170 years ago
THE chronicles of the week record two cases of suicide — one of Hannah Latti- more, a cook-maid, who drowned her- self in the Serpentine, for love of Joshua Kemp, a private in the guards; and the other of the pseudo-Captain or Colonel Montgomery, who anticipated his fate in Newgate on Friday Morning last, by means of a small phial of prussic acid. These unhappy instances, among others, will tend to put the foolish habit of suicide out of fashion: it is already on the wane.
There seems to be no permanence in our world of change, even in our follies. The best and brightest get time-worn. They descend to our servants with our cast-off suits, and from our servants their declension continues, until clothes that once graced the court, and habits that were considered essential by their wearers, are consigned to Monmouth Street together. Swearing was once fashionable; — we have heard ladies utter something very like an oath. Now it is confined to coal-porters and com- mon sailors. 'Damns,' as Bob Acres says, 'have had their day.' The Irish, we believe, still keep up the practice of 'our armies in Flanders' — an infallible proof of the slow progress of civilisation among them. We have not heard of a respectable man, unless under the influ- ence of acknowledged madness, going out of the world in this shabby, disrep- utable way for many years. 'What Cato did and Addison approved,' is now a very vulgar piece of business, which nei- ther Cato's example nor Addison's pre- cepts have any chance of rendering palatable to a man of rank or considera- tion. We hear every day of Coroner's Inquests, and of young maidens and dapper gentlemen who have hung themselves 'a mornings in their garters,' for love, or debt, or some such legiti- mate cause; but it is seldom that the gentleman ranks higher than an appren- tice, or a clerk to an attorney, — or the lady than an alehouse wench, or a straw-bonnet maker, who has been led astray by some wicked man, and throws herself from Waterloo Bridge — all from true love and gin. Here and there we meet with a stray performer who aims at a higher flight than his compan- ions, who will not hang like a dog, nor drown like a kitten, nor bleed like a calf, but will go out of the world like a `gemman' with powder and lead, or in a more scientific way still, like Captain Montgomery, by the aid of prussic acid. But such instances of ambition are rare; for most part fools are content to imi- tate their fellows.
The Spectator 5 July 1828
Previous page
