Clarke's Suicide
"A violent and hopeless passion for a very beautiful lady of a rank superior to his own" caused him to commit suicide. Before shooting himself, he considered hanging and drowning as options, so to decide his fate, he tossed a coin—however the coin landed in the mud on its side. Instead of consoling himself, he chose the third method of death, and performed the deed in the cathedral churchyard." Suicides were not generally granted burial in consecrated ground, but an exception was made for Clarke, who was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral (though other sources state he was buried in the unconsecrated section of the cathedral churchyard).
Read more about this topic: Jeremiah Clarke
Famous quotes containing the words clarke and/or suicide:
“Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.”
—Eugene Field (1850–1895)
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)