Not Quite Suicide: The Inebriated Self-Destruction of John Michael in Late 19th-Century St. Louis

On the evening of July 10, 1877, John Michael drank a great deal of whiskey and then, on his way home, lay down on the railroad tracks.  Although a passerby moved him, he lay on them again and was killed when a train hit him.  His persistence suggests that he committed suicide, but his intoxicated state raised questions by the investigating coroner, relatives, and the press as to whether or not he intendedto take his own life.  The coroner declined to rule Michael’s death as an accident or a suicide, a vagueness that reflects the medical and legal uncertainty about whether one could intentionally take his or her own life while inebriated.  Using coroner's inquests, newspapers, and medical journals, this paper will explore the reasons that coroners and witnesses believed that Michael’s probable decision to kill himself lacked one of the key elements of a suicide verdict: intent. 

Historians have studied suicide and alcoholism separately, but have not examined these two self-destructive deaths together even though both hinged on medical and legal understandings of insanity and intent.  Interestingly, while the coroner could not decide that Michael intentionally killed himself, he also did not consider him to be insane, perhaps a dipsomaniac, meaning someone who was “mad for alcohol.”  The coroner’s hesitation to deem Michael insane was typical, as evidenced by inquests into other into alcohol-related deaths conducted in St. Louis between 1875 and 1885.  Physicians who specialized in treating inebriety may have considered Michael to be suffering from a disease, but their knowledge seldom extended to the general medical profession, including St. Louis coroners.  The death of John Michael demonstrates that the distinctions between insanity and alcohol blurred, evident not only in an ambiguous verdict, but also the community’s and nation's understanding of his death, insanity, and addiction.