97Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Urška Bratož*
Suicide in the Austrian Littoral  
at the Turn of the 20th Century**
IZVLEČEK
SAMOMOR V AVSTRIJSKEM PRIMORJU NA PRELOMU 19. IN 20. STOLETJA
Prispevek skuša razbrati družbeno podobo samomora ob koncu 19. in na začetku 20. 
stoletja, predvsem na primeru Trsta kot velikega avstrijskega urbanega centra, kjer je bil 
trend naraščanja samomorilnosti opazneje viden vsaj od sedemdesetih let 19. stoletja. Ob 
zaznavanju naraščajoče prisotnosti samomora v družbi je bilo mogoče opazovati, kaj so z 
različnih koncev Evrope prinašala razmišljanja o samomoru iz zadnje četrtine 19. stoletja, 
od Morsellijeve študije preko Masaryka do Durkheima, obenem pa, kako so diskurzi okrog 
samomora odstirali nekoliko širšo sliko družbe, skupaj z njenimi strahovi (pred družbenimi 
problemi in spremembami, ne nazadnje pa pred potencialno grožnjo imitativnega efekta, ki 
naj bi ga s poročanjem o samomorih ustvarjal dnevni tisk).
Časopisni diskurz je običajno sledil znanstvenim objavam svojega časa, sočasna opa-
žanja o množičnosti samomorov so se potrjevala skozi statistične analize in medicinske, 
sociološke, filozofske ter druge razprave, obenem pa so odpirala tudi mnoge druge družbene 
problematike, s katerimi je bilo samomor v urbanem prostoru mogoče povezati (alkoho-
lizem, rast proletariata, revščina, spreminjanje vrednot idr.). Vse to je sooblikovalo javno 
razpravo o samomoru kot problemu moderne družbe, s poudarkom na (velikih) mestih, 
saj je bila problematika samomorov tam veliko bolj izrazita kot v manjših neindustrijskih 
mestih ali na podeželju Avstrijskega primorja.
Ključne besede: samomor, mesta, Trst, Koper, modernizacija, 1870–1910, 
Avstro-Ogrska
1.01 DOI: https://doi.org/10.51663/pnz.64.2.05
*  PhD, Research Associate, Science and Research Centre Koper, Institute for Historical Studies, Garibaldijeva 
ulica 1, SI-6000 Koper, urska.bratoz@zrs-kp.si; ORCID: 0009-0005-5047-3572
** The article was written in the context of the research project J6-3123 Sin, Shame, Symptom: Suicide and Its Perceptions 
in Slovenia (1850–2000), financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS).
98 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
ABSTRACT
The paper seeks to examine the social image of suicide at the end of the 19th and the 
beginning of the 20th century, focusing on the case of Trieste as a major Austrian urban 
centre, where the suicide rates were visibly increasing from at least the 1870s onwards. The 
perception of the growing presence of suicide in society made it possible to observe the reflec-
tions on suicide from the last quarter of the 19th century, originating from different parts of 
Europe (Morselli, Masaryk, Durkheim), and at the same time how the discourses around 
suicide shed light on a somewhat broader picture of society, including its fears (of social 
problems and change, not least the potential threat of the imitative effect that the daily press 
was believed to create by reporting on suicides).
The newspaper discourse usually followed the scientific publications of the time, and the 
contemporaneous observations on the mass of suicides were confirmed through statistical 
analyses and medical, sociological, philosophical, and other debates, while raising many 
other social issues with which suicide in urban areas could be linked (alcoholism, the growth 
of the proletariat, poverty, changing values, etc.). All these factors shaped the public debate 
on suicide as a problem of modern society, with an emphasis on (big) cities, where the prob-
lem of suicide was much more pronounced than in smaller, non-industrial towns, or in the 
countryside of the Austrian Littoral.
Key words: suicide, cities, Trieste, Koper, modernisation, 1870-1910, Austria-Hungary
Introduction
During the late decades of the 19th century, as suicide rates in Trieste rose, con-
troversy surrounding this topic appeared to intensify, with statistical and scientific 
discussions seeking to frame the phenomenon within parameters that could explain 
the observed increase in the city. These reflections were reported in the daily press, 
allowing the broader public to follow the scholarly debates that developed particularly 
from the last quarter of the 19th century onwards. The eye-catching headlines read 
“L’epidemia suicida”1 and “La mania suicida”;2 notably eloquent was a comment in 
1 L’Indipendente, June 26, 1912. See also Remec, who observed that this was the terminology used to refer to the 
large number of suicides particularly in the first post-war period and likely motivated by the Spanish flu epidemics 
of the time (Meta Remec, “Epidemija samomorov?: odmevi na naraščanje stopnje samomorilnosti na Slovenskem 
v 19. in 20. stoletju,” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 63, No. 1 (2023): 8‒41). Long before that, Neumann-Spallart 
had mentioned the “very appropriate and frequently used expression suicide epidemics”, stating that it graphically 
illustrated how elements of a miasmic infection float around like spores and fungi in the air in societies affected by 
suicidal tendencies. At a certain point, these societies are gripped by this infection and individuals fall acutely ill, i.e., 
commit suicide (F. X. Neumann-Spallart, “Ueber den Selbstmord,” Statistische Monatsschrift VII (1881): 314).
2 L’Indipendente, June 12, 1893. L’Indipendente was an irredentist newspaper published in Trieste between 1877 and 
1923, primarily targeting the intelligentsia and the social elite. – L‘Indipendente, http://www.atlantegrandeguerra.
it/portfolio/lindipendente/.
99Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Edinost: “Yesterday we reported three suicides, today we report two. Few issues of our 
newspaper are free from the sad headline ‘Suicide’ or ‘Attempted suicide’; however, 
having to record five suicides in two days ‒ that has never happened to us before.”3 
For at least a decade now, it had been impossible to open a newspaper, of any nation, 
without encountering a mention of suicide somewhere,4 and with the topic constantly 
filling newspaper pages, the impression was that it had become a common and com-
pletely normal occurrence.
Statistics for the municipality of Trieste provided by Pierpaolo Luzzatto-Fegiz 
show that suicide rates increased markedly during the period from the last decade of 
the 19th century to the early years of the 20th century, particularly among the male 
population. Between 1875 and 1922, the suicide rate in Trieste doubled for men and 
increased nearly fivefold for women, with the numbers among the male population 
reaching their peak in 1911, and among females in 19205 (see Chart 1). According to 
certain data,6 the general trends in the Austrian Littoral in the first three years of the 
20th century7 showed a particularly high suicide rate in the municipality of Trieste, 
with 32‒45 suicide cases per 100,000 inhabitants, while the figures were much lower 
in Istria (7‒9) and Gorizia, and the lowest in Dalmatia (see Chart 2).
