To a Better Place...a Second Compendium of Suicide

by Nicola Sly

This is a second collection of real historical suicides, as they were reported in the contemporary newspapers, looking at what drove people to take this, the most extreme step. Who were they, what were their circumstances, why did they decide to die, how did they plan their demise, what were their last thoughts and what important messages did they have for those they left behind? The text includes tragic suicide notes, some short, some lengthy and even some that were written in verse.

Using real case histories and covering the whole of the United Kingdom, this book looks compassionately at the varied ways of committing suicide, from the more usual methods such as hanging, taking poison, shooting, throat-cutting or jumping from a great height to the highly unorthodox, such as the Birmingham gentleman who swallowed a walking stick in 1892 and the Staffordshire man who set out to drown himself in a pond in 1914 but was attacked and killed by a dog on his way there.

The book examines what drove people to end their life. Unrequited love, murder-suicide, extreme shyness, fits of temper, despair, religion, failure, shame, jealousy, poverty, illness, debt, pain and fear – every human condition and emotion is laid bare within the pages, providing a revealing insight into one of the most taboo aspects of our social history.

291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 19, 2013

About the author

Nicola Sly has a Masters Degree in forensic and legal psychology and currently teaches criminology to adult learners. She lives in South Wales.