Magistrates and coroners. Report of a select committee of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Southampton, appointed at the midsummer quarter session, 1857, and a letter from the County coroners in reply.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Magistrates and coroners. Report of a select committee of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Southampton, appointed at the midsummer quarter session, 1857, and a letter from the County coroners in reply. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    seem to us to have been somewhat unwarily used, That the County Magistrates, who are the guardians of the county piu’se, should have authoritv to audit and allow or disallow the Coroners account, as far as it is at variance with the reguhitions (f the statute, is but just and reasonable ; but that they should be re- quired or authorised, as that case hnports them to be, to inquire and determine whether an inquest has been necessarily held or not, that is, whether there was any necessity for an Inquest at all, is an interference with the judicial functions of a judicial officer which even the Court of Queen's Bench professes to decline with respect to the Justices themselves. Trust must be reposed somewhere, and if an individual is thought sufficiently trustworthy to fill a judicial office, he ought to be allowed to exercise its duties free from all control, save that which the Court of Queen’s Bench exercises in cases of abuse by the instru- mentality of a crhninal information. OPINION OF ran REGISTRAR GENERAL. “ Although an absolute rule has never been laid down, it is generally understood that Inquests are held, not only when vio- lence is suspected, but in diseases which, from the nature of their symptoms, are liable to be confounded vith deaths by violence. Nearly all the deaths by personal violence are immediate, and poison is usually recognised by the rapidity with which the symptoms come on after it has been swallowed. Tiie law there- fore ]}oints out those who die suddenhj to the especial attention of Coroners. Persons labouring under sickness require peculiar care, and, whenever this has been denied, the death requires an Inquest, and may be properly referred to deaths by violence. It would be taking a narrow view to assume that the Inquest is intended only to detect deaths by murder. The principal utility of the Inquest is the security which it a fords the pjublic mind, and its tendency to prevent crime'' OPINION OF THE TIMES. “ We are far from saying that the present position of the Coroner is what it should be. If anything, his hands should be strengthened, not weakened ; for, with all our machinery of death-registration, inquests, police, criminal courts, &c. we have not too many securities against the violation of human life ; and the Magistrates wiU not find their interference meet with the general acquiescence of the public.”