Preliminary Programme

An important duty in late 18th-century healthcare secular suicide prevention was a central task to everybody since lifesaving regulations were implemented and humane lifesaving societies developed all over Europe. In Electoral Saxony a 1773 edict mandated that each and every subject should be obliged to intervene in cases of attempted suicides by following specific medical procedures. Another edict in 1779 stipulated, that relatives, neighbours as well as local authorities were responsible to take care of people at risk of committing a suicide and to prevent self-destructive behaviour. These new statutory standards raised several problematic issues, that are sketched out in my paper. First of all, which behaviour and by association which person could be determined suicidal with sufficient reliability. Second, how could people act appropriately on observed signs of self-destructive behaviour. Third, who was able to provide professional medical care to both suicidal persons and suicides, whereas fears and taboos preventing to touch the bodies of suicides had to overcome in the first place. Although related to changing perceptions and ideas of both health and human nature and constantly discussed in learned debates these questions confronted ordinary people with urgent problems in their quotidian life. (Show less)

Without question dealing with suicidal individuals is a great challenge for every society. This task, however, proved to be particularly difficult in times when the act of committing suicide and suicidal individuals were associated with crime, sin and diabolical temptations frequently evoking fear and abhorrence. Against this backdrop it seems of special interest to ask what efforts were made in order to keep individuals from committing suicide in early modern Europe.
Based on criminal court records from 17th and 18th century Austria and Sweden this paper focuses on early attempts at suicide prevention and care of suicidal individuals within the local communities. After all, despite the general condemnation of suicide individual cases of self-killing reveal a much broader spectrum of possible responses including concern and care for those who sought to end their own lives. Thus, I will ask if and how individuals actively reached out for help by confiding their suicidal thoughts to family members or parish priests. What measures were taken in order to improve their condition and how was a suicide explained when the provided help did not suffice to save one’s life? By discussing early forms of suicide prevention and care by means of exemplary case stories I hope to provide an insight into the handling of suicidal individuals in early modern local communities.
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The relationship between suicide and physical illnesses or disabilities has been a topic of great interest in modern suicidology but has not been widely discussed or empirically examined in the early modern context. Like mental disorders, physical illnesses have been identified as significant risk factors for suicidal behaviour. Especially chronic, debilitating, deteriorating or painful illnesses that have disruptive practical, emotional and social ramifications may predispose an individual to suicide. Though one can assume that the connection between health problems and suicide is timeless, it must be taken into consideration that modern medicine, health care and social security systems as well as various cultural and societal developments have changed the situation compared to that in the early modern urban and rural communities. The livelihood heavily relied on agricultural work and physical labour in the early modern Swedish communities. Moreover, the era was characterized by unorganized social security, relatively insecure support systems as well as limited medical knowledge and few effective treatments.

The paper discusses the connections between physical health, disabilities, inability to work and suicides in 17th-century Sweden and Finland based on a large sample of over 200 cases collected mainly from court records and other judicial documents. Suicides as well as other deaths that occurred in suspicious circumstances were often discussed in the lower court hearings where a judge, local officials and a jury of local peasants investigated the cases by hearing several witnesses on the backgrounds and behaviour of the deceased. These quite detailed descriptions provide a great deal of information on the health and physical illnesses among the suicides. At least a third of the suicides suffered from physical illnesses or disabilities, ranging from fevers to handicaps and infectious diseases, that had a substantial impact on their quality of life, possibilities and choices. Interestingly, a large share (at least 40%) of the suicides were also principally supported by others and living as dependents in their communities. The high share of those suffering from the debilitating effects and pains related to poor physical health and thus having vulnerable and dependent status or poor living conditions manifests the importance of work and the ability to work in the 17th-century Swedish rural and urban communities. Furthermore, the interpretations and explanations of their suicides indicate that the juries and communities empathized with the living conditions of the infirm. The recurrent references to physical and mental difficulties in the testimonies suggest that natural and medical understandings of suicide were gaining more ground in Sweden as well as across early modern Europe. (Show less)

In 19th-century Finland suicide was gradually medicalized; it was no longer perceived as a sin, but rather as a symptom and sign of mental instability. At the same time doctors and medical writers concluded that women were, due to their weak constitution and nervous system, more prone to madness than men. These two assumptions – suicide being a sign of mental illness and a woman being a potential lunatic – were also present in courts that investigated suicides until the act was decriminalized in 1894. The portrait of female suicide constructed in the courtrooms was more often than not that of a mad or an otherwise mentally shaken woman.
This paper casts light on the portrait of a suicidal madwoman by exploring female suicide cases heard in late 19th-century Finnish courts. Special attention is given to the gendered nature of mental illnesses, that is, the notions of female insanity produced in and by court hearings. I argue that the reasons thought to have caused mental disturbances, and thus suicides, were gendered, and that there were certain female-specific explanations for insanity. Furthermore, I analyse the ways in which the social background of the deceased affected the diagnosing processes. (Show less)