The coroner's court, its uses and abuses : with suggestions for reform / by J. J. Dempsy.
- Dempsy, J. J.
- Date:
- 1859
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The coroner's court, its uses and abuses : with suggestions for reform / by J. J. Dempsy. 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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![on the present absurd registration system. At present a registrar registers any death reported to him, tlie party is buried on his certificate, and the system is no protection what- ever to life. A medical attendant should not be allowed to certify unless he knew the precise cause of death, and no registrar, under the pain of severe fine and dismissal from office, should be allowed to register unless on the certificate of a fully qualified medical man, who should state how long he attended the deceased before demise, and the precise cause of death. Mr. Dempsy makes some pertinent remarks respecting the organization of the Coroner’s jury, and points to the necessity for the appointment of public prosecutors, as also to the justice of allowing legal advisers to attend and speak for accused ])arties before the Court, such being, under the present mode, a favour depending upon the whim of the Coroner. Abridged from The Globe.” Amongst our most useful tribunals we must reckon that which is unprovided with any stated court—the Coroner’s In- quest ; and there are few of our tribunals which we should be more sorry to lose. The tribunal is not modern. A recent writer (Mr. J. J. Dempsy) traces it to the reign of Alfred the Great, just as Virgil traces the birth of his patron to the tra- ditional founder of Rome, the pious Prince of Troy. These traditional origins for institutions form one proof of the esteem in which they have been held for a long series of ages. Curiously enough, the value of the English Coroner’s Court has been illustrated by the want of a similar tribunal in Scotland. Mr. Dempsy recommends that the Coroner should have a seat on the County Bench, and that he should hold his court in some established building—the district police court, the vestry hall, or parochial offices, at times when these buildings were not needed for other purposes. Our author also proposes a much more regular holding of inquests in cases of violence, alleged violence, accident, arson, and many other doubtful circumstances ; the enforcement of all fines for the non-attend- ance of jurors ; and a larger power in the Coroner of indicting fines for cases of culpable neglect or criminal carelessness, a species of retributive penalty now only obtained through some circuitous action at law, sometimes founded on fiction, such as “ loss of service,” &c. Mr. Dempsy proposes that the Coroner should have a Deputy, with a stated salary ; and that there should be appointed for his Court a public prosecutor, charged with the preliminary inquiries into cases of murder, arson,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28268350_0062.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
