{"id":369,"date":"2017-03-24T19:35:06","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T19:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/?page_id=369"},"modified":"2017-04-05T17:42:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T17:42:43","slug":"irish-american-suicides-1865-1912","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/cincinnati-irish-births-and-deaths\/irish-american-suicides-1865-1912\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish-American Suicides, 1865-1912"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Kelly Schmitz<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Imagine walking down the street on a cool, fall day in downtown Cincinnati.\u00a0 The year is 1893, right in the heart of the Gilded Age and the beginning of the Progressive Era.\u00a0 You pass a 55-year-old Irish man on the street name Mat. Kinsley and don\u2019t even give him a second glance.\u00a0 Little do you know, this laborer is going through a troubled time.\u00a0 His thoughts are unsettled, his mind is wild, and later that day he puts a bullet through his tired body, bringing his life to an abrupt and sudden end.\u00a0 It\u2019s very near impossible to know just what drove him and various other suicidal Irish-Americans over the edge in the mid-1800s to early 1900s, but what is for certain is that each of these individuals has a unique piece in a much larger narrative.<\/p>\n

Mat. Kinsley\u2019s death gives a good overall picture of the average Cincinnati Irish-American suicide of that time period.\u00a0 Searching the digitized Cincinnati birth and death records, 63 deaths related to both suicide and Irish ancestry between 1865 and 1912 are propagated.\u00a0 An overwhelming majority of those suicides were of men (78%) as opposed to women (22%), and over half (62%) of those suicides were by a married person.\u00a0 The most common age range was 50-59 (30%), followed by 60-69 (19%) and 17% for both 30-39 and 40-49.\u00a0 Only 30 of the records listed the person\u2019s occupation (one of them being listed as retired), but the only occupation that had a significant number was the laborers (12).\u00a0 Thirty-one per cent died of some form of poison or overdose, arsenic and Paris Green being the most common, but shooting (18%), hanging (18%), and drowning (15%) also had sizable numbers.\u00a0 Paris Green is a toxic inorganic compound that in addition to being used as a paint pigment and in fireworks, was also commonly used as rat poison and insecticide in the 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries.\u00a0 Finally, the locations of these deaths show a significant cluster downtown, with smaller but equal scattering on the east and west sides, and even a few outside the city limits.\u00a0 It\u2019s tempting to draw conclusions and assume that these statistics are unique to the Irish, but a quick glance through the birth and death records of immigrants with German ancestry shows similar results.\u00a0 However, while it is true that the suicides occurring within these two groups were similar, the Germans had far more suicides, revealing 710 results when searching the same database.\u00a0 This figure is probably due to the greater number of Germans in Cincinnati\u2019s population at the time.<\/p>\n

According to a book published in 1906 entitled Modern Social Conditions<\/em>, author William B. Bailey compared the suicide rates per 100,000 people from 1887-93 of 20 different groups.\u00a0 Germany was placed at number five with 206, and Ireland was second to last with 25 (301).\u00a0 The reason he offered for this comes from a quote by General Frances A. Walker, who writes, \u201cHe (the Irish) dies by every form of injury except suicide.\u00a0 With indomitable gaiety and hopefulness, he refuses to look upon this world as wholly bad, or to quit it until the time has come.\u00a0 The Germans, on the other hand, are the great suiciding people among us\u201d (302).\u00a0 As it would appear, the Irish values and outlook on life deter them from committing suicide in all but the most extreme of cases.<\/p>\n

Even though their rate of suicide was less than most other immigrant groups, the Irish were not immune.\u00a0 Fifty to 59-year-old male laborerss were still the most likely to commit suicides across all immigrant ethnic groups.\u00a0 Bailey offers an explanation for this as well, stating that \u201cThe temperament of woman seems to enable her to bear misfortune better than man.\u00a0 He leads a more active life, is usually more ambitious, and the failure to gain some desired end seems to affect him more seriously.\u00a0 The life of woman is more centered in her home, where she is shielded from the stress and storm of life\u201d (304).\u00a0 In this early 20th<\/sup> century interpretation of reasons for suicide, this means that men like Mat. Kinsley could feel discouraged by their lack of success as a laborer and as they aged, the pressure keeps weighing on them until they can bear it no longer.\u00a0 We will never know the true reason some felt compelled to end their lives so tragically, but not even the Irish, stereotyped or not in addition to gender stereotypes of the age, were invulnerable to suicide\u2019s powerful grasp.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/h4>\n

Bailey, William B.\u00a0Modern Social Conditions<\/em>. New York: Century, 1906.<\/p>\n

Cincinnati Birth and Death Records, 1865-1912.\u00a0University of Cincinnati Digital Resource Commons<\/em>, http:\/\/digital.libraries.uc.edu\/collections\/birthdeath\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Kelly Schmitz Imagine walking down the street on a cool, fall day in downtown Cincinnati.\u00a0 The year is 1893, right in the heart of the Gilded Age and the beginning of the Progressive Era.\u00a0 You pass a 55-year-old Irish… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"parent":57,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-369","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/369\/revisions\/559"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}