person cannot die from hanging when the body is in any way supported, and therefore that murder must have been perpetrated; 2nd, that in all cases of death from hanging, the mark produced on the neck by the cord or ligature must be discoloured or ecchymosed. If not ecchymosed, it is assumed that death must have taken place from some other cause, and the body have been afterwards suspended for the concealment of crime. On Aug. 27th, 1830, the Prince de Condé was found dead in his bedroom partly dressed, his body being suspended from the fastening of the window-sash by means of a linen handkerchief attached to a cravat which he was in the habit of wearing. The engraving, fig. 136, will give an idea of the position in which the body was found. The head was inclined a little to the chest, the tongue was congested and protruded from the mouth; the face Fig. 136. Suicidal Hanging. Case of the Prince de Condé. was livid, a mucous discharge issued from the mouth and nostrils, the hands were clenched, the toes of both feet touched the floor of the room, the heels were elevated and the knees were partly bent forward. The point of sus pension was about six and a half feet from the floor. The legs were uncovered, and had some slight abrasions upon them. There was a chair near the deceased. Five medical men-three of them eminent experts, Marc, Marjolin, and Pasquier-inspected the body, and found the usual appear ances indicative of death from asphyxia. There were no marks of violence about it beyond those which might have been produced accidentally by the chair in the act of hanging. There was no natural cause of death in the body, nor any appearance to indicate that there had been violent struggling or resistance on the part of the deceased. On the upper and lateral part of the neck there was a mark produced by the ligature, but no ecchy. mosis; and on the left side of the neck, corresponding to the knot of the cravat, there was a depression somewhat deeper. ('Ann. d'Hyg.' 1830, 1, 157.) The case involves only the ordinary details of suicidal hanging. It was contended, however, that he had been strangled by assassins, and his body afterwards hanged. The characters presented by the mark on the neck, and the erect position of the body with the feet on the floor, were the chief medical points on which those who adopted the hypothesis of murder rested their case. The evidence derivable from the mark on the neck has been elsewhere considered (p. 40); and with regard to the erect position of the body, all experience is against those who would treat this as negativing suicidal hanging. In order that death should take place from hanging, it is not necessary that the body should be freely and perfectly suspended. In his report of the above case, Marc quotes a number of instances, and gives illustrations of death under these circumstances. In one of them (fig. 137, p. 57) a man committed suicide by hanging himself in a prison-cell. He was found quite dead, nearly in a sitting position, his heels resting on the floor and his body being only a foot and a half above it. Fig. 138, p. 57, represents a man, at. 40, who committed suicide by suspending himself EVIDENCE FROM THE POSITION OF THE DEAD BODY. 57 from a hook above his bed. When found he was in a kneeling position -his knees being only eight or ten inches above the bed and his toes resting upon it. ('Ann. d'Hyg.' 1830, 1, 201.) Many cases have been since recorded in which death has taken place from hanging when the feet were in contact with the ground, or the persons were almost sitting or recumbent: these may be regarded as mixed cases of hanging and strangulation. The reports of eleven cases of suicidal hanging or strangulation gave the following results: in three the bodies were round nearly recumbent; in four in a kneeling posture, the body being more or less supported by the legs; and in four the persons were found sitting. In one case the Fig. 137. Suicidal Hanging. deceased, a prisoner, was found hanging to the iron bar of the window of his prison, which was so low that he was almost in a sitting posture. The ligature which he had employed was a cravat, but (what was more remarkable in the case) the hands of the deceased were found tied by another handkerchief. The body was Fig. 138. Suicidal Hanging. round his neck, but his body was so suspended, that when discovered he was on his knees by the side of his bed. There are one or two similar instances related by the same author. Webb met with a case in which a man destroyed himself while lying at full length on a bed. His head was in a loop formed by a leathern strap fastened to the bed-post (Med. Times and Gaz.' Aug. 7, 1852, p. 137). A mechanic was found hanging in his room, with his knees bent forwards, and his feet resting upon the floor. He had evidently been dead for some time, since cadaveric rigidity bad already commenced. The manner in which this person had committed suicide was as follows: he had made a slip-knot with one end of his apron, and having placed his neck in this, he threw the other end of the apron over the top of the door, and shutting the door behind him he had succeeded in wedging it in firmly. At the same moment he had probably raised himself on tiptoe, and then allowed himself to fall. In this position he died. The weight of his body had already sufficed to drag down a part of the apron, for it seemed as if it had been very much stretched. The deceased was in the position in which the body of the Prince de Condé was found (p. 56), and the depression produced by the ligature on the neck was, as in that case, nowhere ecchymosed. These facts, so far from being considered to negative suicide, were treated as in accordance with it. A lady, who had been for some time suffering from great depression, was found dead hanging by a long cloth to a closed door, over the top of which she had thrown the other end of the cloth (knotted) and then shut the door upon it. (For another case see Henke's 'Zeitschr.,' 1843, 2, 50.) Casper reports an instance in which a man was charged with the murder of his wife because her body was found hanging in almost an erect position. ('Ger. Leich.