De Achttiende Eeuw 33 (2001) nr.2
René Bosch
'Suicide in the eighteenth century: Something about English research
by way of introduction'
In this introductory piece I will place the articles published in this special issue as well as some earlier comments on suicide in the Dutch republic in the context of the pioneering study by Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls - Suicide in Early Modern England. In spite of some disagreement about the actual pace of change in the Netherlands, historians tend to agree that both thinking about suicide and the practice of prosecution appear to have developed in the Netherlands in a similar way as in England. Increasingly, during the eighteenth century, authors began to look upon suicides committed by others than indicted criminals as the consequences of mental illness, rather than those of accumulated sin or a lack of religious determination. The state of research in the Netherlands does not allow for a comparison with the findings of MacDonald and Murphy on the prevalence of suicide in terms of gender, age and social class, let alone with those on the motives for suicide. I will touch on suicides in novels and tragedies, suggesting the usefulness of these types of sources.
omhoog
Peter Buijs
'May you blush inwardly about your argument: A 1774 polemic on infanticide
and suicide between Petrus Camper and Augustus Sterk'
The history of Dutch ideas on suicide between 1660 and 1839 shows a development towards a milder judgement. In this article I will argue that this development is connected with a shift in emphasis, from the moral aspects of suicide to its social consequences, to the practical question of how suicide could be prevented, and to medical aspects.
I will concentrate on the first of these three shifts by exploring a polemic about infanticide and suicide that was conducted in 1774 between the medical doctor and professor Petrus Camper and the Lutheran minister Augustus Sterk, in which the social aspect was dealt with for the first time. Camper=s judgement of infanticide was remarkably mild whereas he pleaded for the posthumous dishonouring punishment of suicides to be reintroduced. His opponent Sterk on the other hand was mild toward suicides but less so regarding infanticide.
The uncertainties in their discussion B about the question of whether suicide was or was not punished more mildly, and the question whether punishment would or would not prevent the crime - give evidence of the fact that in the 1770s the general attitude towards suicide was undergoing changes. It is clear, however, that in spite of Camper=s arguments suicide was judged increasingly mildly.
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Machiel Bosman
'The last suicides to be punished in Amsterdam'
Throughout Europe, suicide was considered a serious crime which was punished accordingly: after committing suicide people could be burnt, drowned, hung or buried beneath the gallows. Their possessions would often be confiscated.
In many European countries this situation changed in the course of the eighteenth century. The penalization of suicide came under discussion during the Enlightenment, and gradually suicides were judged by the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Several historians, however, have pointed out that the Netherlands formed an exception to this rule since the treatment of suicides was never questioned here and as late as 1792, just before French ideals took over, the last person who had killed himself was hung in Amsterdam.
All this may be true, but in fact the Republic was at the forefront of decriminalizing suicide in Europe. The Republic distinguished between criminals who killed themselves and other suicides. While the former were still prosecuted in the eighteenth century, the latter, as far as we know, got off. The last conviction of a suicide without a criminal past in Amsterdam took place in 1668.
Since the mid-seventeenth century the impunity of suicides without a criminal record was presented by legal scholars in the Republic as a right. They based this judgement on the Romans, who left suicides unpunished unless they were suspected of a crime, in which case their suicide was regarded as a confession and their assets could be confiscated.
The Dutch legal scholars= point of view is unique for seventeenth-century Europe: while their colleagues in other countries did not question the penalization of suicide, the practice in this country had already changed. This contribution to the decriminalization of suicide in Europe has as yet been paid too little attention to.
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Roel Bosch
''Tightrope walkers seldom die in bed…': Suicide and the Dutch Protestant
church'
If suicide was a topic in eighteenth-century church practice, it hardly left any traces. Texts by Gisbertus Voetius make it clear that he strongly condemned the act, yet had compassion with the perpetrator, showing understanding for what we would call ‘psychiatric illnesses’. His texts in Dutch, intended to be read by ‘ordinary people’, contain serious warnings against suicide, while his publications in Latin, meant for colleagues, are far more understanding. Roman catholic ethics have a similar moral: suicide that originates in ‘insane mens’ is not regarded as a cardinal sin.
By the end of the eighteenth century death is given a place of its own in philosophy and theology, and becomes a loved fiend rather than the fearful, almost devilish figure of the earlier christian tradition. In poems the dying individual is compared to a lark or a butterfly. Such images may diminish the fear of suicide; yet melancholic people will nonetheless be scared of any form of dying.
The taboo of death by one’s own hand and the subsequently limited number of sources on this topic make it difficult to formulate any clear conclusions. By gathering seemingly disconnected details regarding suicide from research on other topics we may obtain the beginnings of further investigations.
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Anna de Haas
'Death in the theatre: the dramatic suicide'
This article explores the role of suicide in neo-classicist tragedy in the Netherlands. Dramatic suicides may be divided into two categories according to the way they were judged and presented: (1) altruists, who B nobly B commit suicide for suprapersonal (patriotic) reasons, e.g. Cato of Utica; and (2) egoists, who kill themselves for personal reasons such as thwarted love or ambition. The second category may be subdivided into morally bad egoists B villains, whose suicide is presented as a just punishment, and morally good egoists who are usually only would-be suicides: misled people who merely threaten to commit suicide or whose suicide is prevented just in time. Only good egoists who unwittingly committed a crime were considered to have killed themselves justifiably (e.g. Jocasta). Suicide for reasons of love (e.g. Pyramus and Thisbe) was regarded as outrageous.
Although it was assumed that Christian audiences would not mistake the many heathen, mostly Roman suicides for worthy examples, many playtexts included explicit passages about the immorality of suicide. Of the various ways of staging a suicide Bact and death on stage; act and death off stage; act on stage, death off stage; or act off stage, death on stage B the first was rare, the second frequent, the third fairly frequent. The fourth was preferred for altruistic suicides: it allowed for moralistic last words.
Around 1760 altruistic suicide came to be viewed as an act of cowardice or madness, while the introduction of new kinds of protagonists B British, Chinese, Peruvians B did not affect the egoists= suicide rate: they were as suicidal as their Roman counterparts. Only Dutch characters never committed suicide on the eighteenth-century Dutch stage.
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