ABSTRACT
In recent years, suicides have gained considerable attention, especially those committed by young people or by those with religio-political or war-like objectives. Yet self-inflicted deaths are not a new phenomenon. They have been practiced for centuries. Despite repeated and persistent occurrences, however, historians have only recently started to focus on such phenomena. While this is a commendable scholarly reorientation, few, if any, of these recent analyses concentrate on those who took their lives either immediately after having committed a crime or while imprisoned awaiting the outcome of their trials: judicial suicides.