A brief comparison of the city of Trieste as an urban area, the town of Koper as 
“semi-urban”, and the Koper countryside (Bertoki) as a rural environment shows that 
smaller urban centres and rural areas never reached the massive suicide rates observed 
in the cities. In the late 19th century, the incidence of suicide in the municipality of 
Koper (which encompassed the town and its suburban rural strip) was sporadic (a 
maximum of 3 cases per year in a population of around 8,000), as can be gleaned 
from several official statistical sources documenting causes of death (cumulative data 
gathered from the annual health reports produced by the municipal administration8). 
3 Edinost, May 27, 1904.
4 L’Indipendente, August 16, 1892.
5 Pierpaolo Luzzatto-Fegiz, La popolazione di Trieste (1875–1928) (Trieste: La editoriale libraria, 1929), 71. This 
fact sparked new debates around the issue of female suicide, its causes, and gender-based perceptions in the first 
post-war period, which were elaborated in detail by Matteo Perissinotto, “Perché le donne si uccidono? Analisi dei 
suicidi femminili a Trieste nel primo dopoguerra (1918‒1922),” DEP, 50 (2023): 1– 26.
6 Guido Timeus, “Contributo allo studio sulla diffusione dell‘alcoolismo nella città di Trieste,” Bollettino della Società 
adriatica di scienze naturali in Trieste 24 (1908): 76. 
7 Data for the 1870s show a somewhat different picture, with 11‒17 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for Trieste and envi-
rons, and 2‒7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants for Istria (Eduard Bratassević, “Die Selbstmorde in Oesterreich 1873–
1877 in Vergleichung zu jenen in Preussen, England, Frankreich, Russland und Italien,” Statistische Monatsschrift 4 
(1878): 429–33. Remec, “Epidemija samomorov?”). For data related to the 1819‒1872 period, see Platter, Ueber 
den Selbstmord.
8 See for example SI PAK 6, Box 233, f. 793/XIV (1889); Box 241, f. 580/XIV (1891); Box 249, f. 1070/XIV (1893), 
Box 253, f. 539/XIV (1894); Box 274, f. 63/XIV (1899). Municipal data for the beginning of the 20th century are 
incomplete or missing, with civil registers recording 11 cases of suicide between 1900 and 1906, only one of them 
being female. Parish death registers, which represent in fact the only source for determining the suicide rate in rural 
areas, clearly indicated the ‒ extremely rare ‒ cases of suicide (most often as “suicidium” or “autochiria”), but it is impos-
sible to know whether in certain cases they could have been covered up and recorded, for example, as accidents.
100 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
Chart 1: Suicide rates for the municipality of Trieste
Source: Luzzatto-Fegiz, La popolazione di Trieste
Chart 2: Suicide rates (per 100,000 inhabitants)
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1873-75 1876-80 1881-85 1886-90 1891-95 1896-1900 1901-1905 1906-1910
men (per 100,000 inhabitants) women (per 100,000 inhabitants)
1901 1902 1903 1904 1905
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Trieste and the environs Gorizia-Gradisca Istria Dalmatia
101Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Further on, the data that animated the scientific, statistical, and newspaper debates 
will be presented in detail and, of course, in the knowledge that statistics were not 
merely neutral collections of data (which has existed at least since Douglas questioned 
the reliability of official suicide statistics given the subjectivity of the reporters, the 
tendency to conceal suicides primarily within the family and the local community, and 
the limitation to mostly urban environments9). At the same time, contemporary dis-
courses and ideas about suicide will be observed, and largely linked to perceptions of 
the developing world at the turn of the 20th century, as is evident in the case of Trieste.10
The city of Trieste is an interesting place to analyse. By the 19th century it had 
grown to become a large urban centre, the maritime capital of the Austrian Littoral, 
and an industrial hub attracting masses of foreign workers; but towards the end of the 
century, it was already experiencing crises (e.g., in 1873), and the imperial era of the 
city gradually came to an end after 1891, when customs duties were abolished. The 
Austrian government introduced this measure as part of its plan for economic reha-
bilitation and promotion of industrial development, a project which involved Trieste, 
since the borders of the customs area also encompassed the territory of its municipal-
ity. The local industry related to port and shipbuilding activities increased, generating 
greater needs for labour from traditional workforce pools (Friuli, Istria, the Gorizia 
region, and Carniola). This, naturally, resulted in a substantial increase in population 
through immigration; from 155,471 inhabitants in 1890, the Trieste population rose 
to 247,471 inhabitants in 1913.11 As the proletariat grew, so did the issue of pauperisa-
tion.12 Trieste made efforts to tackle the “challenges of modernisation” in various ways, 
but frequently struggled to provide adequate living conditions, health care facilities, 
and other essential services to meet the needs of its increasing population.
Urbanisation, Modernisation, Dissolution  
of Traditional Values, and Suicide
In 1879, Enrico A. Morselli (1852‒1929), an Italian psychiatrist and anthropologist, 
published a baseline study on suicide (as a social phenomenon) relying on comparative 
statistics (Il suicidio: saggio di statistica morale comparata, 1879), in which he stated that 
suicide is particularly prevalent in areas “where people live agglomerated, [where] life’s 
difficulties, competition, poverty, and emigration are on the increase, and deeper and 
9 See Remec, “Epidemija samomorov?,” 10. Jack Douglas, The Social Meanings of Suicide (Princeton: Princeton 
University Press, 1967).
10 A comparison of data for Trieste with those for various cities of the Kingdom of Italy in 1904 shows Trieste registering 
the highest suicide rate with 14.3 per 1,000 deaths, higher than Venice (6.7), Milan (8.9), and Bologna (13.4). – Timeus, 
“Contributo allo studio,” 77.
11 Lucio Fabi, La carità dei ricchi: povertà e assistenza nella Trieste laica e asburgica del XIX secolo (Milano: F. Angeli, 
1984), 195, 196. See also Luzzatto-Fegiz, La popolazione di Trieste, 17, 18.
12 See, for example, Fabi, La carità dei ricchi. Marina Cattaruzza, La formazione del proletariato urbano: Immigrati, operai 
di mestiere, donne a Trieste dalla metà del secolo XIX alla prima guerra mondiale (Torino: Tommaso Musolini, 1979).
102 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
more harmful are the effects of economic disruptions.”13 He identified several factors 
with lesser or greater potential to influence suicide rates: in addition to cosmic and natu-
ral influences, he maintained that there were ethno-demographic factors, social factors 
(e.g., religion, culture, ethics, economic position, life in an urban environment), as well as 
biological conditions, social circumstances (e.g., age, sex, occupation, marital and social 
status), and psychological factors that could lead to suicide.
