Suicide Pacts

Lisa Armstrong, Chelsea Lovering, Katie Mote, Stephanie White NURS 535: Death and Dying

The University of New HampshireProfessor Mote

•Definition of a Suicide Pact

- an agreement by two or more people to commit suicide together at a given place and time.

- For the purposes of the historical presentation, we will include ‘mass suicide’ within the context of suicide pacts

•Historical Characteristics of Mass Suicide and Suicide Pacts

•Escape from Persecution

•Cultural Expectations

•Economic Decline

•Health Decline

•Religious Beliefs

•War

•Technological Advances

•Escape from Persecution

•Dates back as early as 2nd Century B.C.

•Fear of capture by an enemy, resulting in torture or death

•Fear of enslavement

•Fear of cultural, religious or political assimilation

•Escape from Persecution

• Masada, A.D. 73 – at the point of succumbing to the Roman army, 960 Jewish Rebels committed mass suicide:

“Slavery, and the sight of our wives led away to shame with our children – these are not evils to which man is subject by the laws of nature; men undergo them through their own cowardice if they have a chance to forestall them by death and will not take it.”

http://www.livius.org/a/1/judaea/masada.JPG

“Suicide in the Middle Ages,” Chapter 1 in The History of Suicide (Georges Minois), Baltimore: John Hopkins

Univeristy Press, 1999.

•Escape from Persecution

•The Russian Old Believers

• “It is estimated that between 1684 and 1691 no less than twenty thousand men and women burned themselves.”

“Mass suicides seem to have generally arisen when armed intervention against a settlement of dissidents appeared to be on the verge of success. The besieged would set fire to buildings in which they had previously strategically placed flammable materials, such that in each of several major incidents, 1,000-2,500 would perish.”

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jPc5hebaTs8/SIK1EbQMytI/

AAAAAAAACjM/GHlHnOvMHd4/s400/PPG31360_369156a.jpg

“Religious Mass Suicide before Jonestown: The Russian Old

Believers” (Thomas Robbins) Sociological Analysis 47, 1:1-20,

1986.

•Escape from Persecution

• “There were numerous instances of mass suicide throughout the Americas. In Brazil, slave arrivals from Gabon were reported to have committed suicide in groups of 10-20.”

“A local slave boarded the ship and jokingly told the arriving Africans that they would have their eyes put out and then be eaten. Over a hundred of the men jumped overboard resolved to end their lives…newly arrived African leaders also led mass suicide attempts by their fellow shipmates and countrymen.”

http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/images/AfricanSlaveTradePoster.jpg

“White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression, and Religious Faith as Causes of Suicide Among New Slaves” (William D. Piersen) The Journal of

Negro Hiistory, 62,2:147-159, 1997.

•Escape from Persecution

•“Middle-aged couple die in suicide pact before husband is charged with rape”

“Had he not killed himself, [he] would have stood trial with a 'realistic prospect of conviction’…his wife refused to believe he was guilty…her whole life was him and without him [she] was no [one]. She would not have survived without him…if [he] had gone back into prison I don't think she would have coped and would have committed suicide herself. ”

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23392315-middle-aged-couple-die-

in-suicide-pact-before-husband-is-charged-with-rape.do

•Cultural Expectations

•Cross-culturally, many acts of suicide, mass suicide, and suicide pacts are a result of cultural norms and expectations

•Cultural Expectations• “Over the past few years, the cases of

‘bride burning’ have registered a sharp increase through-out India, everyday, almost every six hours, somewhere at some place in India, a young married woman is being burnt alive or beaten to death or being pushed the commit suicide.”

“In Kanpur (UP) three sisters were reported to have committed suicide in order to spare their

parents the humiliation of not being able to

provide a dowry, without which they

could not get married”http://media.photobucket.com/

image/bride%20burning,%20india/Schwandes9/burning1-

tm.jpg

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org

http://www.yijuninstitute.org/journal/note1-1-2.pdf

• Cultural Expectations

• “It was discovered that the tombs of the Sumeri kings terminated with a mysterious well, the venue of a particular funeral rite. In fact, because the death of a god-king was considered to be simply a passage into another dimension, where he would continue to live, maintaining his status and therefore requiring his court, the men and women who followed him by poisoning themselves were going to continue their service to their king and master.”

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://

www.strayreality.com/Lanis_Strayreality/Pics3/sumeri3.jpg

• Cultural Expectations• “Sati is the Indian custom of burning widows, or of

widows burning themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands bodies…its public character means that state and society tolerate and accept - and in many cases even enjoin or at least encourage - the custom. No state or political community can pretend that it does not, at least implicitly, accept an act regularly watched by a peaceful multitude with nobody interfering to prevent it, which here would mean to save the victim from herself or from those who are going to kill her.”

