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WHY SO MANY INQUESTS ARE NECESSARY.
I have felt it my duty in several annual reports to remark on the
evidence afforded by many inquest-returns of the obviously culpable
neglect of parents to obtain medical assistance for their sick children,
which is patent on the very face of the verdicts,—for people do not die
"suddenly" of inflammation of the lungs, bronchitis, and other visceral
diseases; that is, not without obvious and continued symptons of serious
illness, proclaiming the necessity of recourse to medical assistance. The
evidence of this kind of neglect is just as marked as ever in the
returns for the past year, and so long as parents are allowed to neglect
the health, and practically to sacrifice the lives, of their children with
impunity, such neglect is likely to continue. There is no excuse for
parents now-a-days, for apart from the gratuitous medical aid obtainable
at hospitals and dispensaries, to say nothing of the Poor Law
Medical Service, there are now so many so-called "Provident
Dispensaries," where some sort of medical attention may be obtained
by the outlay of a few pence, that it is surprising any child should be
allowed to die of diseases such as I have named, without having been
seen by a medical man, even though assistance should have been
sought only at the last, and with a view to certification of the cause of
death and consequent avoidance of the scandal of a verdict which is
almost conclusive proof of parental neglect.
The inconsistency of Coroners' Juries is remarkable, for on the one
hand they have branded religious persons of the sect called the "peculiar
people" with the stigma of a verdict of "manslaughter," for refusing,
on conscientious, though mistaken, interpretation of Holy Scripture, to
"send for the doctor" to a child sick unto death; while on the other
hand, they allow parents who can lay little or no claim to the possession
of common humanity to escape scot free, though guilty of the same
offence, without the same or any palliative excuse. If parents of this