His work was influenced by the political and social contexts of post-unification 
Italy, where stressing the homogeneity of the Italian states14 was particularly impor-
tant ‒ namely, in the newly consolidated Kingdom of Italy, suicide rates (along with 
statistics related to crime and illiteracy) were interpreted as symptoms of a crisis of 
civilisation in the country.15
Morselli’s work on suicide, which earned him the position of assistant professor 
at the psychiatric clinic in Pavia, was an immediate success and even drew the atten-
tion of Émile Durkheim, who used part of Morselli’s statistical analyses as the empiri-
cal foundation for his well-known sociological study on suicide published in 1897. 
Durkheim’s main argument was that suicide is not only an individual act, but also 
a socially conditioned act, dependent “on forces outside the individual.”16 This idea 
was not entirely new. Six years before Durkheim’s book, Neumann-Spallart, who had 
compiled previous writings on suicide, summarised in the Statistische Monatsschrift 
journal the concept that suicide is one of those mass social phenomena shaped by 
general socio-physical influences experienced by an entire population, yet at the same 
time dependent on the free will and psychological state of each its individual.17
In the final decades of the 19th century, many scholars, inspired as much by 
Morselli’s study (1879) as by the works of the Czech politician, sociologist, and philos-
opher Tomáš G. Masaryk (Der Selbstmord als Sociale Massenerscheinung der Modernen 
Civilisation, 1881), stressed the strong connection between the modern era and the 
increasing incidence of suicide (which they attempted to demonstrate through statis-
tics and argued using medical rhetoric). 
One of the key points in Morselli’s work as well as in the writings of other con-
temporary authors with different theoretical backgrounds was that suicide, even at the 
turn of the 20th century, was a consequence of modernisation and an altered way of 
life, of an excess of sensory stimuli, of “a hectic urban life, fast means of transportation 
and communication, increased brainwork, women’s growing intellectual activity, and 
the heightened pace of work.”18 It was believed that urban suicide rates were higher 
because there was “more misery and more despondency, with less encouragement of 
13 Enrico Morselli, Il suicidio: saggio di statistica morale comparata (Milano, 1879), 261.
14 Morselli always paid particular attention to alleged ethnic-based variations in suicide tendencies.
15 Maria Teresa Brancaccio, “‚The Fatal Tendency of Civilized Society‘: Enrico Morselli‘s Suicide, Moral Statistics, and 
Positivism in Italy.” Journal of Social History 46, No. 3 (Spring 2013): 702. For more about Morselli’s and some other 
Italian studies from that time, see also Ty Geltmaker, Tired of living: Suicide in Italy from National Unification to World 
War I, 1860–1915 (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), 27 ff.
16 Émile Durkheim, Samomor. Prepoved incesta in njeni izviri (Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis, 1992), 22.
17 Neumann-Spallart, “Ueber den Selbstmord,” 314.
18 Jessica Slijkhuis and Harry Oosterhuis, “‚Paralysed with fears and worries‘: neurasthenia as a gender-specific disease 
of civilization,” History of Psychiatry 24, No. 1 (2013): 81.
103Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
restraint” in urban environments. Morselli further argued that the incidence of suicide 
(which he referred to as the “deadly disease of civilised peoples”) was higher in cities 
because the struggle for survival there was more intense.19 
French statistician Alfred Legoyt (1881) also wondered why suicide rates tended 
to be higher in cities, and argued that in urban areas, news of suicide travelled fast, while 
in the countryside, where the settlements were more dispersed, it was easier to conceal 
the cause of deaths or more difficult to verify them. Legoyt also contended that cities 
exhibited a culture of excess, such as alcohol abuse (which played a significant role in 
suicide), were inhabited by more people of more open and liberal views (who accounted 
for a large part of suicides), had higher rates of unemployment and homelessness, and 
a greater prevalence of various “moral infections”. Among the more general motives for 
suicide was, in his opinion, particularly indifference in religious matters.20
As we can read in a newspaper comment from that period, growing up in a world 
affected by the processes of modernisation was believed to afflict people even as children: 
“This modern child, born of restless and anxious people, often brought up in an enviro-
nment of irritating nervousness and languid melancholy, who sees too much, this child 
has now acquired a precocious simplicity, a premature intuition (…) The modern child 
reads too many picture books and has hands on too many newspapers. When his father 
stolidly speaks about suicide, when his uncle mocks religion, he pricks his ears. This is why 
the modern child can grow miserable more easily.”21
Even in the decades afterwards, many observations led to similar conclusions, that 
the number of suicides was gradually rising presumably because of increasing indi-
vidualism, particularly in urban environments; add to that 
“the hectic pace of life in modern cities, which are indeed great centres of culture, but they 
deprive man of any intimate contact with divine nature (…) that haste to live, that prevai-
ling eagerness for pleasure in big, noisy, tumultuous, stifling cities that make us forgetful 
of ourselves and of higher purposes, transforming ‒ as Lombardo Radice would say ‒ us 
people into ‘individuals’.”22
It was claimed that suicide had become an ordinary, common thing 
“encompassing all, from the callow youth who takes his own life because of a silly frivo-
lity, to the decrepit old man who accelerates his [natural] death because he can no longer 
enjoy himself (…) Suicide is now a necessity. This generation, intelligent yet floundering, 
sceptical, epileptic, full of crazy aspirations, and pervaded by an incessant fever of pleasure, 
smiles to suicide just as peacefully as a sick man does to the elixir that should give him 
relief and restore his strength.”23
19 Howard I. Kushner, “Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity,” in John Weaver and David Wright (eds.), Histories 
of Suicide. International Perspectives on Self-destruction in the Modern World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 
2009), 25, 26. Cf. Morselli, Il suicidio. For Masaryk’s and Durkheim’s arguments related to this topic, see also Remec, 
“Epidemija samomorov?.”
20 Alfred Legoyt, Le suicide ancien et moderne. Étude historique, philosophique et statistique (Paris: Drouin, 1881), 198, 199.
