His fifth reason was that circumstances arise in which some people convince themselves that their deaths would benefit their families.  Thus, insurances may fall in, for, after one or two premiums have been paid, many offices take the risk of suicide.  Or they may know that when they are gone, wealthy relatives will take care of their children, who will thus be happier and better off than these are while they, the fathers, live.  Wrong as it may be, this, indeed, is an attitude with which it is difficult not to feel a certain sympathy.  After all, we are told that there is no greater love than that of a man who lays down his life for his friend, though there ran be no doubt that the saying was not intended to include this kind of laying down of life.

Colonel Unsworth’s sixth cause was the increasing atrophy of the public conscience.  He stated that suicide is rarely preached against from the pulpit, as drunkenness is for instance.  Further, a jury can seldom be induced to bring in a verdict of felo-de-se. Even where the victim was obviously and, perhaps painfully sane, his act is put down to temporary insanity.

Other causes are drink, hereditary disposition, madness in all its protean shapes; incurable disease, unwillingness to face the consequences of sin or folly; the passion of sexual love, which is sometimes so mighty as to amount to madness; the effects of utter grief such as result from the loss of those far more beloved than self, of which an instance is at hand in the case of the Officer in charge of the Shelter at Great Peter Street, Westminster, mentioned earlier in this book, who, it may be remembered, tried to kill himself after the death of his wife and child; and lastly, where women are concerned, terror and shame at the prospect of giving birth to a child, whose appearance in the world is not sanctioned by law or custom.

Suicide among women is, however, comparatively rare, a fact which suggests either that the causes which produce it press on or affect them less, or that in this particular, their minds are better balanced than are those of men.  I was told, at any rate, that but few women apply to the Suicide Bureau of the Army for help in this temptation; though, perhaps, that may be due to the greater secretiveness of the sex.

Speaking generally, this magnitude of the evil to be attacked may be gauged from the fact that about 3,800 people die by their own hands in England and Wales every year, a somewhat appalling total.

Intending suicides come into the hands of the Army Bureau in various ways.  Some of them see notices in the Press descriptive of this branch of the Social Work.  Some of them are found by policemen in desperate circumstances and brought to the Bureau, and some are sent there from different localities by Salvation Army Officers.

I have looked through the records of numbers of these cases, but, for obvious reasons, it is difficult to give a full and accurate description of any of them.  The reader, therefore, must be content to accept my assurance of their genuine nature.  One or two, however, may be alluded to with becoming vagueness.  Here is an example of a not infrequent kind, when a person arrives at the office having already attempted the deed.