──────┬────────┬─────────┬──────────┬───────┬──────┬─────── ── │Hanging.│Drowning.│Fire-arms.│Wounds.│Falls.│Poison. ──────┼────────┼─────────┼──────────┼───────┼──────┼─────── Male │ 521 │ 150 │ 134 │ 89 │ 26 │ 48 Female│ 395 │ 346 │ 8 │ 59 │ 27 │ 117 ──────┴────────┴─────────┴──────────┴───────┴──────┴─────── Of 151 suicides in New York, in 1883, 56 were from fire-arms, 19 hanging, 15 stabbing and cutting, 12 drowning, 11 falls from a height, 18 poisoning with Paris green, and 7 with opium. These cases have been also tabulated in a manner showing the relative amounts of each means according to nationalities, and disclose the very remarkable fact, that English, French, Germans and Irish, when they have emigrated and are living in a foreign country, still retain their racial predilections for means of suicide; but they also shew that there is a tendency to follow the custom of a place, inasmuch as poison, the favourite means of the native of New York, becomes more frequent among the French and Germans there, than it is among French and Germans at home. Of means rarely observed, I may mention, death by starvation; it is more rare now-a-days than it was in classical times; it requires extreme resolution to persevere in this means of self-destruction, and it is extremely painful. One case of attempted crucifixion is on record, that of Matthew Lovat, in 1802, at Venice; he indeed made two attempts, but failed in both. In Middlesex, last year, a man deliberately inhaled coal gas from the supply pipe in his room, and so died of suffocation and blood poisoning. During 1881, there were five unusual cases in England; two persons blew themselves up with gunpowder, one person burned himself to death, one died of voluntary starvation, and one died from eating horsehair. During 1880, one suicide was caused by drinking paraffin spirit, and another by swallowing pennies and pebbles. CHAPTER XIX. SUICIDE AND CRIME COMPARED; AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE. It is instructive to compare the statistics of crime in general with those of suicide; such data as are found in “Recherches sur le penchant au Crime,” by A. Quetelet, illustrate this matter; he gives the figure of a curve showing the amount of crime at different ages of life. This curve rises from almost zero at ten years of age to nearly its maximum at 20, quite its highest point at 23, and then falls evenly to half its height at 45; thence evenly to 70, when it is at a similar position to 15 years of age, and thence evenly to zero at the age of 100 years. These proportions are found to exist at the present time in our own country. Among women the maximum falls a little later in life than among men, viz., at 30 years of age. Of crime in general, one woman is convicted to four men.