“If we Can’t Live in Peace, we Might as Well die”: Homicide-Suicide in Chicago, 1875-1910

The author investigates the uncommonly high number of homicide-suicides (257) that occurred in Chicago between 1875 & 1910. Various pressures, including overlapping shifts in gender roles & in class ideologies, accompanied by demographic & economic changes, are identified in order to account for profound disruptions in social relations for a specific segment of the Chicago population. These disruptions, the author argues, fueled a surge in homicide-suicides that in other eras might have ended with either homicide or suicide.