SOURCES OF SUICIDE.

Evening Star, Issue 14036, 17 April 1909, Page 12

SOURCES OF SUICIDE.

WORK OF SALVATION ARMY'S PREVENTION BUREAU. Two years of experience has firmly convinced the rulers of the Salvation Army tnat their anti-suicide bureau is a vital and permanent necessity. Statistics show that over 3,400 persons now commit suicide in England and Walt© in the year, a number which is equivalent to almost ten out of every 100,000 of the[population, the proportion has been growing annually. But the number of those who are annually on the brink of felo-de-se and turned amde by chance or kindness who can tell? The object of the Na.iration Army’s bureau is to avert this

fatal plunge. Major Glanville, who presides over the beneficent work, states that during 1908 over on© thousand persons full of suicidal despair songht the aesistan.ce of the bore an. The large majority of the applicants, he believed, are now restored to normal conditions. These cases did not belong to the lowest social stratum- they were the wreckage of the middle classes, and included solicitors, doctors, actors, journalists, chemists, as well as military officers and clergymen. Inviolable secrecy is observed concerning the identity of the applicants. Bat circamstances are investigated and Mly recorded, and an interesting analysis is made of the motives which were impelling them towards self-destruc-tion- Her© is the substance of last year’s leading causes;— Financial embarrassment or hopeless poverty, 50 per cent.; accidents, sickness, or other misfortunes, 21 per cent. ; drink, drags, and disease, 11 per cent.; melancholia from loneliness or other cause, 9 per cent.; forgery and other crimes, 5 per cent. A notable fact here is that the hard struggle for existence is a more prolific source than even drink.