WAVE OF SUICIDE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 258, 31 October 1928, Page 7

WAVE OF SUICIDE.

WORLD-WEARY YOUTHS Appalling Self Destruction In London. WHAT IS THE CAUSE? (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, October 30. The Westminster coroner commented on the death of a 16-year-old office girl, who jumped from a fifth floor window in a pit of pique because she was mildly rebuked. He said: "A wave of juvenile suicide is sweeping over London. World weary at sixteen! It is amazing. Too many young people seem to hold life lightiy." He recalled that a girl committed suicide because she had to wear her mother's black hat at the' funeral of a wealthy young man, who cut himself shaving. In a fit of annoyance she jumped from the window. A young man with his hands in his pockets had jumped into the Thames for no apparent reason. "Weariness before the age of discretion seems to be common in the rising generation." The coroner's remarks have prompted many prominent people to give their views. Eldon Moore, editor of the "Eugenics Review," says that, put bluntly, science nowadays is keeping alive babies, who otherwise would not survive. The so-called world-weary boys and girls belong to that category.

Dame Mary Scharlied, the eminent surgeon, said it was largely accountable to the taking up of the responsibilities of life earlier than they used.

Bernard Hollander, the mental specialist, said suicide whims can seize the strongest minded who later grow healthy citizens. The unsound mind verdict was often a fiction to soothe relatives.