21 Matilde Serao, “I bimbi,” Il Piccolo, November 27, 1885.
22 L’Indipendente, June 26, 1912.
23 L’Indipendente, February 7, 1891.
104 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
Like Morselli, T. G. Masaryk argued that the suicide rate is directly proportional to 
social complexity: he maintained that the decline in religiosity resulting from the dis-
mantling of the traditional social system is the root cause of modern “suicide epidem-
ics”. In Masaryk’s view, suicide was “the fruit of progress, of education, of civilisation”24 
or at least a consequence of the disintegration of a unified worldview.25 Durkheim, for 
example, associated higher suicide rates with too strong (or too feeble) social integra-
tion, and his typification of suicide included “anomic” and “egoistic” suicides, which 
he believed were most characteristic of modern society.26
These and similar ideas partly reverberated in Slovene lands. Aleš Ušeničnik, one of 
the most important Slovene theologians and philosophers and the leading philosophical 
ideologist of Slovene clericalism in the first half of the 20th century, spoke out against so-
called liberalism, particularly because of its atheist nature and its demands for the separa-
tion of Church and State, which would weaken the influence of religion in society. He 
devoted an article to suicide in the newspaper Čas (1908), in which he summarised the 
prevalent conservative ideas of the time, such as the claim that suicides were more com-
mon in cities as these were particularly dangerous from a moral point of view: “Unbridled 
sexual drive, in particular, with its delusions and diseases is responsible for many, many 
suicides. In cities, the highest share of female suicides is represented by young women liv-
ing outside the family setting and succumbing to the temptations of big city life. And the 
number of suicides among the divorcees is even higher.”27 The desire was, manifestly, to 
preserve traditional values, family life, marriage, for the “primary causes of suicide” were 
said to be “alcoholism, sexual excesses and, particularly, the overwhelming hunger for 
enjoyment and the resulting feeling of surfeit, the disgust and revulsion toward life. “But 
the ultimate reason must be that which, besides modern hyperculture, greatly intensified 
this hunger, and that is faithlessness” or atheism as the absence of belief in the afterlife.28 
The modern man was thus said to be losing his footing, for scepticism had “shaken the 
foundations of the Christian worldview ‒ and, again, the numbers of suicide are rising; 
now more than ever, suicide is turning into big social epidemics.”29
It is in this same context that we can interpret 19th-century ideas promoting tradi-
tional family values as the best protection against self-destruction.30 Women, being more 
engaged in traditional roles, were considered more “resistant” to suicide. Potentially 
more problematic were those who started moving to areas outside the private sphere, 
24 Howard I. Kushner, “Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Medical and Social 
Thought,” Journal of Social History 26, No. 3 (Spring, 1993): 466, 467.
25 Neumann-Spallart, “Ueber den Selbstmord.”
26 Cf. Victor Bailey, This Rash Act. Suicide Across Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 
1998), 17.
27 Aleš Ušeničnik, “Samomor,” Čas 2, No. 6 (1908): 295. Similar thoughts appeared elsewhere in the Slovene press, for 
example, in the Kmetijske in rokodelske novice of 23 June 1875 (“The present time of liberalism is full of suicides every 
day …”), or the Slovenec of 4 June 1874 (“modern democratisation” as the cause of numerous crimes, including sui-
cides), etc. At times, we can also find more radical “criminalisation” of suicides in the Catholic press (except for those 
resulting from, say, mental illness), for example: “Suicide is one of the most terrible vices and evils with which man 
closes the door to his own penance. It is also the ugliest, most disgusting savagery by which the suicide defiles and 
brings indelible shame upon themselves and undying grief upon their close ones.” ‒ Zgodnja Danica, August 11, 1876.
28 Ušeničnik, “Samomor,” 297.
29 Ibidem.
30 Kushner, “Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity,” 27.
105Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
including working women, who had to earn their own living. It was believed that these 
circumstances could lead them to mental conditions, such as nervousness, which in 
some cases ended in suicide. We can read about it in a section of a longer treatise about 
“nervousness” authored by Edvard Šavnik (1852‒1931), a Slovene physician from Kranj: 
“Female labour is largely in a most unfavourable relationship to female physical strength 
and health. In addition to dangers to life and health to which female factory workers are 
exposed there is also the risk that the overtaxing and gruelling factory labour, so unsuited 
to their anatomy, may drive them to nervous strain, which is often the initiator of physical 
and mental illnesses.”31 
It was claimed women could avoid these anxious feelings by remaining in the circle of 
their traditional vocation, within the realm of family.
Reportedly, some 6% to 7% of attempted or completed suicides recorded in 
Trieste between 1903 and 1905 ‒ among women as well as men ‒ were associated with 
mental illness, but it would be more accurate to add to these the suicide attempts or 
cases caused by sadness (which in some instances, hypothetically, could have been 
induced by depression). These ranged between 11% and 20% in men, and 16% and 
23% in women, in the same period.32 As can be observed in the crime and accident 
sections of Trieste newspapers, the vocabulary used in relation to suicide cases or 
attempts was frequently linked to mental pathology:33 “They say that a person who 
tries to kill themselves or kills themselves is not of sane mind,” was one of such com-
mentaries.34 Individual cases of suicide were linked, for example, to “nervousness” 
or neurasthenia,35 hypochondria,36 even “postpartum fever”, which could nowadays 
be understood as postpartum depression,37 and other psychopathological conditions.
Neurasthenia,38 in particular, as a “terrible manifestation of modern life”39 carried a 
special connotation, and the discourse on the subject became even more intense during 
the interwar period.40 P. Drinot, who examined this issue in a non-European environ-
ment, observed that the term neurasthenia often appeared in the sense of “incapacity to 
deal with a modern and fast-changing world.”41 This inability to cope with the burdens 
of a dynamic world was said to be typical of certain age brackets in both sexes.
31 Slovenski narod, September 1, 1877, O nervoznosti.
32 Timeus, “Contributo allo studio.”
33 Terms such as “feeble minded”, “the poor man’s head is spinning”, “crazy attempt”, “signs of madness”, etc. were used.
34 Edinost, January 5, 1904.
35 E.g., Edinost, October 19, 1905; May 27, 1904, etc.
36 E.g., Edinost, May 13, 1905.
37 E.g., Edinost, March 3, 1904.
38 See on this, for example, George Beard, “Neurasthenia (nervous exhaustion) as a cause of inebriety.” Quarterly Journal of 
Inebriety, September 1879 (defined as a consequence of an impaired functionality of the nervous system, characterised, for 
one, by bouts of depression, and potentially leading to inebriety or even insanity), and contemporary treatises in the edited 
volume of conference proceedings Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War. ‒ Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra 
and Roy Porter, Cultures of Neurasthenia from Beard to the First World War (Amsterdam, New York, 2001).
39 Timeus, “Contributo allo studio,” 75.
40 See Matteo Perissinotto, “‘In a moment of supreme discomfort.’ An analysis of female suicides through the press in 
Trieste in the post-war transition (1918‒1922)” [in press], 2024.
