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court * It may be added that the deaths registered on the information
of the coroner were 5.9 per cent, of total deaths in Kensington,
and 6.8 in all London. The deaths by violence were 1.9
per cent, in the parish, and 3.5 per cent, of all deaths in
London.
DEATHS "NOT CERTIFIED."
Under this innocent-looking heading the record of deaths from
time to time appears in the weekly returns. The meaning of it is
that the deceased passed away without medical treatment by any
registered practitioner. A duly registered medical man is compelled
by law—since January, 1875—to give a certificate of the apparent
cause of death of any person whom he may have attended in the last
illness. But the production of such certificate is not essentially
necessary for the purposes of registration of death, as in many
cases it is not forthcoming. And, more, the signing of such a
certificate by a person who is not qualified to give it, viz., by
an unregistered practitioner, is no offence at law. I was about
to observe that such a certificate, signed by an unregistered
practitioner, is but waste paper: but, in fact, the evidence it
affords of the cause of death is accepted and entered in the
register, though the certificate itself is " invalid," and the
death is returned as " not certified." At any rate I am not aware that
the evidence of the cause of death afforded by unregistered practitioners
is ever refused. So far as I know there are only two individuals
practising irregularly in this parish to the extent of
giving certificates of the cause of death : and they both claim to
be doctors of medicine of a foreign university, though whether
their degrees were obtained in absentia or after a proper curriculum
is more than I can say. Thirty-three deaths were " certified
" in this irregular manner during the year—at all ages,
from a few days to upwards of seventy years. The causes
of death returned include such important diseases as scarlet
fever, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, inflammation of the lungs,
paralysis, atrophy of children, etc. It is, I need hardly observe,
undesirable that such a practice should continue, and I am glad
to observe that the attention of the General Council of Medical
Education has been directed to it, though they do not as yet appear
to have found a remedy. I venture to believe that the course I
have in former reports suggested would be attended with good
results :—viz., that the giving of" a death certificate by an unregistered
practitioner should be made an offence within the meaning
of the (40th) penal clause of the Medical Act, and subject the
offender to the consequences of "falsely pretending to be registered."
Inquests, moreover, should be held on the bodies of persons who
die under the treatment of unregistered practitioners, that the
* One of the "peculiar people " has just been sentenced to three months imprisonment
for neglecting, on mis-called " conscientious*' grounds, to obtain medical
aid for his sick child, who died. (September, 1876.)