The interface of the civil and criminal law of suicide at common law (1194–1845)

Suicide, … has a capacity to beget paradox in the ethical and legal systems that attempt to house it.A Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, 2000, p153.Poor men, God made, and all for that!The reverence struck me; o'er each headReligiously was hung its hat,Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,Sacred from touch: each had his berth,His bounds, his proper place of rest,Who last night tenanted on earthSome arch, where twelve such slept abreast, –Unless the plain asphalte seemed best.Robert Browning (1812–1889), ‘The Morgue’.Nowadays, suicide is considered essentially a private act, although what constitutes suicide for epidemiological and even clinical purposes in not wholly resolved. Historically, however, at common law, the act of self-killing was a felony with significant religious and legal consequences that impacted upon the deceased person as well as upon his or her whole family. This article identifies the influence of Christian theology, legal theory, and social and medical developments upon attitudes to the felony of self-murder and its definition. It focuses upon the start of more psychologically informed attitudes manifested in landmark court judgments involving exclusion clauses in English mid-nineteenth century insurance contracts. The article illustrates that the law in respect of socially controversial matters does not necessarily develops in a linear progression, nor does it accurately reflect public sentiments. More specifically, the article describes an ongoing definitional conundrum with suicide — whether it should be designated as committed by persons of significantly impaired mental state. The authors observe that in spite of reform to the criminal law of suicide, the civil law relating to suicide has continued to be characterised by ambivalence, ambiguity and significant vestiges of counter-therapeutic moralising.