41 Paulo Drinot, “Madness, Neurasthenia, and ‘Modernity’: Medico-legal and Popular Interpretations of Suicide in 
Early Twentieth-Century Lima,” Latin American Research Review 39, No. 2 ( June 2004): 95.
106 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
Chart 3: Motives for attempted/completed suicides (men): Trieste, 1903-1905
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
Chart 4: Motives for attempted/completed suicides (women): Trieste, 1903-1905
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
physical illness  
19%
mental  
illness 7%
alcoholism  
6%
sadness  
15%
poverty 6%
unrequited 
love 12%
prosecution  
9%
undefined  
26%
physical  
illness  
19% mental  
illness 7%
alcoholism 6%
sadness  
15%
poverty 6%
unrequited love 
12%
prosecution 9%
undefined  
26%
107Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Šavnik wrote of this: “Between the ages of 20 and 40, man fights for income, prop-
erty, name and fortune, he also has to endure the greater share of unpleasant influences 
from the outside world and survive many mental struggles, all the while being at risk of 
losing balance between the body and soul; between the ages of 40 and 50, the woman 
undergoes the climacteric phase and often experiences widowhood, too, which forces 
her to be more involved with the world than is appropriate to her nature; in these peri-
ods, characterised by particular tendency to nervousness, both sexes should be even 
more careful not to let their nerves begin to ail.”42 Morselli, too, believed that women 
were more likely to commit suicide because of “physical” causes (illnesses, including 
mental), and men because of the difficulties in facing life problems.43 Although gen-
der difference is classified as “biologically” conditioned in his work, his opinion also 
reflects social normative influences, such as a clear division of gender roles, positing 
the afflicted women in the private sphere and imposing certain expectations on the 
role of men in society.
Suicide in Trieste at the Beginning of the 20th Century
A Trieste-born chemist and dietitian, Guido Timeus,44 who was familiar with 
Morselli’s work, addressed the incidence of suicide within a larger treatise on the issue 
of alcoholism, which he examined from several points of view (analysing the consump-
tion of alcohol in Trieste, the correlations between alcohol and mortality and those 
between alcohol and suicide45). His findings were disseminated among the broader 
public through lectures, such as one held in 1907 by Dr. Guglielmo de Pastrovich46 at 
the seat of the Medical Association (Associazione medica).47 De Pastrovich had spo-
ken on the topic already in 1903, in what was described as “one of the liveliest debates” 
in the series of public discussions organised by the Minerva Society from Trieste.48
Timeus’s analysis of suicide incidence in Trieste was based on official data and 
the suicide records published in the newspaper Il Piccolo (which he claimed were in 
42 Slovenski narod, August 30, 1877, O nervoznosti.
43 Morselli, Il suicidio, 299.
44 Timeus (1869‒1953) was employed at the Trieste Public Health/Hygiene Office (Civico Fisicato) from the end of 
the 19th century onwards. He was in charge of food control, particularly of imported goods transported by sea, and 
of public health in the field of nutrition (Guido Timeus, https://www.boegan.it/2015/03/guido-timeus/). In this 
context, he also published studies dealing with the problem of alcoholism in Trieste of that time.
45 According to his data, about 6% of male suicides and 3% of female suicides recorded between 1903 and 1905 were 
related to alcohol abuse. The occupational groups with the highest rate of alcohol-related suicides were manual 
labourers and porters (Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”).
46 De Pastrovich (1876‒1927) was a psychiatrist from Trieste and later the director of the Trieste psychiatric hospital 
(Guglielmo, De Pastrovich, https://www.aspi.unimib.it/collections/entity/detail/292/). He personally conducted 
clinical observations in the hospital (from 1900 through 1906), studying patients admitted with mental health issu-
es, including those who had attempted suicide. He reported 70 cases of (mostly male) individuals trying to take 
their own lives merely due to inebriety and “a blind self-destructive impulse” triggered by alcohol (L’Indipendente, 
October 16 and 17, 1907). 
47 L’Indipendente, October 16 and 17, 1907.
48 L’Indipendente, April 21, 1903.
108 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
complete agreement with the official data) for the period 1903‒1905, when 201 cases 
of completed and 188 cases of attempted suicide were registered.49 His study is inter-
esting because it is not merely a count of suicide cases, but a qualitative analysis of 
them (conducted at the narrow level of the city) according to cause, method, sex, age, 
occupation, and time of occurrence (month). Despite the study being methodologi-
cally flawed, as it is not entirely clear whether it presents a credible picture or merely 
reflects the contemporary newspaper coverage,50 some of the highlights are neverthe-
less telling.
Timeus’s findings lead to the main motives for suicide (with around a quarter of 
them undefinable); the principal causes in men were physical illness and sadness (with 
alcoholism and prosecution also registering slightly elevated shares); in women, they 
were sadness and unreciprocated love (Charts 3 and 4). In terms of suicide method, 
poisoning (with carbolic acid/phenol standing out as the prevalent means used)51 
accounted for the greatest share in both sexes; firearms registered a significant share in 
men (likely in connection to military service), and all other methods were also more 
prominently featured in men than in women (Charts 5 and 6).
Correlations between motives for suicide and age indicate that individuals under 
the age of 30 or even under 20, most commonly committed suicide because of sad-
ness, unrequited love, mental illness, as well as prosecution by authorities or fear of it. 
In the age group of 20 to 40 years, the prevalent reason was sadness, but also physical 
illness; the latter was even more pronounced in the age group of 50 to 60 years, when 
it was frequently accompanied by mental illness. While between 1903 and 1905, most 
deaths by suicide or suicidal attempts were registered in the 20‒30 age group in both 
men and women (31% and 39%, respectively), the share of female population under 
20 years of age was conspicuous as well (20%). The percentages for the age groups of 
30 to 50 years were also similar for both sexes, with men displaying a more prominent 
share of individuals over 50 (Charts 7 and 8). It should be noted that the number of 
suicides recorded for the city could be misleading, for (at least according to newspaper 
reports) there were several cases of people who chose Trieste as the setting for their 
fatal act and journeyed in from elsewhere.
49 Timeus, “Contributo allo studio,” 63. Although these data are aggregated, it is interesting to note the relationship 
between failed and fatal suicide attempts varying by gender: suicide attempts were fatal in 49‒59% of cases among 
men, and in 37‒53% of cases among women, with an upward trend exhibited in both groups.
50 Timeus originally listed the completed and attempted suicides as separate categories, but the data were later mer-
ged. Of course, these data are never entirely consistent with the actual situation, given that cases of completed 
suicide can frequently go unrecorded and that attempted suicides are registered even more sparingly, as they often 
remain concealed within an individual’s private sphere.
