Citation

Cellard A, Corriveau P. Histoire Soc. 2013; 46(91): 205-221.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, University of Ottawa Press)

DOI

10.1353/his.2013.0024

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Suicide, a serious crime once subject to the death penalty during the period of New France, is now seen as a societal problem rather than as an individual misdeed. In this sense, suicide is a perfect example of the reversal of a social and legal response to a behaviour that had for centuries, however, been considered deviant. In order to understand the various social stakeholders' change of attitudes and reactions toward suicide and suicide victims for Quebec society as a whole, an empirical database addressing most cases of suicide over a long period of history must be examined. This is exactly what we plan to do in coming years in the course of our project "Du crime de lèse-majesté à 'problème de société': l'évolution de la réaction sociale à l'égard du suicide au Québec de 1763 à 2000", which will involve identifying and analyzing all cases of suicide contained in the Coroner's Archives held by Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) for the period 1763 to 2000. This research note is designed to outline our archival process and illustrate through a few typical cases of suicide the richness of our material. To do this, we have opted to focus on the suicide notes found in the thousands of files examined to date. © Histoire sociale / Social History.

Language: en