Deaths: how

Suicides

I was once asked how Virginia Woolf died.  When I answered "she drowned", this was not accepted; the answer on the card was "suicide".  A careless question setter and a mistakenly pedantic question master (actually it was a woman ...)

Not that I bear a grudge :–)

I would respectfully suggest that in all cases of suicide, the actual cause of death should be enough. I've tried to think of a form of words that makes it clear (in the question) that you need the answer to include the word "suicide", without giving away the fact that it was suicide; but I can't.

If, on the other hand, you are the question master and the contestant answers "suicide", I think you have a right to insist on the actual cause of death.

If you're asked such a question, the safest answer – and the most correct – is (staying with Virginia Woolf as an example): "She committed suicide by drowning".

Boadicea (Boudicca)		Poisoning
Cleopatra: bitten (30BC; according to most contemporary sources on the arm, but in Shakespeare on the breast) by an		Asp
Peg Entwhistle (British–born bit–part actress, 1932)		Jumped from the Hollywood sign
Mark Antony (30BC; believing that Cleopatra had already committed suicide – although in fact she didn’t do so until about two weeks later)		Stabbing with his sword
Sylvia Plath		Carbon monoxide poisoning
Socrates (in compliance with a judicial sentence)		Hemlock poisoning
Vincent van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway		Gunshot
Virginia Woolf		Drowning

Other

Kings Harold II (according to tradition), William II (Rufus), Richard I (the Lionheart)		Arrow wounds
Albert Camus, General Patton (died 12 days later), James Dean, Grace Kelly, Jackson Pollock, Marc Bolan		Car crashes
Tchaikovsky (probably)		Cholera
Rasputin: actually shot by nobles and dumped in a river. Officially		Drowned
Percy Bysshe Shelley		Drowned
Lord Kitchener		Drowned (lost at sea)
Lord Byron		Fever
Guy Fawkes		Hung, drawn and quartered
Leon Trotsky was fatally stabbed with an		Ice axe
Rupert Brooke (1915)		Insect bite
Robert the Bruce		Leprosy
Oliver Cromwell, Caravaggio		Malaria
T. E. Lawrence		Motorcycle accident
Rudolf Valentino		Perforated ulcer
Thomas Etholen Selfridge (US army officer – passenger of Orville Wright – no known relation to the retail family – first person to die this way, 1908 aged 26)		Plane crashes
Charles Rolls (first British citizen to die this way)
Roald Amundsen (Norwegian Sea, 1928), Will Rogers (US actor and humorist – Alaska, 1935), Carole Lombard (wife of Clark Gable – near Las Vegas, 1942), Glenn Miller (1944), Dag Hammarskjöld (Zambia, 1961), Patsy Cline (Tennessee, 1963), Jim Reeves (Tennessee, 1964), Yuri Gagarin (near Moscow, 1968), Otis Redding (Wisconsin, 1969), Rocky Marciano (Iowa, 1969), Audie Murphy (Virginia, 1971), Prince William of Gloucester (first cousin of Elizabeth II – near Wolverhampton, 1972), Jim Croce (Louisiana, 1973), Graham Hill (Hertfordshire, 1975), Ricky Nelson (Texas, 1985), Stevie Ray Vaughan (US blues guitarist – Wisconsin, 1990), John Denver (Monterey Bay, 1997), John F. Kennedy Jr. (off Martha's Vineyard, 1997), Payne Stewart (golfer – South Dakota, 1999), Hansie Cronje (South Africa, 2002), Galen Rowell (nature photographer – California, 2002), Colin McRae (rally driver – Lanark, 2007)
Antoni Gaudi (Catalan architect, 1852–1926)		Run over by a tram
Alexander I, King of Greece 1917–20		Sepsis
John Hanning Speke (discovered the source of the Nile)		Shot himself (accidentally)
Sonny Bono		Ski–ing accident
Kirsty MacColl		Swimming / boating accident
Al Capone, Paul Gauguin		Syphilis
John Keats, D. H. Lawrence		Tuberculosis
Prince Albert (1861), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1889)		Typhoid

And finally ...

British prime minister Lord Palmerston, US vice president Nelson Rockefeller, and Pope John XII, are all said to have died while		Having sex
King George II, Edmund II Ironside (King of England for just over 7 months in 1016), Lenny Bruce, Elvis Presley, Evelyn Waugh and Christopher Shale all died		On the toilet

© Haydn Thompson 2017–23