SUICIDES THROUGH JAZZ SPIRIT.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 June 1924, Page 1

SUICIDES THROUGH JAZZ SPIRIT.

WOMEN AND ENDLESS SOCIAL WHIRL. NEW YORK. April 2o A wave of suicide is sweeping over the United States. Within the last 12 months, according to the Savo-a-Life League, between lo.O(M) and Jt>,ooo Americans have killed themselves. The league has made a careful study of each case. It finds an alarming increase in suicide among women and children— tine largely to the “jazz spirit of the times.” Self-destruction among women is the direct result, the investigators of the league declare, of “their newly acquired personal liberty.” A large percentage of women ended their lives after they had joined “a fast, set with il s endless social whirl of dinners, dances, and cigarettes, which caused physical collapse and nervous breakdown.'’ One woman gave the reason for her death that she "felt unable to live because her canary died.” A girl took gas liecattse she “was not permitted to hob her hair, roll her stockings down, and he a regular flapper.” .Men who committed suicide during the year gave equally trivial grounds as the reason. One said lie could not endure the jolts and gibes received during the rush hours oil the l nderground Railway, New York. The suicide death-toll for the year includes:—o2 physicians, -IS lawyers and judges, 11 ministers of the Gospel, til hankers, l.'l actors, 20 editors, 110 chairmen of directors, nearly 100 men and women millionaires.

Discussing the suicide of -1,000 girls and hoys, the league states that children in America are running wild, and advises parents to prevent very early marriages and indulgence in jazz music.