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sub-districts were (see Table V., Appendix) 3,591, and the
resulting deaths 193. This gives a per-centage of deaths
to cases treated of 5.3. In the two previous years the
ratio was 5.0 per cent.
Inquests.—Violent, Accidental, and Sudden Deaths.—
Unattested Deaths.—Inquiries as to the cause of death by
Coroners were, throughout the District, necessitated in
125 instances. These will be seen, by a reference to the
Local Summaries, to have been of the usual character, and
to have been carried out with touch the usual results—
satisfactory enough in some few cases, but the very reverse
in others, and, it is to be much regretted, with very little
apparent regard to the real objects of such investigations,
viz., the detection of crime, and the furnishing of reliable
vital statistics. The Lancet of a recent date has a short
article upon this subject which is very much to the point,
and is here given in extenso, in order to direct attention
to the necessity which appears to exist for a thorough
reform in the Coroners' courts throughout the kingdom :—
VERDICTS AT CORONERS' INQUESTS.
"The primary object of holding an inquest is undoubtedly to
ascertain the cause of a death, whether it resulted from natural
causes or from violence. Before the value of vital statistics was
either understood or appreciated, such verdicts as ' Death by
visitation of God,' or ' Death from natural causes,' or ' Accidentally
killed,' &c., &c., answered all the purposes whieh inquests were
then intended to serve. Now, however, that mortality statistics
are turned to increasingly useful account by the expenditure of
much time and money—both public and private—such verdicts as
these not only cease to be satisfactory, but are decidedly objectionable.
Coroners appear too often to lose sight of the fact that the
verdict at inquests is entered on the Death Register as the cause
of death, and that such verdicts as those wc have mentioned arc
valueless for purposes of classification. About a week since an
inmate of Millbank Prison died while undergoing a sentence of
seven years' penal servitude. According to custom, although the
cause of death was patent to the Medical Officer of the prison, an
inquest was held before Mr. Bedford, one of the Middlesex