September is Suicide Prevention Month, a time set aside to remind us that while murderers always get screen time on the evening news, suicide is the stealthy killer which takes even more lives.
Suicide has always been with us but has not been well documented in historical records. Likewise, suicide's grim handmaiden, mental illness, has generally been misunderstood throughout most of our history, and this lack of understanding persists today.
Due to a willingness of some newspaper editors to report deaths by suicide, we are able to identify at least a few of the tormented souls who took their own lives. Sometimes the news accounts will provide background on the deaths, and often an editor will speculate on the immediate cause of the suicide.
One of the most interesting accounts of a suicide in 19th-century Arkansas occurred in November 1847, when a well-regarded veteran of the just-concluded war with Mexico killed himself with his pistol. The news article is unsigned, so we do not know who wrote the story, but it gives an unusually detailed account of the deceased, his death, and a possible cause.
Thomas Denton's death was recorded on page 2 of the Arkansas Gazette of Nov. 11, 1847, under the simple headline "Suicide in Arkansas." The writer noted the rarity of suicides in "our State, where labor meets with a fair reward, and where the chase [hunting] and other excitements of western life may serve to restore the spirit in elasticity [of the mind] ..."
Denton's service as a volunteer in the Mexican war was duly noted, including his fighting in the Battle of Buena Vista. The news account also reported that Thomas' brother, John, died during the war. Following his discharge from the militia, Thomas Denton took a job as a guard at the new state prison in Little Rock near the current state capitol.
In the autumn of 1847, Denton took a week of leave from his job to go to his father's farm and help him "house his corn crop"--meaning harvest the crop and get it into a crib.
This is how the newspaper account unfolded the sad story: "He assisted his father during the whole of last week, until Friday, when he bid him 'farewell' in the field, as if intending to return to town. He proceeded to the house, bid his mother good-bye, went down to the springs where his sisters were washing, bid them good-bye, and started off, but did not get beyond the lane, before he shot himself with a pistol."
The news account expressed the shock of the event, noting that Denton's "associates say that they never perceived anything in his manner to indicate such a step ..."
While psychiatry was in its infancy in 1847 and bipolar disorder was yet to be identified, the author of the account of Thomas Denton's death speculated on his mental health: "Yet this sad affair might have had its origin in a deep-seated melancholy, which he never allowed himself to disclose, but which, perhaps, preyed the heavier upon his spirits on that account."
Melancholia in this case was probably severe depression, though it had multiple medical and popular meanings at the time.
Another antebellum suicide was far more dramatic--the victim being an enslaved man. In the summer of 1853 an unnamed runaway slave was captured in Phillips County and put on a boat to his owner in Mississippi. The local Helena newspaper reported that the shackled man leapt over the side of the boat and disappeared below the muddy waters, never to be found.
The same year that defiant runaway made his final escape from slavery, there was a suicide in Crawford County involving a young woman who overdosed on laudanum, a popular 19th-century medicine noted for its high opium content. The newspaper account noted that the young victim had just returned from a religious camp meeting, concluding "we are informed that disappointed love was the cause."
Pining for lost love was often cited as a cause for suicide, especially among women. Mabel Brookins, a Little Rock widow, killed herself in 1892 by swallowing rat poison. The 24-year-old had been "despondent" since her husband, firefighter Henry Brookins, was killed 18 months earlier when he fell from a horse-drawn fire engine responding to an alarm.
In November 1918, as Pine Bluff citizens "boisterously celebrated" the end of World War I, a 21-year-old Army deserter "became stricken with remorse" and drank poison. His wife, 17 years of age, took time to write a note before drinking the remaining poison.
Newspaper accounts document that a surprising number of Arkansans killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid. In March 1919, a Little Rock man drank carbolic acid while at the barber shop. A year earlier, a Fort Smith man walked into Shillcutt Drug Store in Little Rock and purchased two vials of carbolic acid, then took a seat at the soda fountain, where he consumed both vials. He died three minutes later.
A surprising number of people, usually girls or women, killed themselves by drowning. At least that is what the local coroners ruled. According to the Paris Express in Logan County, in February 1901, "Miss Nancy Baker suicided near Hackett by drowning." In the summer of 1920 "one of Prairie County's best farmers" drowned four of his small children and then himself in Colotche Bay.
Suicide by drug overdose was quite common by the dawn of the 20th century. One of the most bizarre involved a Hot Springs drugstore clerk in March 1900 sneaking into his workplace after having been on "a spree" and taking "just the proper quantity" of morphine to end his life.
Tragically and remarkably, two of the four grown children of renowned governor, U.S. senator, and attorney general of the United States Augustus H. Garland killed themselves. The first of the Garland children to die of her own hand was his only surviving daughter, 23-year-old Daisy Garland, who killed herself in 1893.
In announcing Daisy's death, The New York Times described her as "a well known and very popular figure in [Washington, D.C.] society." According to Washington newspapers, Miss Garland shot herself through the heart with her father's revolver.
Garland's son, William A. "Will" Garland, killed himself just before Christmas 1907. This suicide played out in a particularly sad and public manner. After being rebuffed by his estranged wife, Will Garland checked into the new Marion Hotel in downtown Little Rock. After unsuccessfully trying to obtain cocaine on the streets, he convinced the hotel doctor to give him a prescription for five doses--which he had no trouble legally filling late at night.
He retreated to his room and consumed all five, which was prelude to a night of raving and thrashing about. By 7 the next morning Will had to be restrained in his room, and the doctor gave him a sedative. He seemed out of danger and spoke rationally of his addiction and life failures.
Within two hours, however, Will Garland was dead. Both local daily newspapers covered the death in great detail, and both concluded it was a suicide.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2017 Arkansas ranked ninth in the nation in the number of suicides per 100,000 people with 631 deaths by suicide that year. More shockingly stated, on average, an Arkansan takes his or her life every 16 hours.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column was published Sept. 24, 2017.
Editorial on 09/22/2019