on to marry four times, living until 1975.

Skimming through Victorian newspapers we find a variety of recurring methods of suicide. Most common were hanging and throat slitting, but also frequent were drowning, jumping in front of or off trains, and, as more homes came to be equipped with gas, gassing. We also encounter poisons (such as Prussic acid and laudanum), shooting (guns were more readily available than today) and jumping off bridges, cliffs and buildings. Hanging covered a multitude of techniques: one poor woman hung herself on her hat peg. One jumper was the Honourable Miss Clara MacKay aged 39, daughter of Lord Mackay, who had once been a resident of a lunatic asylum and was subject to ‘melancholy’; depression in today’s terms. She jumped out of her bedroom window in 1862. Others jumped from landmark bridges like one ‘well-dressed woman’ from Waterloo Bridge in 1870 and a George Vison from Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1872. One suicide by train took place at Silver Street railway station in Edmonton in 1936 when a woman from Dalston threw herself and her baby in front of an oncoming engine; the posthumous verdict was ‘murder and suicide’.

Some suicides were distinctly strange; there was even one case of a man deliberately swallowing his watch. In 1892 a farmer of New Ross let himself down a well by its bucket and rope to drown. In 1896 at Cliffe near Rochester a cement labourer named Richards laid himself on the coke in a cement kiln while it was fired and died due to suffocation. In the same year in Chicago a man overdosed on laudanum and made a detailed record of his dying sensations for the benefit of the medical profession. In 1932 a Dagenham man hung himself from banisters by both his neck and his feet, which the coroner thought unique. In 1933 Matthew Boffin electrocuted himself by means of wires attached to his wrist and ankle and a time switch besides his bed. Sometimes suicides were very public, like the man who slit his throat on top of a tram in Woolwich in 1888, much to the horror of the passengers below.

People took their own lives for reasons such as bankruptcy, sickness, depression, disappointment in love, mental illness and, for women, post-natal depression (although it was not identified as such) and pregnancy outside of marriage. In the latter category was Susannah Walker who drowned herself in Tottenham Marshes in 1868. She was pregnant and her lover had reneged on a promise to marry her. The inquest was held at the Eagle Tavern in Tottenham; having a pub as a venue for an inquest was not uncommon at the time. Unemployment could also lead to suicide. In 1878 in a 15-year-old girl from Stansfield drowned herself in a pond because she had lost her job at the mill.

Sometimes the motive does not quite add up. In 1896 a Mr Bartlett, Chief Steward at the Royal Naval College, killed himself by jumping off a boat going to the Isle of Wight. He left a note saying that when it was read he would be at the bottom of the ocean. All they found was his hat floating in the Solent. It seems he was distressed by a forthcoming audit into his accounts, although the audit was routine and it later found his accounts to be in order.

It was not unusual for criminals to commit suicide, especially prisoners in their cells, like James Kenyon in Preston in 1909 who hung himself after being sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for attempted theft. In Rome in 1909 Count Trivulzio, charged with murdering his sweetheart, actually shot himself in the court room during the proceedings. Quite a few murderers killed themselves shortly after killing their victims, especially when the victims were known to them. The same is true today.

Not only could prison lead to suicide; suicide could lead to prison, with failed attempts risking the wrath of the law. Court records are full of such cases and remands were common. Three quite typical sentences were six weeks’ hard labour (1894), 30 days’ imprisonment with hard labour (1897) and six months’ imprisonment (1904). But for attempted suicide to be proven the person had to be sane. Technically if the verdict specified self-killing while the balance of the subject’s mind was disturbed it was not legally suicide. Even when suicides were successful, efforts were often made to obtain such verdicts from coroners’ juries, and ‘of unsound mind’ or ‘temporary insanity’ are frequently found on death certificates – more often than the facts would strictly justify – in an attempt to help the relatives avoid the stigma and the complications of simple suicide. Thus the death certificate of the artist Alfred Pollentine (1844-1910) reads: “asphyxia by hanging, suicide while of unsound mind”.

Of course not everyone charged with attempted suicide was found guilty. In 1900 Eileen Hunt was pulled out of Regent’s Canal after apparently trying to drown herself and saying to her rescuers: “Let me die, let me die, I am tired of my life.” Even so it was all put down to alcohol and she was discharged and just advised to drink less in the future.

One celebrity suicide in 1800s was Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), the famous politician. A few weeks before his death he became paranoid, incoherent and irrational, saying himself: ‘‘My mind is, as it were, gone.” His concerned wife kept firearms and razors away from him but he managed to find a small knife and stabbed himself in the carotid artery. His final words were: “I have done for myself. I have opened my neck.” The deed was attributed to insanity and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Another famous suicide was General Sir Beauchamp Duff (1855-1916). Heavily criticised for his role in the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in World War One, he was relieved of command and condemned by a Commission of Enquiry. He took to drink before committing suicide in 1918.

Attitudes to suicide progressively changed in the 20th century and in 1961 it ceased to be a criminal offence. The tragic stories, however, keep on coming.