Suicide in medieval England and Eyre records

Suicide in medieval England was both a religious and a secular concern. This is a particularly important time in the evolution of the common law and legal ideas about intent and responsibility, and is the earliest period from which central, official records on suicide are available. Self-murder was a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church, penalised by prohibition of burial in consecrated ground and also confiscation by royal authorities of the goods of the deceased and the implement used to commit suicide (the deodand), whether it belonged to the deceased or not.

The investigation of all deaths that did not seem to be natural was entrusted to the coroner and a jury drawn from men in the area in which the body was found. The jury was to report:

1. (a) who found the deceased;

2. (b) how the deceased died: whether of natural causes, by accident, by murder or self-murder, and whether the death was felonious (a serious offence resulting in the liability of execution of a living offender and to confiscation of land and goods after death), that is, committed when the deceased was responsible for his/her actions;

3. (c) whether the deceased had any chattels (goods other than land) and who had them now.

Reports of these investigations can be found in the few surviving rolls of coroners from the 13th and early 14th centuries and, in greater numbers, in the records of the Eyre, a judicial and administrative inquiry that was sent out to English counties from the 12th to the early 14th centuries. Drawing on information from coroners' inquests, Eyre juries were required to report all suicides that had occurred since the last Eyre (Reference HunnisettHunnisett, 1959; Reference HelmholzHelmholz, 1986). Their information was not necessarily recent because Eyres visited counties no more than every 7 years (Reference BarkerBarker, 1990). Reports on suicides contained in them are generally very terse, and are recorded in abbreviated, medieval legal Latin.

Eyre records are housed in the Public Record Office and are the best existing source of information about suicide in medieval England. There are few medical records for such an early period, the survival of coroners' rolls is extremely patchy and very few medieval English church court records survive (Reference HunnisettHunnisett, 1959; Reference HelmholzHelmholz, 1986). A small number of references to suicide appear in chronicles; these are interesting but would be unusual cases and may not be representative of suicides in general in this period. Murray (Reference Murray1998) has examined and analysed some of the Eyre records for this period but does not entirely address issues of mental illness and self-killing.

Eyre records cannot answer all of the questions of interest to psychiatrists; in particular, they cannot be used to give reliable data on suicide rates. They can, however, be used to give useful qualitative data on suicidal behaviour and concepts of mental state and responsibility for one's actions.

Examples

The following transcriptions of case vignettes from the Eyre rolls illustrate a number of cases where different verdicts were found in self-killings.

Demographic information derived from Eyre records

Wealth of suicides

Goods forfeited to the king are recorded in all but two cases (Table 2). Some individuals only forfeited the deodand (weapon of their self-killing), whereas others had significant resources (8 pounds and 6 shillings in the case of one woman and 31 pounds and 2 shillings in the case of one man) and would be regarded as ‘wealthy’ (Reference DyerDyer, 1989). Women rarely forfeited more than a pound.

Table 2

Goods forfeited to the crown by individuals committing felonious suicide, from selected English Eyre records between 1227 and 1330 (by gender)

Forfeit1	Female	Male	Total
None	19	13	32
Deodand only	3	3	6
< 1 shilling	5	12	17
1 shilling to 1 pound	29	64	93
> 1 pound	3	35	38
No record of forfeit	2	0	2
Total	61	127	188

Method of suicide

It was usual to record the method of suicide in the Eyre records, both because of a need to show the cause of death and because the implement causing a death was forfeited to the king under the law of deodand. In 189 cases the method of suicide was recorded. We have grouped deaths by stabbing or cutting with knives, daggers, forks, swords or other sharp objects together (Table 3). Hanging is the most common method of self-killing in both men and women, drowning is the next most common in men and women and the use of sharp objects is an almost exclusively male method of self-killing. Other methods of self-killing are rare.

Table 3

Method of self-killing from selected English Eyre records between 1227 and 1330 (by gender and verdict)

Method	Male	Female	Suicide	Accident	Total
Hanging	59	37	96	0	96
Drowning	40	20	54	6	60
Sharp object	26	3	25	4	29
Burning	1	1	2	0	2
Jumping	1	0	1	0	1
Starvation	1	0	0	1	1
Unknown	7	2	8	1	9
Total	135	63	186	12	198

Location of death

In two-thirds of records the general location of the suicide is noted: whether the body was found in its own home, that of another, in water or in another outside location such as a field or wood (Table 4). Given our current understanding of medieval gender roles, with women being largely based inside the home (Reference HanawaltHanawalt, 1998), we expected that men might be more likely to commit suicide outside the home and women inside the home. There is, however, no gender difference in the site of committing suicide.