Fisch, J. (2005). Dying for the Dead: Sati in Universal Context. Journal of

World History, 16(3), 294-325.

http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/asst001/spring99/parrilla/

sati2.JPG

•Economic Decline

•It is a well documented fact that the economic cycle is intrinsically linked with suicide rates.

•This is true throughout the Western and developing world.

• Economic Decline• “Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state

committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure…farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.”

http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?

fuid=NDY2MTA5Nw%3D%3D

http://www.sott.net/image/image/s1/27071/full/svFARMER_420x0.jpg

•Economic Decline

•“Debt drove couple to kill their children and commit suicide”

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/debt-drove-couple-to-kill-their-children-and-commit-suicide-14300252.html

Donegal woman died in a suicide pact with her husband after killing their children when they were driven by debt and despair to destroy their family, [on April 23, 2007] a state inquiry in the Republic has found.

“Debt doesn’t drive just poor farmers to commit suicide - financial woes are fast becoming a major

cause of suicide in urban India as well.”“Feeling cornered, [the father] brought his family to Mangalore last month, purchased cyanide and chloroform and checked into a hotel. That evening, he told his family it was time to end it all. He, his wife and daughter gulped the cyanide and went to bed. His son however,

found the poison’s odor oppressive and opted out of the suicide pact…he spent the night watching his mother and sister writhe in pain and

finally informed the hotel receptionist. The father was declared dead on arrival at [the] hospital. The other two have recovered.”http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080727/jsp/7days/

story_9606322.jsp

•Economic Decline

•“Indians threaten mass suicide to safeguard oil-rich land”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U'wa_people

Wirpsa, L. (1997). Indians threaten mass suicide to safeguard oil-rich land. National Catholic Reporter, 33(32), 13.

In response to Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation insisting on oil exploration and drilling in Columbian territory that the U’wa people claim is theirs, they: “in accordance with their oral history, will commit collective suicide by leaping from a cliff in the Andes.”

•Health Decline

•Many suicide pacts are a result of the decline of health or a terminal diagnosis in one or both parties involved

•Many suicide pacts are failed attempts resulting in homicide charges

•Health Decline

• “An elderly couple, apparently despondent over ill health, were found dead of gunshot wounds in the rear courtyard of their apartment building [ NY, 1985]…each died of a single bullet wound that punctured the heart and a lung. The couple were found lying side by side beneath a tree, fully clothed with a .38-caliber handgun between them. A note was found nearby…the nature of the note was that they were despondent over poor health and they agreed to take their own lives.

• “They were a perfect pair…a truly devoted couple…you wouldn’t see Frank without Elsie.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/19/nyregion/yonkers-couple-die-in-an-apparent-suicide-pact.html

•Health Decline

•“Terminally-ill husband who survived suicide pact with wife arrested on suspicion of her murder”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218442/Terminally-ill-husband-survived-suicide-pact-wife-arrested-suspicion-murder.html#ixzz0XWg5yDOg

“They had enjoyed 52 years of very happy marriage together and did not want to live separate, lonely existences, as their parents did, so decided to commit suicide together…but the plan was only ‘partly successful’…wife’s husband suffered from bone cancer and is severely disabled, and the strain of caring for him had become excessive” daughters claimed.

“A post-mortem exam established the cause of death as suffocation. The wife was completely healthy.”

•Health Decline

•“Suicide pact husband spared jail”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4174155.stm

“He admitted entering into a suicide pact with his wife, who was dying of stomach cancer…said he acted as a “loving husband”…wife asked him to cut her wrists as ‘the last loving thing you could do for her’.

“My wife did not want to die slowly in hospital. I did what she asked me to do” he told the court.

“I failed myself and will now have to pay the price.” (He tried to cut his own wrists in an identical way, but his blood congealed and he rang police when he did not die.)

•Religious Beliefs

•History is replete with incidence of religious suicide, mass suicide and suicide pacts

•The most common type of religious suicide is mass suicide, where hundreds or thousands of people may die in a single event

•Religious Beliefs• “On March 18, 2000, in a

village south-west of Kampala in Uganda, about 600 members of the sect ‘The Ten Commandments of God’ committed suicide by setting fire to themselves after hours of songs and prayers.”

• http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/uganda.html

• Mass Suicide: Historical and Psychodynamic Considerations” (Ignia Mancinelli, Anna Comparelli, Paolo, and Roberto Tatarelli) Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 32, 1:91-100, 2002.Retrieved from PsycINFO database.

