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12/11/2005: "Creative to the Last"
The past week has brought its usual crop of Coronial autopsies, most of which were, to put it bluntly, mundane; most death is, of course. It's something we'd rather not do and so we don't plan for it, put no thought into it. Why should we? It's something that is done to us rather than by us. Only those who are contemplating suicide have the opportunity for input into the process, yet even here, few take advantage. The vast majority of such deaths are by pills or hanging (incidentally and completely anecdotally, since the government decided to limit paracetamol sales, the number of deaths by pills has gone down and the number of deaths by hanging has gone up); I suspect the reason for this is that a) they are easy to achieve, and b) they are relatively quick.
There are a few individuals, though, who decide that their exit is going to be...different. These are frequently middle-aged and slightly older, usually men, and usually quite intelligent. Not for them the triteness of pharmaceuticals or rope, oh no. For these people, a statement has to be made.
The most unusual and (in many ways) the most spectacular, was the gentleman who tied one end of his tow-rope around the trunk of a tree, then threaded the other end through the back of his Landrover; he then sat in the driver's seat, tied it around his neck and set off at high speed... I have actually tried to use this in a short story but it's just so strange I haven't managed it.
Another case involved a man who having placed his Zimmer frame by a nice hot bath, then connected it to the main grid, got in the bath and...well, you can imagine, I'm sure.
And I well remember the soul who opted to jump off a high bridge over a railway; he was so keen on success that, presumably fearful that the fall of about thirty metres would not kill him he did so just as the last train to Paddington was coming along. That was not so much an autopsy, more a carvery.
Keith McCarthy on Sunday, December 11th 2005 @ 01:40 PM GMT [link]