The Ageing Body, Memory-Loss and Suicide in Georgian England

Abstract

This article examines why older people were particularly prone to suicide in Georgian England, and argues that their suicidality is best understood through the lens of the ‘ageing body’. By centring on the experiences of the suicidal, it proposes that suicide was not ‘medicalised’ in the way traditionally described in the historiography, being reconceptualised, over the course of the eighteenth century, as a product of lunacy. Instead, it contends that older people often thought that their suicides were a rational response to the struggles of ageing, which included physical decline and embodied memory-loss. To do this, it uses previously unseen coroners’ inquests from across England, in addition to wills and medical writings. It examines these inquests for what they can tell us about the emotional and embodied experiences of older suicidal people, thus contributing to an under-researched aspect of the social history of ageing.