Table 4

Site of self-killing from selected English Eyre records between 1227 and 1330 (by gender)

Location	Female	Male	Total
Own home	20	35	55
Other's home	2	10	12
Farm building	1	1	2
Outside — field	0	7	7
Outside — water	16	33	49
Unknown	24	49	73
Total	63	135	198

Reliability of records

Although the Eyre records are incomplete, we have managed to find records of 198 cases of self-killing. That so many records exist is a result of the importance of legal documents and of the early centralisation of justice in medieval England. English legal documents afford the best available body of factual information on medieval suicide.

Murray (Reference Murray1998), in the first of his volumes on suicide in the Middle Ages, examines medieval legal records, including some Eyre rolls, for the period that we have studied. Although we have a number of cases in common, we present new cases that have not been reported elsewhere and we have explored the information differently.

We would anticipate that the records that we have examined underrepresent the true number of suicides in the communities that the reporting Eyres represent for a number of reasons. First, there are clearly missing records for this period. Sometimes it can be seen that suicide cases mentioned at the coroner's inquest do not appear on the Eyre roll. Second, it is likely that suicide was underreported. It is recognised that even today suicide rates are underestimated through imperfect detection and an assumption that a death that might have been suicide was an accident unless proved otherwise (Reference SymondsSymonds, 1985). It has been suggested that there would have been pressure on medieval communities to underreport suicides to royal officials, because of the consequences for the family of the suicide, who could not bury him or her in consecrated ground according to the rites of the Church, and would be unable to keep the suicide's goods (Reference HanawaltHanawalt, 1979; Reference MacDonald and MurphyMacDonald & Murphy, 1990). The records show some cases of attempts to conceal suicides, with families or neighbours burying those who had killed themselves, or removing the goods of a suicide before they could be examined by royal authorities. Presumably some similar offences went undetected. More detailed examination of the Eyres shows no evidence that self-killing was underreported to a greater extent than other offences: it is accepted that there was a gap between law and practice in medieval England.

The cases may be drawn from an unrepresentatively affluent population. No reliable information is available as to the population size and wealth in England before the late 14th century, but on any estimate the number of people with little or no money or valuable goods that could be forfeited to the king must have been large. Few poor individuals, however, appear in our data. It is possible, but unlikely, that poorer individuals were less inclined to kill themselves. It would be more likely that those responsible for reporting suspicious deaths to the coroner did not report deaths of poorer individuals without social standing or goods to be forfeited.

Although clerics appear to be over-represented, many men were involved in church activities and the presence of a description as a cleric does not indicate their level of involvement in the church. What does appear to be important in their description as a cleric is that their profession is mentioned at all, whereas few others are. Perhaps this is because the sin of self-murder was particularly abhorrent in those who were preaching that it was a sin. It might be suggested that there would be less pressure for concealment of suicide of clerics who did not have descendants to inherit their goods, but because some lower level priests were able to marry there would have been the usual pressure to conceal their suicide.

Methods of self-killing

As the implement causing death was forfeited to the crown, relatively complete records of method of suicide were available. There are no recorded cases of self-poisoning as a method of suicide. Self-poisoning was a particularly unacceptable method of self-killing and there may have been some cultural bias against using this method to kill oneself (Reference MacDonald and MurphyMacDonald & Murphy, 1990). It seems unlikely, however, given the accessibility of naturally occurring poisons and widespread knowledge of herbal remedies (Reference RawcliffeRawcliffe, 1997), that self-poisoning did not occur. Chronicle sources have shown knowledge of poisoning in this period (Paris, 1880). More likely explanations of the lack of reports of suicide by poisoning would seem to be either the inability of medieval inquests to detect the presence of poisons in the body or the lack of suspicion aroused by deaths without the presence of physical evidence external to the body.

Hanging was the most commonly recorded method of suicide in both men and women, accounting for over half the deaths in total. It would be likely that a greater proportion of deaths by hanging than other methods were reported to the Eyre because there was incontrovertible physical evidence of self-killing and objects to be forfeited to the crown (the rope and beam). It may also be that there actually were proportionately more deaths by hanging. In women, it could be that the reluctance to hang themselves, which is suggested by later figures, was overcome in the Middle Ages because of a lack of alternatives. They may have been less able or willing to poison themselves and, having a more home-based domestic role, may have been less able to drown themselves because this would have necessitated them leaving their usual ‘women's space’. Our data, however, do not give us any evidence to support this.

Death by drowning was also common. It is likely to have been underreported because if the body was not found the coroner did not have to become involved. In addition, deaths by drowning often may have been thought to be accidental and not usually reported as suspicious.

The use of knives, axes or swords is predominantly a male method of suicide. This may reflect cultural acceptability of male use of such implements or greater accessibility of these for men. The latter seems unlikely, because women would have ready access to potentially lethal household knives and axes. The greater use by men than women of sharp instruments as a method of suicide may, rather, be due to the cultural acceptability of violence in men that might generalise to violence in suicide in men. This shows an important consistency with the excess of violent methods of suicide seen in men now (Reference Appleby, Shaw and AmosAppleby et al, 1999).