-Oeffn.' vol. 2, p. 92.) A man hanged himself by a silk handkerchief passed through a ring only twenty-six inches from the ground. Rake saw him in a few minutes after he had been cut down: the body was quite warm. When first seen, the man was lying with his legs extended at full length; the handkerchief was drawn tightly round the throat by a slipknot, and his face was directed towards the ground. Both hands were firmly clenched. There was a well-defined, nearly circular, and muchindented mark round the lower part of the neck corresponding to the ligature. The ligature was drawn so tightly at one or two points as to appear almost buried in the folds of the skin about the neck. There was much ecchymosis at various spots in the back of the neck, and some abrasion of the skin at two or three points. There was swelling, with great congestion of the face. There was no escape of blood from the ears. (For other cases, with illustrations of the positions of the body, see Tardieu, in Ann. d'Hyg.' 1870, 1, 94.) Three additional cases occurred at the General Asylum for Lunatics, Northampton, in 1852. In the first, the man made a loop of a twisted blanket at a height less than five feet from the ground, and then kneeling forward strangled himself, the feet being on the ground and the knees nearly touching it. The fingers were not clenched nor contracted, but partially bent. There were no marks of any convulsive struggle except a slight bruise on the wall. In the second case the man hanged himself on a beam : the legs touched the ground-the hands were not clenched. In the third, the patient had hanged himself by mounting on a shelf in a loft, fastening his neck-handkerchief to a beam, and then swinging himself off. He was found with his right leg suspended in the air, whilst his left leg was supported by the shelf on which he had been standing. His right hand was convulsively clenched, which is said to have been a habit on the part of the deceased; the left hand was open, and the fingers only slightly bent. Remer found that out of one hundred and one cases of suicidal hanging, in fourteen the body was either standing or kneeling, and in one instance it was in a sitting posture. Duchesne published an account of fifty-eight cases in which the suspension of the body was partial-the feet or trunk being more or less supported. Twenty-six of these were new cases. reporter drew the conclusion that suicide by hanging is consistent with any posture of the body, even when resting upon the two feet. ('Ann. d'Hyg." The THE LIMBS TIED. SELF-SUSPENSION. 59 Oct. 1845, 2, 141 and 346.) Further evidence need not be adduced to show how unfounded is that popular opinion which would attach the idea of homicidal interference to cases in which a body is loosely suspended, or in which the feet are in contact with any support. We ought rather to consider these facts as removing a suspicion of homicide; for there are probably few murderers who would suspend their victims, either living or dead, without taking care that the suspension was not partial, but complete. Besides, the facts of many of these cases are readily explicable; thus, if the ligature is formed of yielding materials, or if it is only loosely attached, it will yield to the weight of the body after death, and allow the feet to touch the floor, which they might not have done in the first instance. If there is reason to believe that the body has not altered its position after suspension, we must remember the rapidity with which insensibility comes on and death commonly ensues in this form of asphyxia. (See 'Med. Gaz.' vol. 44, p. 85.) The limbs secured in suicidal hanging.-One or two points are worthy of notice in relation to this question. The hands or legs, but more commonly the former, have been found tied in cases of undoubted suicidal hanging ('Ann. d'Hyg.' 1832, 1, 419); and yet it has been debated whether it was possible for a person to tie or bind up his hands, and afterwards hang himself. It is unnecessary to examine the arguments which have been urged against the possibility of an act of this kind being performed; since, among many cases that might be quoted, two occurred in 1843, in London, where the persons died from hanging: the act was suicidal, and the hands were found tied, in both instances, with a handkerchief. A third case occurred at Worcester, in 1844, in which the deceased tied his wrists with a handkerchief; and secured to this were two flat-irons, in order to increase the weight. A remarkable case of suicide, in which the hands and ankles were tightly secured, has been published (Med. Gaz.' vol. 45, p. 388; see also cases in Guy's Hosp. Rep.' 1851). In another case of suicidal hanging, a folded handkerchief was found pressed into the mouth and nostrils. Suicides sometimes designedly arrange matters so as to create a suspicion of murder. A woman was found hanging to the branch of a tree-the feet not touching the ground. A bundle of decayed leaves was found projecting from her mouth, and a ticket was pinned to her right shoulder, on which there were the following words in pencil:-'Three of us have committed the murder. We found on her one dollar and fifteen groschen. She only prayed for her two children.'