51 From the second third of the 19th century onwards, chemical substances were increasingly used as disinfectants in 
the event of infectious diseases, particularly cholera, but also smallpox and measles. They were easily accessible, 
which undoubtedly contributed to their use in suicides. Carbolic acid, for example, was employed for medical and 
veterinary purposes, as well as in agriculture.
109Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Chart 5: Suicide (attempt) method – men
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
Chart 6: Suicide (attempt) method – women
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
firearms melee weapons* hanging drowning poisoning
1903 1904 1905
impact-related 
injury**
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
firearms melee weapons* hanging drowning poisoning
1903 1904 1905
impact-related 
injury**
*  Blade and blunt hand-weapons.
** Following collision with a vehicle, jumping from height.
110 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
Chart 7: Male suicide (attempts) by age between 1903 and 1905 
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
Chart 8: Female suicide (attempts) by age between 1903 and 1905
Source: Timeus, “Contributo allo studio”
10 to 20 yrs
11%
60 to  
70 yrs
6%
20 to 30 yrs
31%
30 to 40 yrs
15%
40 to 50 yrs
17%
50 to 60 yrs
16%
70 to  
80 yrs
4%
unknown
0%
10 to 20 yrs
20%
20 to 30 yrs
39%
30 to 40 yrs
18%
40 to 50 yrs
14%
50 to  
60 yrs
6%
70 to 80 yrs
1%
60 to 70 yrs
1%
unknown
1%
111Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
Newspaper reports of individuals driven to suicide by poverty or incurable disease 
sounded more forgiving than of those who took their lives because of “unreciprocated 
love”, as M. Perissinotto showed for the interwar period.52 The rhetoric that proffered 
suffering among the reasons for suicide was reflected in phrases such as “unfortunate 
man”, “poor man/woman”, “pitiful girl”, “poor wretch”, “suffering has imposed on him”, 
“he/she is suffering from an incurable disease”, “poor soul” and the like, and there are 
several cases when misery53 or poverty54 were suggested as explicit causes for the sui-
cide. Also, when the person taking their own life left behind a family, the impression is 
sometimes that the understanding or justification of the suicidal act was greater if the 
person in this difficult, “unbearable” situation was a man. A case in point was that of 
a 49-year-old man afflicted by illness who decided to end his life by hanging himself, 
leaving behind a wife and three children; the newspaper, in addition to reporting his 
death, published the deceased’s alleged suicide note, in which he begged his wife’s 
forgiveness, and which evoked compassion among the readers.55 In another instance, 
it reported of a 52-year-old man from Friuli who committed suicide by gas suffocation, 
because in Trieste, where he had moved for work, he could not find a job, and the paper 
wrote that “misery pushed him into death,” although through this act the deceased 
widowed his wife and orphaned his children who lived in his home town.56 In contrast, 
when reporting deaths of women who took their lives and left behind a family, the ten-
dency was to suggest they should feel guilty for doing that: “… she committed suicide 
with no regard for the pain she would be inflicting on her husband and children,”57 was 
said about a 41-year-old woman from the Trieste quarter of Rojan, who ended her life 
by ingesting carbolic acid after accompanying her terminally ill husband to hospital.
The link between poverty and suicide was also stressed by Timeus,58 who 
noticed the number of suicides rise at the beginning or end of month, which he 
associated with the salary that the workers would receive. He established that 1%‒8% 
suicides in men were brought on by poverty and 2%‒5% in women (in the period 
between 1903 and 1905); nevertheless, he failed to take into account one key ele-
ment: the civil status of the suicides. In fact, it was clear from newspaper reports that 
these voluntary deaths were also importantly linked to marital status (widowhood, 
unmarried), as such circumstances had an impact on an individual’s economic situ-
ation, increasing their existential hardship,59 which could in part explain the slightly 
52 See Perissinotto, “In a moment of supreme discomfort.”
53 E.g., Edinost, April 2, 1905.
54 E.g., Edinost, April 25, 1905.
55 Edinost, September 27, 1905.
56 Edinost, January 30, 1904.
57 Edinost, February 8, 1905.
58 Timeus, “Contributo allo studio,” 75.
59 For these issues, see Dragica Čeč (“Podobe starosti v začetku 19. stoletja,” in Mojca Šorn (ed.), Starost - izzivi histo-
ričnega raziskovanja (Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2017), 11– 33), who shows, in regard to the example 
of early 19th century Ljubljana, that widowed and unmarried persons represented the majority of welfare recipients, 
with women as the prevalent group by gender (also because of reservations in demonstrating sympathy and solida-
rity for men, Čeč, “Podobe starosti,” 12ff). 
112 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
elevated suicide rate among elderly men.60 At the same time, one cannot ignore the 
general economic crisis in Trieste at the time; an analysis of the cost of living in 
Trieste, for example, confirms its marked increase in the very first years of the 20th 
century.61 Among occupations presumed to be more prone to suicide in Timeus’s 
study were self-employed persons, day labourers, and servants in women, and work-
ers and field hand in men.62
The Press and Alleged Incitement to Suicide
Some recent studies63 cite the daily press as one of the possible factors motivating 
suicide (in the sense of the Werther effect, when a certain type of reporting can give 
rise to imitation64). I. Smiljanić, who analysed the press coverage of suicides in con-
nection with economic deprivation, noted that the Slovene liberal and conservative 
(Catholic) press covered the topic of suicides in different ways. While liberal newspa-
pers reported suicide news frequently and sometimes cynically, Catholic newspapers 
featured it more sparingly (to avoid its potentially detrimental effect on the reader-
ship), but a lack of respect for the deceased and even mockery of people who commit-
ted (or attempted) suicide could often be observed. In short, both liberal and Catholic 
press treated this act in markedly negative and judgmental tones.65
Daily press engaged in sensationalistic journalism (an overview of the news-
papers Edinost66 and Il Piccolo67 in the 1903‒1905 period can confirm that; see also 
Perissinotto, who examined the Italian press in Trieste during the interwar period68), 
60 There were several cases of suicide recorded in Koper between 1900 and 1906 involving widowers and unmarried 
men aged 50 or older (KDA, Koper Death Register, 1900‒1912).
61 Mario Alberti, Il costo della vita, i salari e le paghe a Trieste nell‘ultimo quarto di secolo (Trieste: E. Vram, 1911).
62 Timeus, “Contributo allo studio,” 65, 66, 69, 74.
63 E.g., Manina Mestas, Florian Arendt, “Suicide Reporting in the Nineteenth Century. Large-Scale Descriptive 
Content Analysis of Austrian Newspapers,” Media History 29, No. 3 (2022): 305– 20. Florian Arendt, “The Press 
and Suicides in the 19th Century: Investigating Possible Imitative Effects in Five Territories of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire.” OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying 81, No. 3 (2018): 424– 35.
