By English law Suicide is of the Felony of Murder, inasmuch as it is the murder of one of the subjects of the sovereign: it is a murder committed by a man on himself. There is authority for saying that there is no such offence as self-manslaughter. Regina v. Burgess, Leigh and Cave, 258. It is suicide, or “felo-de-se,” not only to kill oneself with deliberation, when in right mind, and of years of discretion, but also to kill oneself accidentally when performing a felonious act; such as attempting to kill another. But if a man is killed at his express desire by another, it is not suicide, because in law the request is illegal and void, though the latter is a murderer. Yet if one persuade another to kill himself, and he does so, it is suicide, and also murder in the adviser: see R. v. Dyson.

So also if two persons agree to commit suicide together, and one succeed and one fail, the survivor is guilty of murder, for aiding and abetting a suicide. See R. v. Russell, and R. v. Alison.

To constitute felo-de-se, the deceased must die within a year and a day of his self-inflicted injury, and must have been in his right mind, yet in the interval he cannot in law purge his offence by repentance. See 1 Hale, P.C., 412. Persons obviously insane frequently kill themselves, yet it cannot be denied that persons are frequently found self-slain, who have never shown any sign of mental derangement.

To avoid a verdict of felo-de-se, it should be shown by the evidence that the deceased had not arrived at years of discretion, or else was suffering from unsoundness of mind; in the adult the consent of the will to a self-inflicted action should not be denied until disproved.

The argument by which jurors are supposed to be influenced, viz., that no one in his senses would commit that which is the very negation of a law of nature is, in fact, an aggravation of the offence. If tenable it would excuse every criminal from blame, and would apply the more powerfully in proportion to the intensity of the crime.

To murder a mother, or a daughter, is as much repugnant to a sensible man, as to murder himself; but if none but lunatics could commit such crimes, no one would be culpable at all.

And, therefore, by the law of our land, if a lunatic even murder himself in a lucid interval, he is felo-de-se, as much as any man, and if he murder another man in a lucid interval he is as much a murderer as any other man. See 1 Hawkins, P.C., cap. ix., ss. 2 and 3.

At the present time, the absence of a sound mind in cases of self murder, is the constant presumption of jurymen, who by avoiding a verdict of felo-de-se, commit an amiable perjury, to save, as they say, the reputation of the deceased among his survivors.

Now at one time the English law prescribed for the suicide an inglorious burial in the highway, with a stake driven through the body; and the vicarious punishment of his friends by the forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the Crown.

No definite legal authority can be given for this form of burial; Blackstone does not mention it.

It was abolished in 1823 by 4 George IV., c. 52; by this statute no Coroner should issue a warrant for the burial of a suicide in any highway, but it was enacted that the corpse should be buried privately in any churchyard or burying ground between 9 and 12 at night without any religious rites.

This enactment has been further amended by Acts 43 and 44 Victoria c. 41, and 45 and 46 Victoria, c. 19 (1882), which provide that the body of a suicide may be buried either silently, or with any such orderly, or Christian religious service at the grave, as the person in charge of the body thinks fit, or I would add, can procure.

There is of course no clause compelling any minister of religion to perform any definite burial service.

But I have no doubt that in such cases there would be no difficulty in finding some clergyman to use forms of prayer at the grave, which would be satisfactory to the relatives. The law was formerly evaded as follows: if it seemed likely that a verdict of felo-de-se would be found, the inquiry was adjourned, and in the meantime the body was buried under a warrant from the Coroner.

In the time of the legal author Bracton (1260), a person committing suicide to avoid conviction for a felony, forfeited his lands and goods; other suicides forfeited their goods only.

This distinction was lost sight of in the time of Staundforde, who wrote in 1570.

The law of forfeitures in other respects remained the same until 1870, when forfeitures for felony were abolished by 33 and 34 Victoria, c. 23.

Whilst such disabilities existed, it was perhaps a kindness of juries to misrepresent the manner of death, and to find that all suicides were of unsound mind; but now that these disabilities, both of forfeitures, and usages of contempt to the corpse, have been taken away, there does not seem to be any necessity to refrain from finding a verdict “according to the evidence,” which a Coroner’s jury is sworn to do; at least, more accurately, a Coroner’s jury is sworn to give a verdict “according to the evidence, and the best of their knowledge and belief,” thus giving a greater freedom in investigation than is given to jurymen in a criminal court.

Stevenson, in Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” remarks, “It is to be hoped that these recent enactments of the Burial Laws will do away with many absurd verdicts of ‘Temporary Insanity;’” and Chitty, J., 1834, adds, “If juries were more often to find verdicts subjecting parties to some ignominy, in cases where there is no pretence of insanity, the apprehension of such a result would tend to prevent the frequency of the act.” (Med. Jurisprudence, cap. ix. sec. v.)

