No matter how often
I think about it, the fact that suicide wasn’t decriminalised in England and
Wales until 1961 never loses its power to shock. Barely believably, in a world
of passenger jets, space exploration, television and pop music, one which in
many ways appears not so different to our own, those who failed in an attempt
to take their lives were still, at least theoretically, liable to prosecution
and imprisonment. Even if criminal
proceedings were increasingly rare, hospital staff continued to meet their
obligation to report cases of attempted suicide to the Police – and the
Metropolitan Police’s own guidance of the time was unequivocal; "an attempt to commit
suicide is an attempt to commit a felony, and therefore punishable with hard
labour’.
