The verdict of ‘suicide while insane’

At an inquest held recently upon the body of a medical man in London evidence was given that he had purchased prussic acid, that the bottle containing it had been found nearly empty by his bebside, and that he had died from prussic acid poisoning. There was also evidence that there was nothing in his circumstances or his life to cause him distress and there was no evidence of any motive that might be said to have induced him to take his life. The jury found a verdict of ‘suicide’ and a discussion took place between them and the coroner as to whether the usual addition should be made to the effect that the deceased at the time of committing the act was of unsound mind, the coroner suggesting that over-study might be considered as a possible cause of mental derangement, while the fact of suicide might be treated as evidence that mental derangement existed. The jury, however, refused to accept these suggestions and the coroner in recording their verdict made the observation that it did not now involve the consequences that used to follow a finding of felo de se. The penalties attaching to self-murder constituted in bygone days the effort of the law to punish one whose act had withdrawn his person from its reach. In the words of Blackstone the suicide is guilty of a double offence; one spiritual in evading the prerogative of the Almighty, the other temporal against the King who has an interest in the preservation of all his subjects. The law in Blackstone's day, being unable to punish the dead man, used to act upon what he left behind, his reputation and fortune — on the former by an ignominious burial in the highway with a stake driven through his body, on the latter by forfeiture of all his goods and chattels to the King, hoping that his care for either his own reputation or the welfare of his family would be some motive to restrain him from so desperate and wicked an act. More recently forfeiture for felony has been abolished (in 1870) and since 1882 burial with ignominy has been forbidden and the coroner has now to give directions for the interment of the remains in a churchyard or other burial ground without any right to the celebration of a burial service but not necessarily without the celebration of any such service. The returning of verdicts of “suicide while of unsound mind” without any evidence of such unsoundness is no doubt to a large extent a survival from the days of post-mortem penalties, while to some extent it has its motive still in the desire to shield the dead against the charge of impiety alluded to above. Blackstone protests against the practice and against any such doctrine as that the act of suicide is itself evidence of insanity. In a very large number of cases the person who kills himself is not in a condition of mind to estimate or to control his action, but at present it often occurs that a jury finds a verdict that a person was of unsound mind when he committed a certain act upon no other ground than because he committed the act in question or upon evidence upon which no such verdict would be returned in any other case than that of suicide. This perhaps salves the feelings of surviving relatives by formally acquitting the deceased upon the charge of self-murder, but at the same time to some extent it constitutes a record of insanity in a family founded upon altogether insufficient evidence. No reasonable person would regard such a verdict as conclusive, but whatever weight it carries for the one purpose it must carry for the other. It is easy, at all events, to understand that intelligent and conscientious men upon a jury who have sworn to find a verdict according to the evidence may object to doing so as to a matter of which there is no evidence at all. It may also be suggested that a verdict to the effect that the deceased caused his own death but that the condition of his mind when he did it had not been proved to the jury's satisfaction would inflict no unnecessary pain upon survivors without asserting as a fact that for which there is no foundation.