-There was not the slightest mark of violence or of anything like resistance on the body of the deceased, and a full investigation of all the circumstances led Heinrich to the conclusion that this was really an act of suicide, which the deceased had thus attempted to pass off as murder. (Casper's 'Vierteljahrsschr.' 1866, 2, 70.) Power of self-suspension.-It has been a debated question, whether corporeal infirmity, or some peculiarity affecting the hands, might not interfere with the power of a person to suspend himself. This question can be decided only by reference to the special circumstances of each case. In the case of the Prince de Condé (p. 55), it was alleged that he could not have hanged himself, in consequence of a defect in the power of one hand: it was also said that he could not have made the knots in the handkerchiefs by which he was suspended. Allegations of this kind appear to have been too hastily made in this and other instances. A determined purpose will often make up for a great degree of corporeal infirmity; and unless we make full allowance for this in suicide, we shall always be exposed to error in drawing our conclusions. Blindness is no obstacle to this mode of perpetrating suicide; and in reference to age, suicide by hanging has been perpetrated by a boy of nine, and by a man of ninety-seven years of age. STRANGULATION. CHAPTER 56. CAUSE OF DEATH-APPEARANCES AFTER DEATH-WAS DEATH CAUSED BY STRANGULATION, OR WAS THE CONSTRICTION APPLIED TO THE NECK AFTER DEATH?MARKS OF VIOLENCE-ACCIDENTAL, HOMICIDAL, AND SUICIDAL STRANGULATION. Strangulation.-Cause of Death.-Hanging and strangulation are usually treated together, and some medical jurists have admitted no distinction in the meaning of these terms. In hanging the phenomena of asphyxia takes place in consequence of the suspension of the body, while in strangulation asphyxia may be induced not only by the constriction produced by a ligature round the neck independently of suspension, but by the simple application of pressure (throttling), through the fingers or otherwise, on the windpipe. Tardieu considers that the two modes of death should be kept distinct. The external and internal appearances in some respects differ; and while the proof of death from hanging leads to the strongest presumption of suicide, the proof of death from strangulation is equally presumptive of murder. (Sur la Strangulation, 'Ann. d'Hyg.' 1859, 1, 107.) This medical jurist defined 'strangulation to be an act of violence, in which constriction is applied directly to the neck, either around it or in the fore part, so as to prevent the passage of air, and thereby suddenly suspend respiration and life.' This definition obviously includes hanging, and every person who is hanged may be said to be strangled; but while there is only one method of producing death by hanging, there are various methods of producing death from strangulation. A person may be strangled by the use of a cord or ligature drawn tightly round the neck, or by manual violence to the front of the neck, whereby respiration is prevented. The cause of death is asphyxia. The rapidity with which it takes place will depend on the degree of pressure, and the completeness with which the act of breathing is obstructed. Faure applied a ligature forcibly and suddenly to the neck of a middlesized dog. For fifty-five seconds the animal did not appear to suffer; but it suddenly became violently agitated, the body stiffened, and it rolled convulsively on the ground. A bloody froth issued from the nostrils and throat, and frequent and violent efforts were made to respire. In three minutes and a half it was dead. In a second experiment an elastic tube, which admitted of being gradually closed by pressure, was introduced into the windpipe. The animal could bear the pressure up to the reduction of one-half of the calibre of the tube, but beyond this it suffered greatly, and when the pressure was increased there were convulsions. The dog died, in great suffering, before the tube was completely closed. ('Ann. d'Hyg.' 1859, 1, 122.) It is probable that human beings die more quickly than animals, especially from the effects of manual strangulation. A sudden and violent compression of the windpipe renders a person powerless to call for assistance and give alarm, and it causes almost immediate insensibility and death, without convulsions. When a ligature or bandage is used, the pressure is not so complete, and death takes place more slowly, with convulsive movements. The circulation of venous blood continues for a short interval (about four minutes), as in other cases of asphyxia. Owing to this the face and lips, in cases of accidental strangulation, have been |