SUICIDES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 9411, 27 May 1882, Page 3

SUICIDES.

A woman was brought before Sir Robert Carden in London lately on a charge of attempted suicide. She had, says a contemporary, cooked a pork chop for her husband which did not please bis taste, and because of his displeasure she tried to poison herself by drinking paraffin oil. Paraffin oil can hardly be included among the poisons, for some indeed take it regularly as a specific against chest affections, but she seems to have taken enough to do her serious harm, and no doubt she intended the dose to be fatal. The case supplies an unpleasant illustration ot the levity with which people nowadays resort to that remedy for human ills from which Hamlet recoiled. Is it the weakening of “ the thought of something after death,” or is it only the increased nervousness that comes from civilisation which makes the veriest trifles seem a burden absolutely intolerable ! Even the children of this generation do not shrink from suicide, and in some parts of Germany there is a distinct approximation to the old Pagan ideas of the lawfulness of self murder. Whatsoever may be the cause, it is not a pleasant sign of the times.