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As pointed out in preceding reports, " the only satisfactory mode of dealing with this matter
would be to erect a shelter and provide it with a proper equipment," which could be " most
economically done in connection with a disinfecting station." The Council however, have decided
that the depot at Wood Lane, where the disinfecting station is to be erected, is not a suitable
situation for a Shelter. It will be remembered that I recommended the Council's Wharf at Kensal
Road, as a suitable and convenient site for the disinfecting station, and the shelter, as well as for
carrying out the provisions of the Cleansing of Persons Act, all under a single management.
PUBLIC MORTUARY.
Bodies were deposited at the Mortuary during the year to the number of 273, upon application,
as follows :—
1. At the request of the relatives of the deceased 7
2. At the request of undertakers, mainly at the instance of the relieving officers 73
3. At the request of the coroner (inquest cases):—
Cases of sudden death 118
Cases of violent death 49
167
4. Brought in by the Police j^ound dead 16
° ' (Accident cases 4
— 20
5. On account of death due to infectious disease.6 273In 92 of the above cases post-mortem examinations were made under the coroner's warrant.
Coroners' Districts.—The districts of Coroners do not in all cases correspond with the
municipal areas, and in certain parts of the borough bodies of persons upon whom it became
necessary to hold inquests were removed to Paddington for that purpose. A communication was
addressed to the London County Council in January, calling attention to the desirability of steps
being taken to secure the adjustment of boundaries of the Coroners' districts, so that every Borough
shall be wholly situated in one of such districts. The matter remains in statu quo, but there is
ground for hoping that the desired re-arrangement of the districts will ere long be taken in hand.
Occasionally complaint is made of improper detention at the homes of the poor of the bodies
of deceased relatives, on the supposition that the Council possess arbitrary power to remove
bodies to the public mortuary. What the law enables the Council to do is set out in the 89th
section of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, which provides that—
" When either—
(a) The body of a person who has died of any infectious disease is retained in a room in
which persons live or sleep ; or
(b) The body of a person who has died of any dangerous infectious disease is retained
without the sanction of the medical officer of health, or any legally qualified medical
practitioner, for more than 48 hours, elsewhere than in a room not used at the time as
a dwelling place, sleeping place, or work-room ; or
(c) Any dead body is retained in any house or room so as to endanger the health of the
inmates thereof, or of any adjoining or neighbouring house or building ;
a justice may, on a certificate signed by a medical officer of health, or other legally qualified
medical practitioner, direct that the body be removed, at the cost of the sanitary authority, to
any available mortuary, aud be buried within the time limited by the justice."
The majority of cases of improper deposit of dead bodies in living rooms occur in connection
with the removal from the infirmary mortuary of deceased patients for private burial. But until
recently the Council's officers were without information, and so were unable to exercise influence to
effect the transfer of bodies to the public mortuary, however sanitarily unsuitable the place of
temporary deposit—occasionally a single-room tenement—might be. The Guardians, in 1902, gave
instructions to the steward of the infirmary to report to me all necessary particulars when a dead
body is removed from the mortuary at that establishment for private burial by the friends of the
deceased, and this is now done.