“Helping criminals commit suicide since 1852…”

When prisoners on suicide watch in prison have their shoelaces removed for fear they may hang themselves, I can’t be alone in being impressed at the robustness of their choice in footwear fastenings. I’m not sure of the breaking point of the average shoelace, but I’d hypothesise that it would be less than the weight of the average person.

Fred West, arguably the most well-known of shoelace related suicides, wasn’t a small man (exacerbated by a sizeable bouffant and Mungo Jerry sideburns), but successfully bought the farm via this self-inflicted route. Conversely, my shoelaces snap on a fairly regular basis when I’m merely popping shoes on my feet, so either I’m tying them in a heavy-handed and unsustainable fashion, or I’m buying crap laces. It seems that the crims and perps of unstable mind that populate our prisons either have a predilection towards good quality laces (maybe there’s something subliminal in their psyche that, possibly, they may have to swing from a door frame with them one day), or, err… have hollow bones. Like birds.

The ability for such simple items to support the weight of a fully grown serial killer is impressive and perhaps something that the Shoelace Marketing Board should be actively shouting about, perhaps with an ad campaign along the lines of Araldite (the one where a man is suspended over a frothing sea of sharks, though is prevented from being torn limb-from-limb as he’s bonded to a board by his super-strong glue).

Ironically, had Fred sported shoes with Velcro fastenings, he could still have carried out his plan by sticking them onto his Dickensian mutton-chops before leaping off the chair. Not the most dignified way to go perhaps, though effective nonetheless. I bet when he was alive, you never saw him in slip-ons. Some people are just born to be serial killers.