https://archive.org/details/suicide-fedden-1938Chapters 1-3 of 10
I. Introduction
II. Servant and Widow
III. The Suicide Horror and the Savage
The blurb states:
"This book is the first comprehensive study to be written in English of the infinitely various attitudes towards suicide throughout the history of the human race. The causes of suicide in primitive, classical, mediæval and more modern times, and the points of view which have led philosophers to condemn or approve the custom, are expounded with a scholarly thoroughness in which pedantry plays no part, so that the volume is a gold-mine of out-of-the-way information on the subject."
From the book:
"A certain number of individuals have continuously found this act the most efficient and satisfactory response to circumstances they did not choose to put up with or to which they could find no other reply."
"The personal suicide is usually persecuted by society or only grudgingly recognised even in times of tolerance."
"Suicide is the price paid by many to view the unfamiliar new landscape. The transition to self-sufficiency has often lain for the weak, unfortunate and misplaced via self-destruction. Such deaths, which have been multiplying for a hundred years, are oddly distributed taxes levied against gigantic change."
"When the number of those who are giddy standing alone grows less, then time will reduce the number of suicides also."