Gambling History: 1890s Newspaper Sought Data On Suicide

Why and how often does gambling lead people to suicide?

While digging through old U.S. newspaper archives on gambling, I discovered a 19th-century article with a bit of prescient speculation. The paper predicted that data would show a close association between gambling and suicide.

The Watertown Republican (Watertown, Wis.) republished the original column from The Contemporary Review on December 2, 1891, with the archive preserved by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

We’ve learned much about the relationship between gambling and suicide in the roughly 135 years since the article’s publication. Numerous recent studies have shown that about 40% of people with a gambling addiction report lifetime suicidal ideation, compared to 16% of the general population. About 20% of people with a gambling addiction report a suicide attempt.

The risks could be greater, considering that it is possible to suffer severe financial harm from gambling without meeting the criteria of an addiction. Chasing losses is just one component of a potential diagnosis.

Compulsive gambling can occur alongside other addictions, such as substance use, so there are challenges with generalizing the risk of suicide due to gambling.

Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that people knew the close association between gambling and suicide long before statistics on the link. As is sometimes the case with gambling-related studies, researchers end up providing empirical evidence of what was long anecdotally observed, felt, and sensed about gambling’s vast potential for harm.

Below is the text of the 400-word article published in 1891, followed by an image.

“If we could but obtain accurate statistics, we should find that gambling was of all vicious habits, not even excluding hard drinking, the one which most predisposed its victims to suicide. Yet,” continues the writer, “one does not quite see at first why gambling should so greatly predispose to suicide. The gambler, prima facie, ought to be a man trained by his life to bear ill-luck with fortitude.” This, of course, is true only if there be nothing in the conditions of his life secretly disintegrating that fortitude.

Let us see. It is probable that an intelligent jury will always account for the gambler’s suicide by supposing that ere he consummated the awful deed he had come under the resistless control of temporary insanity. Hence we must try to discover those facts in the gambler’s inward history which led to this insanity. I believe they are of two classes, according as we study his experience in the light of ethical or of psychological and physical laws. In the region of moral consciousness I do not think we need seek far for the cause of insanity. The loss of the man’s whole possessions by gambling must work upon him, like a sudden accident upon a drunken man—it awakens him. And now as he looks at the result of his career, at the obligations he has ignored, the relatives he has wronged, even the riches he has lost in pursuit of the gambler’s passion, only one word can rise to his mind, and that is, “Fool!” As he glances around the men with whom he has been gambling look at him in pity and mutter “Poor fellow!” or “Poor fool!” The very servants who have watched his ruin gaze now at one poorer than they, and call him in their hearts, “Poor fool!”

I believe this word of scorn, echoing within or without, filling the atmosphere for that man’s ear, accurately describes the shame which he feels. Ashamed, crushed, ruined, despised by the associates who need him no longer, and called to no new and congenial surroundings by any human voice, the wonder is not that so many become insane, but that every ruined gambler is not drawn in the hour of his awakening into the terrible vortex of insanity. The man who loses his all in a legitimate commercial undertaking retains at least his self-respect, and self-respect is the soul of fortitude.

Observations and notes

The article talks about so-called “insanity” in the context of gambling. The medical field no longer uses that term. In the present, a gambling problem could be associated with an “acute mental-health crisis” — but that is not framed as a loss of sanity. Gambling as a form of “insanity” could be stigmatizing for some people.
The article describes the harsh reality of financial harm from gambling as an “awaken[ing]”. Some people today with gambling addiction have described a similar feeling of shock at the realization that their gambling is out of control.
The word “fool” can imply that a person with a gambling problem lacks intelligence. That is often not the case, and it can be stigmatizing to suggest such personal shortcomings in the context of addiction. Gambling games, especially when combined with modern technology such as mobile devices, are designed to be habit-forming. No one is stupid for falling prey to products intended for compulsive use. To be fair to the 1891 article, the internet was not around at the time. All this said, it is OK for a person with a gambling problem to regard their own behavior as foolish or unwise, if such a mental framing helps in their recovery from gambling. For someone harmed by an addicted gambler, it is valid to consider the person’s gambling to be foolish. What’s important is not to let shame delay quitting and treatment.
The article concludes by comparing financial loss from gambling and a “legitimate commercial undertaking”. Suicide after experiencing ruin related to the loss of one’s material wealth appears to be an ancient phenomenon, but the article does hit on something often true. Financial harm from gambling, where it is virtually impossible to win in the long run, can sting harder than loss from an endeavor with at least some chances of success, however remote. In the present, some people describe gambling as “lighting money on fire.” It’s easy to have feelings of self-loathing for treating money with such disregard.
Though obviously dated, the article is helpful for a look back at long-held views on gambling and its relationship with suicide.

If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide related to gambling, please call 1-800-GAMBLER for 24/7 help.