64 The Catholic newspaper Čas wrote about the impact of sensationalist reporting in 1907, for example, when it drew 
attention to the findings of sociologist Èugene Rostand that detailed descriptions of crimes can lead to imitation 
(“Časopisje in zločini,” Čas, October 1, 1907, 480). A special treatise about the negative impact of the press on 
suicide rates was written by Bozzini as early as 1894 (Generoso Bozzini, Contagio morale: il suicidio e la stampa. 
Cerignola, 1894).
65 Ivan Smiljanić, “‚Konkurzi, samomor, žalosten je pogled na trgovsko polje.‘: gospodarski polom kot vzrok za samo-
mor na Slovenskem pod Avstro-Ogrsko in prvo Jugoslavijo,” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 63, No. 1 (2023): 50. 
See also M. Kristan, who analysed the coverage by the newspapers Slovenec and Slovenski narod between 1883 and 
1885. Maja Kristan, “Samomori, pogrešani, umrli,” in Katja Vodopivec (ed.), Deviacije na Slovenskem pred sto leti 
(Ljubljana: RSS, 1987), 283‒95.
66 It was published as a political journal of Slovenes in Trieste between 1876 and 1928, and as a daily newspaper in the 
period under analysis. 
67 Il Piccolo was published between 1881 and 1919. Although seeking to be apolitical, it was pro-Italian and supported 
liberal-national views, but focussed primarily on reporting news from the city, the neighbouring towns, and the 
international arena for a broad and diverse readership. – Il Piccolo https://www.atlantegrandeguerra.it/portfolio/
il-piccolo/. 
68 Perissinotto, “In a moment of supreme discomfort.”
113Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
citing the suicide method, personal details of the deceased, including name, sex, age, 
occupation or residence (street), and often even the presumed cause for the suicide.
Although the news items about suicides were typically brief (and did not contain 
photographs), reports of suicides in the last decades of the 19th and in the early 20th 
centuries graphically described the circumstances of the act and contained a series of 
personal data/elements that enabled identification and compromised the privacy of 
the victims or their families. In truth, the press mostly reported of ordinary people or 
well-known individuals from outside the local area, and less frequently of representa-
tives of the upper classes.69 It should be noted that much of the information featured 
in sensationalistic press was inaccurate, deficient, or downright false,70 as the papers 
themselves would sometimes admit, printing corrections to previous news71 and lay-
ing the blame for the mistakes on private sources.72
But the problem of sensationalist reporting of suicides was acknowledged even 
before the turn of the 20th century; several papers devoted their editorials to this issue, 
cautioning against a glorification of suicide through long and detailed daily reports 
that explored every aspect of it and could give the suicidal act the false impression 
of facility or effortlessness.73 The criticism was frequently directed at the press itself.
We can thus read: “Not only is the suicide described as if the journalist had been pre-
sent at the act and inhumanly allowed it to happen before their very eyes, which, luckily, 
is untrue, but the sad hero is stripped down to his shirt before the public, while a crude 
psychology attempts to lay bare his soul as well, and sordid sentimentalism runs riot in 
reproducing the sorrowful exclamations of the relatives, the regrets, the comments, with 
such contradiction between one newspaper and another that their comparison reveals 
it is all fruit of imagination. And as if it hadn’t been enough talking about it one day, the 
papers revisit it the next day with even more detailed and more intimate news; antici-
pating the funeral arrangements, so that in people’s curiosity the notion may grow into a 
small event and they can write about it at even more length ….”74 Legoyt, too, believed 
that much of the blame for suicides lay with the press “thoughtlessly advertising natural 
facts to feed unhealthy curiosity.”75
In a debate on this very topic, Generoso Bozzini warned against the dangerous 
effects of imitation and argued that eliminating suicide news from their death notices 
section would be an honourable thing for the papers to do. He believed that journal-
ism had an important mission and should not be reduced to “an accurate ‒ too accu-
rate ‒ photograph of everyday life with all its torments, mistakes, and misery; rather, 
it should be a training ground for noble ideas and even nobler sentiments, and never 
a reckless school of perversion and aberration.”76 A year before that, an anonymous 
69 Cf. ibid.
70 Cf. Smiljanić, “Konkurzi, samomor,” 49.
71 E.g., Edinost, May 27, 1904.
72 E.g., Edinost, May 31, 1904.
73 L’Indipendente, August 3, 1898.
74 Ibid.
75 Legoyt, Le suicide ancien et moderne, 199.
76 Bozzini, Contagio morale, 9 and 12.
114 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
physician had written to L’Indipendente with similar ideas, suggesting that the newspa-
per desks should deliberately turn down stories about suicides.77
Bozzini further believed that “among certain social classes, such as prisoners and 
soldiers, the imitative instinct is creating veritable epidemics78 that often spread due 
to wild publicity triggered by the irresponsible advertising of ‘suicide’.”79 Moreover, 
he felt that the effect of imitation was perilous for those who, “caught up in the fever 
of fame, which they believe they can achieve in this way and which would otherwise 
elude them, derive pleasure in the thought that their name, their letters, the story of 
their life so rapidly divulged will rescue them, for an hour, a day, from the obscurity in 
which they would have otherwise remained forever.”80 But no such debates, of course, 
managed to persuade the newspapers to stop reporting on suicides, and the practice 
continued for several decades.81
Conclusion
The case of Trieste as a large Austrian urban centre, one of the largest in the coun-
try, shows the suicide rate rising sharply even before the First World War, with an 
upward trend evident (at least according to the records) from the 1870s onwards. Over 
the next three decades, the number of suicides in the municipality of Trieste more 
than doubled for both men and women,82 which strongly affected the average regis-
tered in the Austrian Littoral compared to other crown lands. Following the increasing 
occurrence of suicides in society in the last quarter of the 19th century, it is possible to 
observe the results generated by reflections on suicide from all across Europe, from 
Morselli’s study to those of Masaryk and Durkheim, to mention only the most promi-
nent. While all those studies saw suicide as a phenomenon affected by social factors, 
and thus tried to explain it as scientifically as possible, using statistical analyses, the 
more modern approaches to studying the history of suicide seek to reformulate the 
classical positivist approach so as to include structural factors, but also the ways social 
factors are reflected within the realm of individual experience and meanings that social 
actors attach to events (this criticism sees suicide as a product of official categorisa-
tions and argues that the latter are also affected by the cultural interpretations or per-
77 L’Indipendente, June 12, 1893.
78 For suicide among the military, see in particular Filip Čuček, “Vojaški samomori v Avstriji od srede 19. stoletja 
do prve svetovne vojne (z nekaj slovenskimi primeri),” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 63, 3 (2023): 117–34. The 
Edinost (20 February 1903) reported on a session of the National Assembly that discussed the alarming numbers of 
suicide in the Austrian army, attributing them to the inappropriate way the soldiers were treated. The civil registers 
of Koper from before the end of the 19th century contain several records of soldiers under the age of 30 committing 
suicide by firearm (KDA, Koper Death Register, 1875‒1899), and more than a few cases of suicide in the early 20th 
century, among prisoners and prison guards; imitative suicide cannot be ruled out in the case of two prison guards 
taking their own lives in May 1901 (KDA, Koper Death Register, 1900–1912).
