The Ancestors Lost by Suicide Commemoration Project

Welcome to the Ancestors Lost by Suicide Commemoration Project. This is a limited blog series in the form of short biographies recounting the lives of all of my ancestors who died by suicide (links below), all of whom lived in Wales and England between the late 18^th and mid-20^th Centuries.

For many people who died by suicide in 19^th and 20^th Century Wales and England, the last public writings about them were about making a case for why the suicide happened, in part to judge what degree of social consequences the deceased and their family should face. Those newspaper articles often detailed and sensationalised the means by which they died to satisfy their readers’ voracious appetites for the ‘exceptional, violent, and grotesque’.^[1]

Every one of us deserves better than to be remembered as little more than a series of tragic events leading to a death. So, I intend to take a different approach to writing the life stories of my ancestors who died by suicide. I’m not interested in writing an over-simplified answer to why each one of them died, rather I’m interested in re-setting the record of their memory. I’m interested in telling the stories of real people with different life experiences. In some cases, this means celebrating their contributions to art, their local community, or their loved ones. In others, it just means finding one thing that was unique to them as a person.

Lastly, my hope is for these posts to help you have conversations with yourself and your loved ones about suicide. Many people, including myself until relatively recently, don’t really know how to talk about suicide or even if we should talk about it at all. These conversations are the entry point for preventing suicide because it is preventable. At the end of each biography, I’ve added resources from reliable sources related to suicide prevention—they range from information to dispel myths, to more thoughtful language we can use when talking about suicide, to practical resources for people who have experienced thoughts of suicide.

I hope you enjoy re-telling these ancestors’ stories with me and I hope it inspires you to re-think how you tell your own ancestors’ stories. I hope you also find something here that will help you be better equipped to support your community and loved ones.