There are still some authorities who think that evidence of insanity could be found in all cases, if only sufficiently investigated. See “Journal of Mental Science,” April 1861. I feel bound to say this is to me only an amiable fallacy.

Several cases have come under my personal notice where deliberate suicide has been committed by persons of the clearest intellect, who have never shown any one symptom of mind failure, who were not even eccentric, and yet who chose to sacrifice their life in this world and risk their eternal future, just to avoid a passing annoyance. Such a choice may show, if you like, a weakness of mind, but is not what our Text Books teach us to understand by the expression Lunacy.

Gibbon, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” c. 14, remarks, “Whenever an offence inspires less horror than the punishment awarded to it, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.” Jeremy Bentham remarks that jurors do not hesitate to violate their oaths, and so meet the interference of law, by finding suicides to be “non compos.”

The frequency with which Coroners’ juries return a verdict of “Suicide whilst in a state of temporary insanity,” is less a proof of the connection between suicide and lunacy, than a sign of the futility of the existing laws relating to the crime of felo-de-se.

The commission of suicide does, no doubt, raise the question of insanity, but in such cases the issue should be tried, not decided offhand. The reports of the following criminal trials may be consulted for further information on the subject of the association of suicide with crime.

In Regina v. Gathercole, 1839, the prisoner attempted to drown himself; another man jumped into the water to save him, but lost his own life in the attempt; G. was convicted of Murder.

In Regina v. Fisher, 1865, a man and wife agreed to die together; both took opium; the wife died, the man by vomiting was saved; he was convicted of murder, although he had once been in an asylum.

In Regina v. May, 1872, a young man who had aided a youth to kill himself was tried for the crime, and the same ruling was laid down by the judge, that to aid or abet is murder.

In Regina v. Dyson (Russell and Ryan, Criminal Cases), two persons agreed to kill themselves together; one survived, and was held to be guilty of murder.

The true doctrine of the English criminal law would be perhaps, as follows: If suicide affords any presumption of insanity, it is of insanity at the moment only, and even then, if not supported by other evidence, it is not enough to deprive the person of imputability. See McAdam v. Walker, 1 Dow, Parly. Cases, 187. Felo-de-se is a crime, and a person is innocent until found guilty.

Sir James Fitzjames Stephen writes: “Suicide may be wicked, and is certainly injurious to society, but it is so in a much less degree than murder. The injury to the person killed we cannot estimate; the injury to survivors is generally small. It is a crime which produces no (public) alarm, and which cannot be repeated.”

“It would therefore be better to cease to regard it as a crime, and to provide that any one who attempted to kill himself, or who assisted any other person to do so, should be liable to secondary punishment.”

Whether it be true that the injury to survivors is generally small is, perhaps, open to question; especially in cases where the suicide is the sole means for the maintenance of others, a wife and family, for instance; in such a case, if suicide be not a crime, it is at least a cowardly neglect of duty.

The modern French view of the disabilities of suicide is shown by M.J. Tissot, in Le Droit Penal, 1860, vol. 2, p. 48; he discusses the aspect from which suicide should be viewed by law: “the penalties should be fixed with regard to justice, decency, and custom; they would not fulfil the first condition if they injured innocent survivors, nor the second if they tended to dishonour humanity by ill-treatment of the remains.”

“It should suffice to refuse an honourable funeral, the customary burial ceremonies; this punishment would be privative only. The citizen who flees his country is not honoured in his departure.” And in “La Manie du Suicide,” he says, “the funeral should be private, as if society, religion, and family, were blushing at the disgrace.”

For ancient French laws on Suicide, see Laverdy, Code Penal, cxi., &c.

In the German Strafgesetzbuch, article 216, we find, “If a person is induced to kill another by the express and serious request of the person killed, he shall be imprisoned for not less than three years, and not more than five years.”

No mention is made of suicide proper, in old German codes.

In the Bavarian and Saxon Codes suicide is not mentioned: but up to 1871, it was the Saxon law that the bodies of suicides should be sent to the schools of anatomy for dissection.

In the Austrian Code, there is a proviso that the suicide shall be buried by certain officials, but not in a churchyard.

The Prussian Code forbids any injury to the corpse; there are to be no marks of respect at the funeral; if the suicide be committed to avoid punishment, the executioner is to bury the body.

The French Law is very remarkable; M. HÉlie states it thus: “La loi n’a point incriminÉ le suicide. Le fait de complicitÉ est il punissable? La negative est evidente.”

In the United States suicide has never been a crime against statute law, nor have there ever been any burial barbarities in cases of suicide; but any one accessory to a suicide is guilty of murder as a principal.

The English Draft Penal Code proposed to make the abetment of suicide a special offence, subject to penal servitude for life, as a maximum punishment.

The attempt to commit suicide was to be punished by two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.