RACE, GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES, AND CLIMATE.
The inhabitants of the majority of countries are not at the present
time so unique racially, as was probably the case at an earlier date.
Races of men have spread themselves to contiguous lands, and have
emigrated to other tracts of country; so that it is now much the
reverse of usual to find a nation composed of any one race, or even
of a very preponderating majority of one stock. The more nearly,
however, that a state is thus constituted, the more obvious appears the
fact that each race of men has a certain underlying “special rate of
suicide.”
This rate, I say, underlies all the variations exhibited by the various
portions of that race; which may be due to Climate, Religion, Morals,
or Education.
The idea of a real Specific Ethnic Rate of Suicide is, I believe, due
to Wagner of Berlin; and the more the subject has been examined, the
more obvious the conclusion appears.
It may be compared to that principle adopted by modern chemists, that
every elementary body has a definite specific rate of gravity; and
indeed the simile may be carried farther still, for as the chemist
by combining his elements can prepare a new body, having a different
specific gravity rate, dependent on the rates of the original elements;
so a country composed of a mixture of two races, exhibits a “Suicide
Rate” different from the special rates of the constituent races, and
intermediate between them.
Although it may not be practicable to prove these statements by a
direct appeal to figures, because no case can be produced which is
not, at any rate to some extent, complicated by considerations of a
collateral nature, but yet the more deeply the matter is investigated
the more true it will be found to appear. The statistics collected by
Wagner and by Œttingen may be consulted in this connection.
The changes of rate produced by Race mingling can be studied, not only
in countries where the process has been going on for centuries, but
also in respect to recent movements of men. When Europeans emigrate,
they are found to carry with them to their new home their peculiarities
in regard to Suicide: the several races of Germans have a high rate
at home, and on examination of the records of a country peopled by
emigration, of New York, for instance, we find that the Germans there
kill themselves more often than the Anglo-Saxon element, which has
in its home a low suicide rate. During the year 1883, in New York
there were 151 cases, of these no less than 70 were Germans; now the
proportion of Germans in New York is certainly not seven-fifteenths of
the population.
The Negro races in their original homes shew an avoidance of voluntary
death, and they carry this characteristic with them into other lands:
in the United States the relative proportion between the number of
suicides, in coloured and white men, is about one to eighty.
The rate of suicide observable in a race is seen to be curiously
associated with stature; the original inhabitants of Germany were tall
and fair; these had originally a high rate, and descendants of this
race shew the same peculiarity to-day. In proportion as these fair tall
Germans infiltrate another country, just as certainly does the suicidal
total grow. Morselli states that in Italy the rate increases from south
to north, gradually, in proportion as the stature also increases, until
the German states are reached. There is, however, another tall fair
race, who have a low rate, the Slavonic; on the eastern borders of
Hungary where these immigrate, the Hungarian rates are lowered.
In Europe the highest proportion of suicide is shewn by the Germanic
races, and the two stocks, German and Scandinavian, divide the
supremacy for the maximum rate.
The ne plus ultra of German purity in race is found in Saxony, and this
kingdom has the largest suicide ratio of any country.
The height of Scandinavian purity in race is found in Denmark, and
there also the ratio is very large, enormous, in fact: in Norway the
rate was for very long also extreme, but the great severity of recent
laws with respect to offences and to drunkenness have made an almost
incredible reduction in the amount of suicide.
Our British population is of too mixed a blood to enable statistics to
show much of value; but the ratio is much smaller in the Anglo-Saxon
than in the German.
The Celtic races avoid suicide, as is seen by the low rates in Ireland
and Wales.
The races of Slavonic origin show the lowest rates, with those of
Asiatic Turanian origin, the Magyars, Finns, and Lapps.
CLIMATE AND GEOGRAPHICAL DATA.
The extremes of heat and cold seem to tend to a low rate. In Europe
the highest rates are found in the central and upper two-thirds of the
north temperate zone; the maximum being at about 50° lat.
The countries of the west and the south of Europe give the minimum
proportions.
The principal suicide area of Europe is a zone lying from the north of
France to the east of Germany, with two foci, viz., the country around
and including Paris, at a rate of 330 per million of inhabitants, and
the kingdom of Saxony, at a rate of 469 per million. Compare with
these very high numbers the proportions shown by regions lying more to
the south: viz., Calabria, 9; Portugal, 16; Sardinia, 13; Spain, 19;
and Sicily, 18 per million. Leaving this central European area, and
advancing to the north, we again reach territories where lower rates
are found to prevail, although not so low as those of the Mediterranean
coast. While Scotland has a rate of 48, Ireland’s proportion is even
much less, about 24. Finland has a low rate, and so has Northern
Russia, 35 per million inhabitants.
Mountainous countries show a lower rate than lowlands; the Highlands of
Scotland and Wales give a ratio only half that of England.
In the mountain cantons of Switzerland self-destruction is almost
unheard of.
The amount of suicide varies considerably in the several counties of
England; it has in many years happened that Rutland and Westmoreland
have shown a very high rate; but this may possibly be due to their very
small size rendering the comparison unfair.
Dr. J. N. Radcliffe, some years ago now, took the pains to calculate
the rate per million for each county, from the Registrar’s returns; he
gives the following as the counties having the highest rates:─
The London area: Middlesex, 105; Kent, 97; Surrey, 95; and Sussex, 89
per million inhabitants.
The Midland area: Leicester, 89; Lincoln, 87; Nottingham, 87; Warwick,
77; and Derby, 80.
The Northern area: Westmoreland, 99; Cumberland, 86; Lancaster, 70; and
Chester, 70 per million.
Very large proportions follow the great Rivers of Europe, especially
the Po, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Oder, Rhine, Elbe, Thames, and the Scheldt
in Belgium.
On Marshes, Salt Marshes, and lands low lying and liable to floods,
the ratio is much less, as in Holland and on the Landes in France.
But we shall, I think, be justified in considering that it is not the
river that has caused the suicides, nor the marsh that has made them
few; the truth no doubt is that the marsh has rendered the people few,
and simple in habit, whilst rivers, the oldest means of locomotion,
invited settlers, and settlers made town after town, and then a city on
each river, and multitudes grew, and as some few became wealthy, the
millions became permanently in want.
Montesquieu, with whom suicide was a favourite study, called England
the “Land of Suicide,” from its fogs and damp, dark, cold climate,
but he was wrong; even at that time France had a heavier voluntary
death-rate. Over and above which our suicides cluster in preference
round our summer months, and not our foggy ones, to which fall our
heaviest ordinary death-rates.