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'This Rash Act' - Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,478
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'This Rash Act' - Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Hardcover)
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What made some 700 men and women in the Yorkshire town of
Kingston-upon-Hull, in the years 1837 to 1900, decide to suffer no
longer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and take their
own lives? In this study, the author seeks to uncover the
experiences that drove people to suicide; to analyze how suicide
was understood by victims, by their families and friends, and by
legal and medical authorities; to study how the presumed causes of
suicide and the meanings of suicide changed over time and in
response to changed social circumstances; and to see what "suicide
narratives" elicited by coroners' inquests can tell us about
Victorian life, beliefs, and values in general.
The book is based on an unprecedentedly complete and comprehensive
collection of inquest files covering the entire Victorian era in
Hull (most coroners' files have not survived or exist only in
fragmentary form). Hitherto, suicide in the Victorian period has
been examined only on a national basis; where local evidence has
been used, it has come chiefly from London. Through the testimony
of relatives, neighbors, friends, and even the deceased (by means
of suicide notes), the author has been able to get closer to the
experience of suicide and its social construction than has been
possible in any previous study.
The framework within which the author evaluates the paths to
suicide is the life cycle. By placing each suicide in its local
socioeconomic context, and by examining each stage in the life
course for each sex and for different social levels, the author has
been able to assess causation factors with great confidence. He
establishes arguments (such as the importance of declining wages
and job security for older men and the loss of a marital partner
for either sex) more securely than have earlier studies, and puts
some new arguments on the agenda (such as the importance of the
presence or absence of interpersonal ties and the influence of Poor
Law policy).
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