Opting Out

On New Year’s Eve 1819, 33-year-old London tea dealer Elton Hamond committed suicide. A man found guilty of deliberate self-murder would forfeit his estate, so Hamond composed this plea:

To the Coroner and the Gentlemen who will sit on my Body.

Norwood, 31st December, 1819.

Gentlemen,

To the charge of self-murder I plead not guilty. For there is no guilt in what I have done. Self-murder is a contradiction in terms. If the King who retires from his throne is guilty of high treason; if the man who takes money out of his own coffers and spends it is a thief; if he who burns his own hayrick is guilty of arson; or he who scourges himself of assault and battery, then he who throws up his own life may be guilty of murder, — if not, not.

If anything is a man’s own, it is surely his life. Far, however, be it from me to say that a man may do as he pleases with his own. Of all that he has he is a steward. Kingdoms, money, harvests, are held in trust, and so, but I think less strictly, is life itself. Life is rather the stewardship than the talent. The King who resigns his crown to one less fit to rule is guilty, though not of high treason; the spendthrift is guilty, though not of theft; the wanton burner of his hayrick is guilty, though not of arson; the suicide who could have performed the duties of his station is perhaps guilty, though not of murder, not of felony. They are all guilty of neglect of duty, and all, except the suicide, of breach of trust. But I cannot perform the duties of my station. He who wastes his life in idleness is guilty of a breach of trust; he who puts an end to it resigns his trust, — a trust that was forced upon him, — a trust which I never accepted, and probably never would have accepted. Is this felony? I smile at the ridiculous supposition. How we came by the foolish law which considers suicide as felony I don’t know; I find no warrant for it in Philosophy or Scripture. It is worthy of the times when heresy and apostacy were capital offences; when offences were tried by battle, ordeal, or expurgation; when the fine for slaying a man was so many shillings, and that for slaying an ass a few more or less.

Every old institution will find its vindicators while it remains in practice. I am an enemy to all hasty reform, but so foolish a law as this should be put an end to. Does it become a jury to disregard it? For juries to disregard their oaths for the sake of justice is, as you probably know, a frequent practice. The law places them sometimes in the cruel predicament of having to choose between perjury and injustice: whether they do right to prefer perjury, as the less evil, I am not sure. I would rather be thrown naked into a hole in the road than that you should act against your consciences. But if you wish to acquit me, I cannot see that your calling my death accidental, or the effect of insanity, would be less criminal than a jury’s finding £10 Bank-of-England note worth thirty-nine shillings, or premeditated slaying in a duel simple manslaughter, both of which have been done. But should you think this too bold a course, is it less bold to find me guilty of being felo de se when I am not guilty at all, as there is no guilt in what I have done? I disdain to take advantage of my situation as culprit to mislead your understandings, but if you, in your consciences, think premeditated suicide no felony, will you, upon your oaths, convict me of felony? Let me suggest the following verdict, as combining liberal truth with justice: — ‘Died by his own hand, but not feloniously.’ If I have offended God, it is for God, not you, to enquire. Especial public duties I have none. If I have deserted any engagement in society, let the parties aggrieved consign my name to obloquy. I have for nearly seven years been disentangling myself from all my engagements, that I might at last be free to retire from life. I am free to-day, and avail myself of my liberty. I cannot be a good man, and prefer death to being a bad one, — as bad as I have been and as others are.

I take my leave of you and of my country condemning you all, yet with true honest love. What man, alive to virtue, can bear the ways of the best of you? Not I, you are wrong altogether. If a new and better light appears, seek it; in the meantime, look out for it. God bless you all!

Hamond left the letter with his friend Henry Crabb Robinson: “Mind you don’t get yourself into a scrape by making an over-zealous speech if you attend as my counsel. You may say throughout, ‘The culprit’s defence is this.'” Robinson, fearing a scandal, passed it unread to Hamond’s relations, and the jury found Hamond insane.

| Death · Society

The Two Poles

dudeney poles puzzle

A puzzle by Henry Dudeney:

A man planted two poles upright in level ground. One pole was six and a half feet and the other seven feet seven inches above ground. From the top of each pole he tied a string to the bottom of the other — just where it entered the ground. Now, what height above the ground was the point where the two strings crossed one another? The hasty reader will perhaps say, “You have forgotten to tell us how far the poles were apart.” But that point is of no consequence whatever, as it does not affect the answer!

