Aug. 13, 1962 - Two days ago in New York City, a twenty-eight-year-old woman drowned herself in a bathtub on East Tenth Street, a laborer in Staten Island shot himself, and a prominent executive plunged from the eighth floor of his apartment on Washington Square West. Before the day was over, there were 12 suicides — 10 more than the daily average in New York City. The total was an unofficial record for New York in recent years, according to John A. Foley, administrative assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner. On the average, two or three persons commit suicide each day in New York, said Harry M. Warren, president of the National Save-A-Life League, an organization dedicated to dissuading potential suicide victims. Mr. Warren said that some of the recent suicides might have been influenced by the death of Marilyn Monroe last week from an overdose of sleeping pills. He recalled that there “was a wave of suicides” in the summer of 1948 after Carole Landis, the actress, had killed herself. “Many individuals identify with a movie queen or king,” he said, “and the death of one so prominent disturbs a little bit of every one of us.”
留言