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secrecy—they are not the results of* the hard toil of an underpaid
official—they are not intended for the top shelf of a registrar's office,
to be bound up with red tape and put aside and forgotten—they are
not intended as a mere toy and plaything for some one favoured
individual employed in a Government office to toy with in idle hours
—they were not paid for to swell the waste-paper basket of a
Registrar General—but they are your property, they are your ledger
as a public body, the records of your profit and loss by death and
birth, the means whereby you may be in a position to discover the
source of any extra expenditure, the cause of that expenditure and
its remedy. They were intended (and you have a right, I say, not
merely to ask, but to demand, that they should be put to their
legitimate use) that every conceivable advantage that can be gained
from them, should be gained from them. Let me remind you that
in pressing on the various authorities our need of these documents
which had been taken from us, we asked for no new favour, but merely
for the restoration of an old favour which we deemed nothing short of
a right. For this is the long and the short of the matter. These
records are for the use of those to whom they can be of use. Paid
for by the public, and collected by public officers, it is passing
strange that any question can be raised whether or no the public have
a right to them. And yet, whatever may be said to the contrary, this
is the true question, and the only question, at issue between the
Boards and Vestries of the Metropolis and the Registrar General.
With no personal feeling whatsoever other than a desire to deal
with the subject fairly, I earnestly, as a Metropolitan medical
officer, protest against such an act of arbitrary power as their withdrawal.
THE MORTUARY.
From August 9th, 1874, to the end of June, 1875, 366 bodies
have been received at the mortuary, and in post-mortems have
been made in the post-mortem room. As many as 97 inquests have
been held in the coroner's room, from December 9th, 1874, to the
end of June, 1875; and the fees received for the use of the same,
amounting to £16 7s. 6d., have been paid to the Vestry. I cannot
help expressing my own conviction of the immense value of a public
mortuary and I can only trust that some day it will be far more