Self-burning is rare, as is death by jumping, reflecting the lack of high buildings and that jumping from cliffs or bridges into water might be regarded as an accidental fall, the body could have disappeared or, if seen as deliberate, might have been recorded as a drowning case.

The case of self-starvation and deprivation of fluid was not found to be suicide, implying that death by omission was not regarded as self-killing. The distinction between acts and omissions remains present in modern law, for example in cases of hunger strikers ( Leigh v. Gladstone, 1909; Secretary of State for Home Department ex parte Robb, 1995).

Comparison with later suicide statistics

There are twice as many recorded cases of suicide in men than women. This may be a true record of gender ratios but it is possible that the rates in women are under-represented because married women were unlikely to have independent goods to be forfeited to the crown. However, one of the more robust findings in suicide statistics across the ages in England is the higher recorded suicide rate in men compared with women. Contemporary statistics and studies looking at suicide in Victorian, Tudor and Stuart times have all shown similarly increased rates in men (Reference AndersonAnderson, 1987; Reference MacDonald and MurphyMacDonald & Murphy, 1990). The roles of men and women in society have changed little until recent times so it is not possible to say whether this gender difference has a biological or social origin.

Although the excess of male suicides appears to be constant, the methods of suicide appear to vary with time, which probably reflects accessible and culturally acceptable means of suicide. In medieval suicides, as mentioned previously, there are no cases of poisoning because this was a particularly abhorrent method, whereas today this is a common method of suicide in women in Britain. In our cases, hanging is the most common method of suicide and there are no gender differences in this, whereas the Victorian studies suggest that men were much more likely to hang themselves than women, whose characteristic method of suicide was drowning.

Descriptions of mental illness and understanding of intent

Clarke (Reference Clarke1975) discusses descriptions and treatment of those with mental illness in this period. The language used in the Eyre rolls to describe suicides apparently due to mental illness is consistent with that which Clarke discusses and in our study the use of descriptions of the felonious and non-felonious suicides in those apparently suffering from mental illness is interesting. Returning a verdict of accident, rather than suicide, in cases of self-killing was rare. Accidental verdicts were found where mental disturbance was caused by a physical illness (e.g. “labouring under an acute fever”) or an inherent mental disturbance did not allow the individual to form the requisite intent. In this case series there were only eight such accidental verdicts. These individuals had to be sufficiently impaired as a result of illness to be unable to form the intent to kill themselves. The descriptions of these individuals imply that they were suffering from severe mental illnesses, probably psychotic illnesses, and that they were easily recognisable as behaving unusually to those around them. Of the felonious suicides, six were identified as clearly suffering from mental illness but apparently able to be responsible for their own actions and thus for killing themselves. That the remaining 182 individuals killing themselves were free of any mental illness would seem very unlikely, given current information about mental illness in those killing themselves (Reference Barraclough, Bunch and NelsonBarraclough et al, 1974). It would seem more likely that many of them were suffering from non-psychotic or quietly psychotic illnesses. This implies that there was a difference in the understanding of the ability to form intent, that labouring under a frenzy one could not do so whereas in other psychiatric states one could. Although not as yet systematically examined, homicide records from this period would seem to support this distinction (Reference HunardHunard, 1969).

Significantly, in the eight cases of non-felonious self-killing there are no cases of hanging, although it is common in the sample as a whole. This may shed more light on the idea of the sort of mental states that were regarded as excusing conduct that might otherwise be criminal. The act of hanging may have been seen as requiring a more deliberate plan than self-killing by drowning or stabbing, which might be more impulsive and require less structured thought, so that it was inconceivable to medieval jurors that a person whose mental state was such that it would excuse otherwise criminal actions would be able to hang himself.

Further research in this field will focus on the attitudes of juries during this period, an extension of the examination of coroners' records into the late medieval period, many of which have not yet been examined, and exploring the evolution of ideas about intent and psychiatric theories. In addition we intend to develop an understanding of across-time, cross-cultural psychiatry. There has recently been an upsurge of interest among historians and lawyers in suicide, and this area should also be of importance to and illuminated by psychiatrists.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

• ▪ This paper gives a historical perspective on suicide at a time of evolving legal and religious attitudes to suicide during the earliest period for which English legal records are available.

• ▪ Self-killing is more common in men than women in the medieval period; this is a consistent finding over time.

• ▪ Few of the individuals killing themselves were regarded as suffering from mental illnesses.

LIMITATIONS

• ▪ Some Eyre records are clearly missing from this period.

• ▪ Self-killings are likely to have been underreported to the Eyres.

• ▪ Recording of self-killings is brief and incomplete.