Suicide ancestor. Suffolk 1894.

[benny1982]

Hi

My great, great grandfather on my dads side, the male line committed suicide in Suffolk on 30th June 1894 aged 43. His name was Jesse Titshall, a miller who lived in the tranquil hamlet of Letheringham in rural Suffolk. He had 9 children, two by his first marriage.

I have found him in newspaper reports. One of his neighbours always thought that he was strange, but not enough to kill himself. Sorry to sound thick but what could he have meant by strange?

Jesse used strychnine and had previously threatened to kill himself. In Suffolk in the 1890s I think a lot of the mills were shutting down and his son moved to Essex about 10 years after his dad's death.

He was buried at Letheringham churchyard on the 2nd July 1894. No headstone was erected yet his father was quite a successful miller. Jesse's death certificate says that he was "of unsound mind". It might not be a bad idea to find out where his unmarked grave is.

His newborn baby daughter was baptised by her mother in September 1894, and he was still named on the record despite having been dead for 3 months.

I did read that suicide burials took place in the hours of darkness. Did this still occur in the 1890s?

Ben

[Jan1954]

Hello Ben,

I have 2 great, great grandfathers from different branches of my family who both killed themselves "whilst of unsound mind". One walked out in front of a train in 1922 and the other "cut his own throat" in 1867.

On the death certificate for both of them, an inquest is mentioned. Now, some local newspapers provide quite detailed reports of the inquests whilst others might be rather sketchy - it depends really on where it was.

In the case of the first chap mentioned above, it happened in a fairly quiet village in Kent and I managed to locate a pretty detailed report in the local paper.

You mention that you have found newspaper reports. Is this of the inquest itself?

Some information about Letheringham may be found on GENUKI here: http://www.genuki.org.uk/cgi-bin/htsearch?method=and&format=builtin-short&matchesperpage=20&sort=score&config=genuki&words=Letheringham
It may be worth having a look at the newspaper reports mentioned.

The Suffolk Family History Society may be able to put you onto his grave plot or know where such records are held.

As to why someone who knew him thought him "strange" - well, anything out of the ordinary could be counted as strange and memories can be clouded after an event... :cool: Maybe other newspaper reports might shed some light on this and give examples.

Good luck in your search,

[KateJones]

Hi Ben,

My grandfather, medically trained (and a psychiatrist - so it can happen to anyone) committed suicide when I was a baby. There were many stories about his "strange" behaviour - for example, when my mother was a child and saw him in the street and said "Hello, Daddy", he would just keep walking, ignoring her. For a long time the family wisdom said that he was just "wrapped up in thought". However, when my son was growing up he would do exactly the same thing - when classmates passed him in the street and called "Hi, Matthew", he would ignore them - he said he knew them and so why did he need to acknowledge them? Eventually our son's "strange behaviour" was diagnosed as Asperger's Syndrome - a form of autism, and he got assistance and social training to help him. He's now 19, studying engineering and knows that you greet people in the street - but for him it will never be automatic, it's a case of remembering the rule that other people like to be greeted, and you can see that when he does it he's slightly embarrassed by it.

There is a genetic component to autism, and I can now see that it was probably in both mine and my husband's family to varying degrees. I'm as sure as I can be that my grandfather was somewhere on the "Autistic Spectrum". What on earth must it have been for him living in a world where no-one knew about autism (Asperger's was first identified in the 1940's but the medical paper wasn't translated into English until the 1980's!), where no-one could help him to make sense of the world, where no-one was tolerant of his 'idiosyncracies'? Perhaps his move into psychiatry was an attempt to understand himself and what was going on in his own brain. I have heard that people with autism are more liable to suffer from depression, probably because of other people's lack of understanding.

Doubtless your gg grandfather's family were deeply embarrassed - suicide was a crime, and must have reflected on the family. I imagine that everyone personally blamed themselves too - as happened in my family, and which has had a toxic effect on some members for the last 5 decades. I imagine that the family did not want to draw attention to the grave with a headstone.

You may never find out what the 'strange' behaviour was, perhaps, like Asperger's Syndrome, it wasn't identified until many years later - for example he may have been schizophrenic. In addition, serious depression is something that seems completely incomprehensible to those around the depressive. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to those observing, but to the depressive, that is the way that the world is, and no matter what anyone else says, however persuasive their argument, nothing will change that view.

Good luck in your search but I wouldn't hold out too much hope of a 'modern' diagnosis.
Best regards
KJ