GRGR(15) sus per coll

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Jeremy Osner wrote:
> 
> I was wondering what "sus. per coll." (p. 329) meant; a web search
> brought me to the home page of Blandy & Blandy, an "11 partner firm of
> solicitors based in Reading, Berkshire with origins dating back to
> 1733," wherein I read:
> 
> The Blandy family is not without skeletons in its closet. Mary Blandy
> was the daughter of the Town Clerk of
>  Henley-upon-Thames. Having allegedly poisoned her father, she took
> refuge in the Little Angel in Henley. To no avail,
>  however, and after one of the earliest cases in which forensic evidence
> was given as to the nature of the "love philters"
>  administered to her father - to wit, arsenic - she was hanged (or, as
> the old records put it, died sus per coll.) at Oxford
>  in 1752 and buried in a grave with her father and mother. That branch
> of the Blandy family has no descendants.
> 
> I'm guessing it stands for "suspended by the neck" in Latin, though I
> don't know Latin for neck -- ah, here it is: collum = neck. Anyone know
> what the endings on suspens- and coll- are? I'm not gonna even guess.
> Anyway, learning this confirmed my hunch that "dangling...off the
> Slothrop family tree" was a way of saying they had been hanged. Only one
> of them was a witch, though; presumably the others were common
> criminals.
> 
> --
> The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which,
> during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel,
> mechanically testing whether there were still plenty
> left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the
> placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason
> at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick
> reading, already downhill, and -- O horrible!
> 
> Invitation to a Beheading
> Vladimir Nabokov
> http://www.readin.com/books/invitationbeheading/



You got it. SUSpendo, COLLum.