A ‘Dirty Little Secret’? The State, the Press, and Popular Knowledge of Suicide in Victoria, 1840s-1920s

The author argues that contrary to popular belief, suicide was not hidden during the nineteenth century, citing the fact that people rarely tried to cover up death by suicide, inquests were held in public houses before local juries, & suicide was reported regularly in the news as evidence of this. He argues that the professionalisation of the inquest in the early twentieth century excluded most popular participation & led, by the 1930s, to the erosion of popular knowledge of suicide.