79 Bozzini, Contagio morale, 7. Similarly Morselli, Il suicidio, 433.
80 Bozzini, Contagio morale, 11.
81 As shown by Perissinotto (“In a moment of supreme discomfort”) for the first post-war period.
82 Luzzatto-Fegiz, La popolazione di Trieste, with Timeus, “Contributo allo studio,” making similar findings.
115Urška Bratož: Suicide in the Austrian Littoral at the Turn of the 20th Century 
ceptions of the actors).83 Although self-perceptions are much more difficult to trace 
in the case of suicide, the data on Trieste adumbrate the socio-cultural meanings that 
were ascribed to suicide in a certain era and allow us to observe how the discourses 
around suicide reveal a somewhat broader picture of society, including its fears (of 
societal problems, of change, encroachment of new/different values, etc.).
The media discourse usually followed the scientific publications of its time, the 
simultaneous observations about the multitude of suicides were confirmed by statisti-
cal analyses as well as medical, sociological, philosophical and other treatises, while 
at the same time raising numerous other social issues to which suicide in urban areas 
could be linked (alcoholism, growth of the proletariat, poverty, changing values or 
potential threats to the traditional value system, and the like). All this informed the 
public debate on suicide as a problem of modern society – particularly as manifest in 
large cities, where suicide represented a much more burning issue than in smaller non-
industrial towns or in the country (as demonstrated by the case of Koper).
A few examples have been used to illustrate the image of suicide as reflected in both 
Slovene and Italian presses, which were influenced by similar ideologies. On the one side, 
the phenomenon was portrayed as an inevitable result of unfavourable economic condi-
tions or economic hardship in which (usually) representatives of the proletariat would find 
themselves, or of a dead-end situation brought on by a severe or incurable illness. Suicide 
could also be medicalised, considered a neurological consequence of certain mental ill-
nesses or conditions. On the other hand, it was perceived to be a result of the corruptive 
effects of modern lifestyle and values (e.g., individualism, hedonism, materialism, atheism, 
etc.) that were supplanting the safety of the traditional embrace of family and social life ‒ 
and it was in this view that it was most severely condemned. Not least, the ways in which 
society could attempt to alleviate the problem and prevent suicides included addressing 
the potential imitative effect that daily newspapers allegedly had with their death notices. 
Our aim, however, was not to determine the actual impact of the press on suicide, of course, 
but rather to observe the discourse that developed in popular science and media and other 
circles around the influence of daily press on suicide incidence. In these cases, it seems, the 
criticism was directed at the social factors fuelling the rising suicide rate, suggesting ‒ in 
line with the sociological doctrines of the time ‒ that rather than the individual committing 
suicide, society as a whole was in need of an intervention.
Sources and Literature
Archival sources
• KDA – Koper Diocesan Archives (Škofijski arhiv Koper):
– KDA, Koper Death Register, 1875–1899.
– KDA, Koper Death Register, 1900–1912.
83 See Bailey, This Rash Act, 15, 16.
116 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
• SI PAK – Pokrajinski arhiv Koper (Koper Regional Archives):
– SI PAK KP 6, Občina Koper.
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118 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LXIV – 2/2024
Urška Bratož
SAMOMOR V AVSTRIJSKEM PRIMORJU  
NA PRELOMU 19. IN 20. STOLETJA
POVZETEK
Prispevek opazuje družbeno podobo samomora ob koncu 19. in na začetku 20. 
stoletja, predvsem na primeru Trsta kot velikega mestnega središča, kjer je bil trend 
naraščanja samomorilnosti opazneje viden vsaj od sedemdesetih let 19. stoletja. Ob 
zaznavanju naraščajoče prisotnosti samomora v družbi so tudi v ta prostor prihajale 
razne evropske razprave o samomoru, od Morsellijeve in Masarykove do Durkheimove 
študije, diskurzi okrog samomora pa so hkrati odstirali nekoliko širšo sliko družbe, 
vključno z njenimi strahovi pred družbenimi problemi in spremembami.
Časopisni diskurz je običajno sledil znanstvenim objavam svojega časa, opažanja 
o množičnosti samomorov so se potrjevala skozi statistične analize in medicinske, 
sociološke, filozofske ter druge razprave, obenem pa so odpirala tudi mnoge druge 
družbene problematike, s katerimi je bilo samomor v urbanem prostoru mogoče 
povezati (alkoholizem, rast proletariata, revščina, preoblikovanje vrednot idr.). 
Vse to je sooblikovalo javno razpravo o samomoru kot problemu moderne družbe, 
posebej večjih mest, saj je bila samomorilnost tam veliko bolj izrazita kot v manjših 
neindustrijskih mestih ali na podeželju Avstrijskega primorja.
Primeri iz dnevnega tiska in poljudnoznanstvenih razprav razkrivajo raznolike 
podobe samomora. Na eni strani je bil prikazan kot neizogibna posledica neugodnih 
ekonomskih razmer oziroma finančne stiske, v kateri se je znašel (običajno) pred-
stavnik proletariata, ali pa brezizhodnega položaja posameznika zaradi hude in neoz-
dravljive bolezni. Samomor je lahko bil tudi medikaliziran kot nevrološka posledica 
določene psihične bolezni ali stanja. Na drugi strani pa je bil dojet kot posledica kvar-
nega učinka modernega življenja in vrednot (na primer individualizma, hedonizma, 
materializma, ateizma ipd.), ki so izpodrivale varnost tradicionalnega objema družin-
skega in družbenega življenja, in v taki obliki je bil tudi najbolj obsojan. Med načini, 
kako bi bilo to problematiko (ki je bila razumljena kot družbeno pogojena) mogoče 
zmanjšati ali preprečiti, je bilo tudi vprašanje potencialnega imitativnega efekta, ki naj 
bi ga na pojavljanje samomorov imel zlasti dnevni tisk s črno kroniko.