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Bygones

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Bibb.png

In 1842, Kentucky slave Henry Bibb made his way to Canada and became an abolitionist. While attending a convention in Detroit, he sent pamphlets to a number of Southern slaveholders, including his former master, William Gatewood. In 1844 he was surprised to receive this letter:

Bedford, Thimble County, Ky.
Mr. H. Bibb.
Dear Sir:– After my respects to you and yours &c., I received a small book which you sent to me that I peroseed and found it was sent by H. Bibb. I am a stranger in Detroit and know no man there without it is Walton H. Bibb if this be the man please to write to me and tell me all about that place and the people I will tell you the news here as well as I can your mother is still living here and she is well the people are generally well in this cuntry times are dull and produce low give my compliments to King, Jack, and all my friends in that cuntry I read that book you sent me and think it will do very well — George is sold, I do not know any thing about him I have nothing more at present, but remain yours &c
W.H. GATEWOOD.
February 9th, 1844
P.S. You will please to answer this letter.

He replied:

Dear Sir:– I am happy to inform you that you are not mistaken in the man whom you sold as property, and received pay for as such. But I thank God that I am not property now, but am regarded as a man like yourself, and although I live far north, I am enjoying a comfortable living by my own industry. If you should ever chance to be traveling this way, and will call on me, I will use you better than you did me while you held me as a slave. Think not that I have any malice against you, for the cruel treatment which you inflicted on me while I was in your power. As it was the custom of your country, to treat your fellow men as you did me and my little family, I can freely forgive you.

I wish to be remembered in love to my aged mother, and friends; please tell her that if we should never meet again in this life, my prayer shall be to God that we may meet in Heaven, where parting shall be no more.

You wish to be remembered to King and Jack. I am pleased, sir, to inform you that they are both here, well, and doing well. They are both living in Canada West. They are now the owners of better farms than the men are who once owned them.

You may perhaps think hard of us for running away from slavery, but as to myself, I have but one apology to make for it, which is this: I have only to regret that I did not start at an earlier period. I might have been free long before I was. But you had it in your power to have kept me there much longer than you did. I think it is very probable that I should have been a toiling slave on your plantation today, if you had treated me differently.

To be compelled to stand by and see you whip and slash my wife without mercy, when I could afford her no protection, not even by offering myself to suffer the lash in her place, was more than I felt it to be the duty of a slave husband to endure, while the way was open to Canada. My infant child was also frequently flogged by Mrs. Gatewood, for crying, until its skin was bruised literally purple. This kind of treatment was what drove me from home and family, to seek a better home for them. But I am willing to forget the past. I should be pleased to hear from you again, on the reception of this, and should also be very happy to correspond with you often, if it should be agreeable to yourself. I subscribe myself a friend to the oppressed, and Liberty forever.
HENRY BIBB.

| History

Money Talks

http://www.google.com/patents/US408709

Pay telephones appeared as early as 1889. William Gray patented this version, in which a coin dropped into a slot mechanically unlocks the hand crank. While he’s using the phone, the caller keeps the device unlocked by resting his arm on an armrest: “In case the first call is not answered from the central office the user of the telephone can, while keeping his arm upon the arm-rest and so holding the button uncovered, hang up the telephone m on the hook m’ and again call the central office by turning the crank b and pushing in the button in the usual manner.”

| Technology

In a Word

agamist

n. an unmarried person

Schedule of a bachelor’s life, from the Yorkshire Observer, Nov. 30, 1822:

