When she [Mary Wollstonecraft] followed him as far as London she found a new mistress. On a rainy night in October 1795 she walked around Putney long enough to make sure her best dress was heavily saturated, then she jumped off the bridge into the Thames leaving a note … ‘Let my wrongs sleep with me’. But she was not to be allowed her poetic suicide. A boatman pulled her out. She was thirty-seven and she seemed to have lost everything except her child: her faith in revolution, in the virtue of the people, her belief of the possibility of an independent woman’s life; the goodness of nature must have seemed a cruel joke. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e1: Forces of Nature, BBC 2002
On 14th January 2008 Jonny Benjamin came to Westminster Bridge with the intention of throwing himself off. A stranger stepped out of the rush hour crowd and talked him out of it – his words stopped Johnny taking his life. The Stranger on the Bridge, Channel 4 2015
In 1953 he [Alan Turing] went on holiday to Norway where he’d heard there were dances for men only. But he was already under police surveillance. Horizon: The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing, BBC 1992
No-one who knew him was prepared for what happened next. ibid.
As much as 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide. Horizon: Being Transgender, BBC 2017
In the UK three-quarters of the people who take their own lives are men. Around the world suicide kills one person every 40 seconds. Horizon: Stopping Male Suicide, BBC 2018
Suicide kills more men under the age of 50 than anything else. ibid.
We need to better understand what causes someone to get to the point of suicidal crisis in the first place. ibid.
If you live in the north-east, you are around 35% more likely to die by suicide than if you live in London. ibid.
Those in the lowest socio-economic group living in the most deprived areas are up to ten times more at risk of dying by suicide than those in the highest groups living in the most affluent areas. ibid.
Three times more men than women go on to die in this way when far more women than men attempt suicide. ibid.
Some people have suspected that the Secret Service may have at least encouraged him [Turing] to commit suicide. And that there’s even the slight suspicion apparently in some circles that they might have contrived to murder him on the grounds that he was too big a security risk. That he knew so much and yet he would go abroad to see some man – I can imagine them being quite nervous about that. But somehow it seems to me to be farfetched. Professor I J Good, interview
Dom: I left my brain at home, didn’t I? It seemed the most sensible thing to do.
Becks: Of yeah. Why is that?
Dom: This is suicide, Becks. The Firm 2009 starring Daniel Mays & Calum McNab & Paul Anderson & Lewis Banks & Camille Coduri & Joe Jackson & Richie Campbell & James Kelly & Jaf Ibrahim & Tommy Nash & Eddie Webber & Billy Seymour et al, director Nick Love
I feel that I am reserved for some end or other. Lord Clive, Governor of Bengal, when pistol failed to fire twice, attributed
Women holding children by the hand were running towards the water. There were also whole families including elderly people. Many had tied themselves together. I didn’t understand what they were doing. Waltraud Reski, schoolgirl Demmin 1945
I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Peace, Love, Empathy. Kurt Cobain suicide note referencing Neil Young song
I Hate Myself And Want To Die. Nirvana, Cobain’s preferred title for album, rejected by record company
On the morning of October 12, responding to a report of a domestic dispute, police entered their Chelsea Hotel room and found Spungen, clad in blood-soaked bra and panties, crumpled under the bathroom sink, dead of a single, deep stab wound to her abdomen. Sid, in a drugged haze, was charged with her murder and released on $50,000 bail. In several telephone calls to Deborah Spungen after his arrest, Sid ‘never said he was sorry,’ she recalls. ‘He never said anything about it happening at all.’ Ten days later, Sid attempted suicide, slashing the full length of his forearm with a knife and reportedly screaming, ‘I want to be with my Nancy! I want to be left alone!’ Sid & Nancy, a biography, hotshotvideo online
Some of us made it
To the forest edge, but many of us did not
Make it, although their unborn children did –
Such as you whom the camp commandant branded
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Jesus, break his fall:
There – but for the clutch of luck – go we all. Paul Durcan, The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious, 1980
The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice. George Carlin
Suicide Squad Leader: We are the People’s Judean Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack! [stab themselves] That showed ’em, huh? Monty Python’s Life of Brian 1979 starring Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin & Kenneth Colley et al, director Terry Jones
The Internet can be a hunting ground for those looking to exploit the vulnerable. Death by Email
In July 2005 a thirty-two-year-old man from Coventry, England – the death of Mark Drybrough appeared to be a tragic yet straightforward case of suicide. But in the months and years that followed, his family and other campaigners would hunt for someone who had been instrumental in Mark’s death. ibid.
The sites where Mark was posting offered more than just a sympathetic ear. Campaigners and support groups are concerned that they can actively encourage and facilitate suicide. ibid.
Between six hundred and eight hundred young people commit suicide in the UK each year. ibid.
The house belonged to a forty-six year old state registered nurse, William Melchert-Dinkel. ibid.
There on the front page campaigners were warning about a man who had been stalking internet chat rooms. ibid.
A case that would make legal history: State of Minnesota vs William Francis Melchert Dinkel. ibid.
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had harried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera p1
And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father. II Samuel 17:23
We know at least forty-five cases whereby the Internet has played a significant role in the death of somebody. Paul Kelly, Papyrus, Suicide Prevention Charity
When you’re young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you’re laughing again. Marilyn Monroe, My Story
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable. Franz Kafka, The Trial
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
To be or not to be. That’s not really a question. Jean-Luc Godard
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S’s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving. J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey
You did not fear death. You stepped in its path, but without really desiring it: how can one desire something one doesn’t know? You didn’t deny life but affirmed your taste for the unknown, betting that if something existed on the other side, it would be better than here. Édouard Levé, Suicide
Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It’s kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances. Robert Crumb