Thread by @ProDemocracyRTs

Perhaps the strangest story ever to run in the Chicago Tribune appeared on Page 10 of the May 4, 1873, edition. Headlined, “How to Die Easy,” it gave tips for committing suicide without “the cutting of throats or the blowing out of brains.” A thread. 1/10

The whimsical tone of the Tribune’s suicide instruction story is really something. The Trib starts its very long article with this sentence: “No subject is more attractive to the local department of a newspaper than suicide.” (Certainly not the case anymore.) 2/10

The Tribune dismisses the idea that suicide is morally wrong. Certainly, if you leave destitute orphans or no money for burial, it is. Otherwise, if a person "decides to return his phosphates to the earth … let him slide, and not poke around, being in everyone’s road.” 3/10

The Tribune’s 1873 pro-suicide article also assures people that doctors and coroner’s juries will help the families redeem life insurance policies on the person who kills himself, so they needn’t worry about that. 4/10

What’s needed, the Tribune says, is an affordable, efficient way for people to kill themselves. “Suicide should cease to be the luxury of the rich, and should be put within reach of the poor.” 5/10

Beware of making a bloody mess with a knife or gun, the Tribune advises. “Very few are considerate enough to imitate that Quaker woman who was so neat and thoughtful as to lean over a slop-pail and cut her throat so daintily that not a drop fell upon the carpet.” 6/10

Timing is important, the Tribune says. “No person with any self-respect will kill himself in the morning, for then the evening papers have the first chance at him, and they do write things up so clumsily.” 7/10

The Tribune advises readers to use “the fluid extract of gelsemin” to poison themselves. Now commonly spelled gelsemine, it comes from plants known as woodbine. The Trib says one advantage of gelsemin over laudanum is that druggists are less likely to suspect your motive. 8/10

If people follow the Tribune’s advice to poison themselves, “Then we shall have fewer instances of delicate women driven to hanging or drowning themselves, and of nervous and shrinking men compelled to draw a razor across their throats.” 9/10

Here’s the whole Tribune article, presented as a historical curiosity and an example of “public service journalism” in 1873. 10/10