Black and white movies and mid-century pulp fiction are filled with nick-of-time rescuers breaking down doors, shouting Gas!
and frantically opening the windows; real life victims include poet Sylvia Plath.
Yet you never hear about this anymore.
Suicide by gas didnt go out of style it just became a whole lot less convenient.
The gas piped into your house these days is not your grandfathers gas.
It only smells terrible; its really not that lethal.
Safety types call it a simple asphyxiant.
Who has that kind of patience?
And who can stand that smell that long?
The gas it replaced, coal gas or illuminating gas was another matter entirely.
It was manufactured locally at gasworks from coal heated in airtight chambers.
The active ingredient was, of course, the carbon monoxide.
Like all good technologies, it was fast, convenient, and effective.
Advances in metallurgy and welding technology in the 1930s and 1940s brought coal gas industry to an end.
After World War II, American cities and towns rapidly switched over to the new safer natural gas.
The local gas plant joined horse trams and coal furnaces on the dust heap of discarded technology.
The transition in Britain was a little slower, with a few gasworks limping into the 70s.
The switch from coal gas to natural gas also had one unexpected effect.
During the 50s and 60s, about half of the suicides in Britain were by coal gas.
Even the suicidal appreciate convenience.
If its too much trouble, as Dorothy Parker said, You might as well live.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