At 16 years, incipient palpitations are manifested towards the young ladies.
17. Blushing and confusion occurs in conversing with them.
18. Confidence in conversing with them is much increased.
19. Is angry if treated by them as a boy.
20. Betrays great consciousness of his own charms and manliness.
21. A looking-glass becomes indispensible in his room.
22. Insufferable puppyism exhibited.
23. Thinks no woman good enough for him.
24. Is caught unawares by the snares of Cupid.
25. The connection broken off from self-conceit on his part.
26. Conducts himself with airs of superiority towards her.
27. Pays his addresses to another lady, not without hope of mortifying the first.
28. Is mortified and frantic at being refused.
29. Rails against the fair sex in general.
30. Seems morose and out of humour in all conversations on matrimony.
31. Contemplates matrimony more under the influence of interest than formerly.
32. Begins to consider personal beauty in a wife not so indispensible as formerly.
33. Still retains a high opinion of his attractions as a husband.
34. Consequently has no idea but he may still marry a chicken.
35. Fails deeply and violently in love with one of seventeen.
36. Au dernier desespoir! another refusal.
37. Indulges now in every kind of dissipation.
38. Shuns the best part of the female sex.
39. Suffers much remorse and mortification in so doing.
40. A fresh budding of matrimonial ideas, but no spring shoots.
41. A nice young widow perplexes him.
42. Ventures to address her with mixed sensations of love and interest.
43. Interest prevails, which causes much cautious reflection.
44. The widow jilts him, being as cautious as himself.
45. Becomes every day more averse to the fair sex.
46. Gouty and nervous symptoms begin to appear.
47. Fears what may become of him when old and infirm.
48. Thinks living alone irksome.
49. Resolves to have a prudent young woman as housekeeper and companion.
50. A nervous affection about him, and frequent attacks of the gout.
51. Much pleased with his new house-keeper as nurse.
52. Begins to feel some attachment to her.
53. His pride revolts at the idea of marrying her.
54. Is in great distress now to act.
55. Is completely under her influence, and very miserable.
56. Many painful thoughts about parting with her.
57. She refuses to live any longer with him solo.
58. Gouty, nervous, and bilious to excess.
59. Feels very ill, sends for her to his bed-side, and intends espousing her.
60. Grows rapidly worse, has his will made in her favour, and makes his exit.

| Language · Society

Double Talk

A logical curiosity by L.J. Cohen: A policeman testifies that nothing a prisoner says is true, and the prisoner testifies that something the policeman says is true. The policeman’s statement can’t be right, as that leads immediately to a contradiction. This means that something the prisoner says is true — either a new statement or his current one. If it’s a new statement, then we establish that the prisoner says something else. If it’s his current statement, then the policeman must say something else (as we know that his current statement is false).

J.L. Mackie writes, “From the mere fact that each of them says these things — not from their being true — it follows logically, as an interpretation of a formally valid proof, that one of them — either of them — must say something else. And hence, by contraposition, if neither said anything else they logically could not both say what they are supposed to say, though each could say what he is supposed to say so long as the other did not.”

| Science & Math

The Devil’s Game

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pandemonium.jpg

Ms. C dies and goes to hell, where the devil offers a game of chance. If she plays today, she has a 1/2 chance of winning; if she plays tomorrow, the chance will be 2/3; and so on. If she wins, she can go to heaven, but if she loses she must stay in hell forever. When should she play?

The answer is not clear. If she waits a full year, her probability of winning will have risen to about 0.997268. At that point, waiting an additional day will improve her chances by only about 0.000007. But at stake is infinite joy, and 0.000007 multiplied by infinity is infinite. And the additional day spent waiting will contain (presumably) only a finite amount of torment. So it seems that the expected benefit from a further delay will always outweigh the cost.

“This logic might suggest that Ms. C should wait forever, but clearly such a strategy would be self-defeating,” wrote Edward J. Gracely in proposing this conundrum in Analysis in 1988. “Why should she stay forever in a place in order to increase her chances of leaving it? So the question remains: what should Ms. C do?”

(Edward J. Gracely, “Playing Games With Eternity: The Devil’s Offer,” Analysis 48:3 [1988]: 113-113.)

| Science & Math

The Copernicus Method

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin_Wall_Potsdamer_Platz_November_1975_looking_east.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott was visiting the Berlin Wall in 1969 when a curious thought occurred to him. His visit occurred at a random moment in the wall’s existence. So it seemed reasonable to assume that there was a 50 percent chance that he was observing it in the middle two quarters of its lifetime. “If I was at the beginning of this interval, then one-quarter of the wall’s life had passed and three-quarters remained,” he wrote later in New Scientist. “On the other hand, if I was at the end of of this interval, then three-quarters had passed and only one-quarter lay in the future. In this way I reckoned that there was a 50 per cent chance the wall would last from 1/3 to 3 times as long as it had already.”

At the time, the wall was 8 years old, so Gott concluded that there was a 50 percent chance that it would last more than 2-2/3 years but fewer than 24. The 24 years would have elapsed in 1993. The wall came down in 1989.

Encouraged, Gott applied the same principle to estimate the lifetime of the human race. In an article published in Nature in 1993, he argued that there was a 95 percent chance that our species would survive for between 5,100 and 7.8 million years.

When and whether the method is valid is still a matter of debate among physicists and philosophers. But it’s worth noting that on the day Gott’s paper was published, he used it to predict the longevities of 44 plays and musicals on and off Broadway. His accuracy rate was more than 90 percent.

| Science & Math