Off the 'Cuff

The Vancouver Police Department’s Annual Reports had, until the 1960s, short descriptions, usually only a paragraph long, of many of the big crimes, murders and suicides that had occurred during the year. These descriptions were thumbnail sketches of the passions and pains that drive humans to commit such acts. Extreme poverty, drug addiction, drunkenness and a pervading sense of utter desperation or hopelessness were some of the common themes that ran through these stories.

In the 1940 VPD Annual Report was a short description that I guess fits into the “utter hopelessness” category. It was a case of a double suicide of an older man and woman. This was a vignette that I found both completely heartbreaking and ultimately puzzling. It is also a story that has stayed with me in the months since I first read it. The description reads:

On July 12 1940 officers of the department investigated the deaths, by illuminating gas poisoning, of an unidentified man and woman in an apartment in Vancouver. Both the man and woman were between 60 and 65 years of age. They had rented the apartment a month previously giving the names of Mr. F. Smith and sister. They paid a month’s rent in advance in US money and stated that they had come from Kansas City. When found it appeared that they had been dead for several days. There were no letters, papers, etc. to help establish their identity. All enquiries in Missing Persons Files in both Vancouver and Kansas City have failed to reveal any record of the couple and investigations are still continuing. The man was 5’5”; 155lbs, grey hair at sides, thin on top; own teeth. The woman was 5’1½”; 150lbs, grey hair; grey eyes; own teeth. Photographs and fingerprints of woman on file. There were no scars on either body.

The heartbreaking part of this scenario is obvious: two individuals, possibly related, appeared to have traveled to Vancouver with the sole purpose to kill themselves. They left behind no record of whom they were or why they had died. It was as if they did not want anyone to know they had ever existed.

The puzzling part is that we will never know why this couple committed suicide nor why they traveled so far to do so. Their story is a closed book for us. But I can’t help but wonder at their life and at what they had seen. This blog is all about supposing who these people were and why they decided to end their lives. Such supposition is meant with the highest level of respect. All lives deserve commemoration in some form, particularly those who think their life is not even worth remembering.

The report tells us few things about this couple. One is their approximate ages, which indicate to us about the time they were born. No mention is made of physical ailments, so perhaps they were healthy in that respect. Also, they were white, of stocky build and obviously did not want anyone to know who they were. And let us suppose that they were indeed American citizens as they wanted people to believe.

If they were between 60 and 65 years old as the police estimated in 1940, they would have been born between 1875 and 1880. This was at the tail end of reconstruction after the American Civil War. This couple grew up in an era when the Civil War was recent bloody history. They were between 10 and 15 years old when the escapist dream of the American frontier was officially “closed” in 1890 by the census bureau. They came of age during a period of dramatic increases in labour and racial unrest. When America entered World War One in 1917, this couple would have been between 37 and 42 years old. They were approaching their early 50s when the Great Depression struck. And, with the storm clouds of war once again on the US horizon just as they were entering retirement perhaps this couple was simply exhausted by life.

According to recent US statistics, it is the elderly rather than youth that is of greater risk of suicide. Indeed, the age group of 65 years and older has the highest rate of suicide than any other age group in society. This couple was approaching this age, if not already in it.

Perhaps this couple was lonely, despite having each other. Perhaps they were strangers who met in a bar one day and decided to enter into a suicide pact. Or perhaps they were indeed brother and sister who had no other family. Being related, and not wanting to shame the family name, would explain all the trouble this couple went to of traveling to another country to die and taking great care to leave no identification. This was, after all, during a time when suicide would stain a family’s reputation and many of the more conservative religions refused to hold services or bury suicides in sanctified cemeteries.

I can’t help but think about the macabre road trip these two people took to reach Vancouver, wherever it is they came from. I try to imagine that premeditated decision to pack up the suitcase, hop in the car or on the bus or train, knowing that you are traveling to your own intentional, anonymous death. No last words. No last final goodbyes to friends. Did they even discuss it while on the road? Or did they talk about everything but their eventual end? Imagine then renting an apartment, perhaps first purchasing a canister of gas used for lighting, and conscientiously paying one month’s rent in advance. All the time with the intentional thought that these rented rooms would soon be a place of death.

It is incredible, sobering, and sometimes terrible to think what can be accomplished when a person is determined to do so, even to the extent of an anonymous suicide in another country.

Tags:   history · suicide · Vancouver · vpd Annual Report1 Comment