ABANDONED CHILDREN IN SIBENIK FOUNDLING HOUSE AT THE END OF THE 19th CENTURY / Napustena djeca u sibenskom nahodistu krajem 19. stoljeca

The Sibenik Foundling House was an institution that cared for abandoned children before their adoption. The paper analysed the accommodation capacities of the foundling house from 1886 to 1900, using registers of baptisms and deaths from the provincial hospital in Sibenik as the basis for the analysis. An analysis of the received children was conducted based on how they arrived at the site and the level of knowledge about their origin or identity. From 1886 to 1900, the Sibenik Foundling House received three hundred and seventy-eight abandoned children with a yearly average of 25.2 children. Two hundred and forty-three children were brought to the hospital by their mothers as newborns, and their identities were recorded in the baptism registers, constituting 60.15% of the total number of residents in the Foundling House. One hundred and six received infants were foundlings­children without known identity­comprising 26.24% of the total number of baptisms in the hospital. Twenty-nine children were born in the hospital and left by unmarried mothers in the care of the Foundling House, making up 7.18% of all entries in the register of baptisms. The monthly distribution of received children shows a balanced distribution. The mortality rate of these children in the Foundling House was 32.80%. Children who did not have names and surnames were given to them by the priest who baptised them.

A REVIEW OF SUICIDES IN DALMATIA REPORTED IN THE DAILY PRESS BETWEEN TWO WORLD WARS / PRIKAZ SAMOUBOJSTAVA U DNEVNOM TISKU U DALMACIJI IZMEDU DVA SVJETSKA RATA

The paper analyzed texts of newspaper reports of suicides in Dalmatia that occurred in the period between the two world wars. Words used in headlines were analyzed separately. Suicides were statistically analyzed according to age, gender, method, location, and monthly distribution. Most of the cases were reported during May and June. During 1936 and 1937, there was a rapid increase of suicides in media coverage. There is no evidence that the number of suicides really increased during these years. Statistics show the existence of gender preferences for certain suicide methods. The morning was the most common time of day for suicide in Dalmatia. Newspapers were inappropriate according to today's WHO instructions. Texts were full of details, the romanticization of suicide and violation of deceased person's privacy. Results of the research showed that news reports did not cause mass suicide imitations. However, there are cases of individual imitations. In some micro-locations (smaller settlements and their surroundings), there is evidence that some cases were influenced by earlier suicides. However, the time period between original and imitated cases varies from few weeks to ten years. This shows that time is not variable in imitations performed in micro-locations.

[Spanish Flu in the Neretva Valley] / Spanjolska gripa u dolini Neretve

The Spanish flu is a pandemic that was neglected even though it killed more people than World War I. At the end of 1918, newspaper reports are scarce due to war events, press cen-sorships, and burst political events. For decades after the epidemic was over, the Spanish flu was not the subject of scientific research. By analysing the entry from the registers of the six Neretva parishes (Borovci-Nova Selo, Desne-Bagalovici, Dobranje, Opuzen, Metkovic, Vidonje,and Vid), statistical data on the scale of the epidemic were reconstructed as well as the time course of the spread of the disease in the valley. The sex and age structure of the deceased were also analysed. The disease was spreading from Opuzen throughout the valley. The peak of the epidemic was in the second half of November and late December. The villages of the Desne and Vidonje were the most affected. Vid was also captured by the third wave in 1920, which was as deadly as that in 1918. The most affected were women, which fits in Croatian statistics. Comparing the timeline of epidemics in Zagreb and Neretva valley, it is visible that Zagreb was affected earlier by an epidemic. The third wave did not affect Zagreb as much as it did Neretva, especially the village of Vidonje. In these Neretva parishes, people under twenty were mostly affected. This deviates from the general rules and statistics of the Spanish flu, which stated that the most affected population was between the ages of twenty and forty. The article deals with data on the Spanish Neretva flu cases, while the number of infections remains unknown.