• Cult Mass Suicide“On March 26, 1997, the bodies were found of 39 similarly dressed men and women who took their own lives in a mass suicide. Led by Marshall Applewhite, the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ cult believed that a flying saucer was traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet. They chose to leave their physical bodies behind to find redemption in an extraterrestrial “Kingdom of Heaven.”

http://www.heavensgate.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtxoNRekTDA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLEUH1Ce6gY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh35j2S68DQ&feature=PlayList&p=CD9486772074874B&index=0&playnext=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQba3ry4IBg&feature=PlayList&p=4191BBED5C092B38&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19

Robinson, W. (1997). Heaven's gate: The end?. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(3), Retrieved from PsycINFO database.

•Religious Mass Suicide

•Mass murder or mass suicide at Jonestown?

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=waco&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f&aq=f#q=jonestown+suicide&hl=en&emb=0&view=2&qvid=jonestown+suicide&vid=-7860880126603536377 0-45 / 31.30 – 36.30

http://blog.cleveland.com/world_impact/2008/11/large_Bodies1978-30_Years_After_Jonestown_Meye.JPG

•War•“Social suicide is a real prospect when

psychotic leaders have nuclear weapons. Too many countries who do not get along now have nuclear weapons. A major nuclear war is an unthinkable nightmare…assuming about 5,000 megatons of nuclear warheads were detonated…at least one half of the world’s population would die as a result of such a nuclear holocaust. And the irony is that we would have done it to ourselves under the guise of deterrence, a social suicide for over half the world’s population.”

• Maris, R. (1997). Social suicide. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 27(1), 41-49. Retrieved from MEDLINE database.

•War• “Since the earliest period of Japanese history a

warrior’s self destruction was accepted as a release from shame, an act of honor and courage, and an ultimate proof of integrity.”

• “The classical manner of self-immolation is the samurai ritual disembowelment known as seppuku (or hara-kiri).”

“The story tells of a group of samurai – ronin - who were left leaderless after their feudal lord was forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for over a year to kill the court official. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku - as they had known they would be - for committing the crime of murder. With little embellishment, this true story was popularized in Japanese culture as emblematic of the loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor that all good people should preserve in their daily lives.”

Burial graves of the 47 Ronin at Sengaku-ji. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_Ronin

•Technological Advances

• Internet Suicide

• ‘Suicide Pact Websites’ brings up over 83,000 entries in a Google search

• “Yahoo and Google retrieved the highest number of dedicated suicide sites, whereas MSN had the highest number of prevention or support sites.”

• “Sites providing factual information about suicide, pro-suicide sites, and chat rooms discussing general issues relating to suicide occurred most often within the first few hits of a search and are thus more likely to be accessed.”

• “The three most frequently occurring sites were all pro-suicide.”Biddle, L., Donovan, J., Hawton, K., Kapur, N., & Gunnell, D. (2008). SUICIDE AND THE INTERNET. BMJ: British Medical

Journal, 336(7648), 800-802. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

•Technological Advances

• Internet Suicide

•“The internet may be fuelling an increase in suicide pacts. In the past two months, 26 people in Japan have killed themselves after meeting online and planning their deaths using websites containing instructions for committing suicide…these ‘how-to’ websites tell people the lethal doses of paracetamol and other common drugs.”(2004). Killer connections. New Scientist, 184(2477), 5. Retrieved from Business Source Corporate

database.

•Technological Advances

• Internet Suicide

•“A 26-year-old man used an Internet chat room to try to arrange a mass suicide on Valentine’s Day involving more than two dozen women across the United States and Canada…the chat-room participants planned to log in on Valentine’s Day and commit suicide while keeping in touch over the internet…suspect has been charged with solicitation to commit murder.”(2005, February 12). National Briefing | Northwest: Oregon: Man Who Planned Mass Suicide Is Arrested. New York Times, p. 10.

Retrieved from Business Source Corporate database.

•Technological Advances

• Internet Suicide

• “Japan’s Internet Suicide Cults”

• 142 men and women who met on Internet chat-rooms in Japan have died in groups since October 2004, committing suicide together, usually by carbon monoxide poisoning caused by charcoal burners or by CO poisoning and sleeping pills overdose. ... Group suicide Internet cults have also begun spreading to South Korea and Australia, from chatrooms and forums to MySpace blogs, although exact statistics have not been kept by the governments.” http://www.newprophecy.net/

japansuicide.htm

“Web suicide pacts surge in Japan”

“The number of Japanese who killed themselves in suicide pacts made over the internet rose sharply last year. Police said 91 people died in the pacts in 2005, compared with 55 in 2004 and 34 in 2003, when the records started.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/

4695864.stm