Today’s Trendsetting Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
According to the poet Bryon, no one who has ever handled an open razor has not, at some time, had the fleeting temptation to draw the blade across the throat. A similar phenomenon occurs when perfectly sane people edge towards a precipice and imagine what it would be like to throw themselves over.
Sometimes it needs only one person to slit his throat or jump from a high building for a host of imitative suicides to follow. Favored places to commit suicide include the London Monument (from which Elizabeth Moves threw herself in 1839 and thereby started a fashion), St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Campanile in Venice and the Kegon Waterfall near Tokyo. The column at the Place Vendôme in Paris had to be closed to the public in 1881 because of the numbers of people hurling themselves down. New Yorkers have the pick of hundreds of skyscraper buildings.
In February 1933 Kiyoko Matsumoto, a 19-year-old schoolgirl, plunged to her death by jumping into the open mouth of the volcano of Mihara-Yama on the island of Oshima, Japan. Kiyoko had developed an infatuation with one of her fellow students named Masako Tomita. Since lesbian relationships were considered taboo in Japanese culture, Kiyoko and Masako decided to travel the volcano to take their lives. Only Kiyoko jumped, ending her life there in the lava pit’s hellish temperature of 1200 °C. Her suicide caused a sensation and prompted thousands of imitators. In the remainder of 1933 another 143 followed Miss Matsumoto into the crater, and on one day alone there were six successful suicides and twenty-five unsuccessful attempts. In the next year the volcano claimed another 167. So great was public interest that boatloads of tourists flocked to the island. Visitors could dine at the coastal restaurants, take a camel ride to the top of Mihara-Yama and, on a good day, witness a suicide or two. 1,208 people attempted suicide in two years before a barrier was erected around the crater and it was made a criminal offense to purchase a one-way ticket to Oshima.
The Crater of Mihara-Yama
Culled from: Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears
A Word from the Good Book
My favorite book is Wisconsin Death Trip, a collection of 19th century newspaper articles from Black River Falls, Wisconsin accompanied by glass plate negatives taken by the town photographer in the same era. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
“Mrs. Phillip Fredericks, aged 82 years, who was partly insane, threw herself in her neighbor’s cistern at Beloit and was drowned. She had long planned death in this manner.” – Badger State Banner, July 23, 1891
Which leads one to wonder, how did everyone know she was planning death in this manner? Did she talk about it frequently? My mother used to say, “You kids are going to drive me to Moose Lake!” (an asylum in Minnesota). Did Mrs. Phillip Fredericks say something similar? “Keep it up, and I’m jumping in that cistern!” Also, “partly” insane? So many questions…