THE 'TEMPORARY INSANITY' VERDICT.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 124, 24 April 1895, Page 3

THE 'TEMPORARY INSANITY' VERDICT.

The burial penalty still attached to a verdict of felo de se is doubtless the thief reason why juries invariably declare that one who has killed bimfiolf' committed, suicide while suffering from temporary insanity.' When the case is examined, wo find often that ' temporary insanity' is really the last explanation possible 'Domestic linhappincss ' is a frequent cause; ' deceased had boon out of work for some time, and was in low spirits ' is another. Elsewhere than in England a sense of honour; niis oi uided perhaps, but in no degree insane, often makes men take their own lives; and there lave boon period's in tho world's history when suicide has been not merely honourable but fashionable, and men and women have ended their lives for reasons which to us seem trivial and absurd. These last bear a superficial resemblanco to suicides based on insanity. In reality they arc far apart from the instances of irrational but commanding impulse, which can really bo defined as suicidal mania. When the mother of an illegitimate child, deserted by her lover and nf used shelter in her own home, or permitted there only to bo taunted incessantly with her fall—when she kills herself or her baby, or hoth, sho is not mad. She is helpless, or, being ignorant, thinks herself so. Sho sees no way out of an intolerably humiliating position ; she is misorable in the present, and sees no hopo in in the future, therefore she ends her life. Her deed is an active interpretation of the Psalmists's cry, ' Let mo fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of man.' It is foolish, cowardly, sinful; but it is not mad. Similarly, the man who has lost his occupation, and cannot bear to seo his wife and children suffering privation, shows himself by his suicide to be selfish, cowardly, and lacking in foreeight—for how will the loss of the possible bread-winner advantage those he loves ?—but not, strictly speaking, mad, as madness is defined by scientists. Neither is the gambler who has lost his last penny, and blows out his brain? at Monte Carlo, nor the ruined speculator, often fraudulent, who prefers death to poverty or prison. When the averago human mind can see a reason for despair, or even deep discouragement, we are not justified in point of strict accuracy, in defining such suicide as duo to ' temporary insanity.'