CAUSES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 350, 30 March 1910, Page 4

CAUSES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

The present is the age of statistics. We are no longer content to go along in the 'happy-go-lucky manner which characterised our grandfathers. The scientist is striving to aacribe a reason for all things, and to this purpose data, apparently in itself of but scant importance, is being gathered from the four quarters of the globe. The criminal has ceased to be merely a malefactor to bo punished according to the degree of his offence against our moral code. Authorities now recognise that punishment has a wider object than the mere attainment of social security or the punishment of an offence. The punitive aspect is overshadowed by the end in view, the reformation of the offender, and the old idea of vengeance is replaced by that of expatiary descipline. With the criminal classes it has always been possible to obtain information and particulars of their lives enabling the criminologist to weigh up the influence of beredtyy and environment and reduce the study of crime and criminals from guesswork to almost an exact science. But not so easy is the study or analysis of the reasons which induce the large army of suicides to take their lives. An inquest, the customary verdict, "suicide whilst of unsound mind," and the affair is forgotten. Very little effort has been made to iprobe the causes which induced the suicide to prefer death to the continuance of life. It has been left to General Booth to throw some light on the matter and to present a problem to the philanthropist and social reformers of the Old World. The creation of an Anti-<Suieide Bureau has led to the collection of causes by those of suicidal tendencies for the contemplation of the act. The following are the causes assigned by the callers at the London office during 1909: Financial, embarrassment

or hopeless poverty .. 578—54 p.c. Drink, drugs and disease .. 94 9 p.c, Melancholia from loneliness, etc. .. .. .. 101—10 p.e. Embezzlement, foreery.et-c. 49 4 p.c. Accidents, sickness, and other misfortunes .. 242—23 p.c. Total .. .. 1064 100 p.e. What percentage of the causes these fUnires (le.il with cannot be said, but there is no reason to doubt that the proportion of causes would not varr to any great extent, even if it were nossible to collect the reason of every suicide in London. An nnalvsis of the figures show that 75 per cent, are ascribed to financinl embTrmssment. novertv and misfortune. To have carried the further it would have been hisrhlv interesting to have ascertained t,o .what fcxti'nt the causes were due to the individual's own aptinris or f 0 fjje social and economic conditions in force.