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87
Blows on head (causation not discovered) 2
Kick by horse 2
Crushed in a folding bedstead 1
Burns (1) and scalds (2) 3
Run over by railway engine 1
Suicide. —By poison (prussic acid and chlorodyne) 2
By wound of throat 4
By stabs 1
By pistol wound 1
By hanging 4
By fall from window 1
Manslaughter 1
Of 60 violent deaths in the parish 9 occurred in Brompton.
Among the cases described as "sudden," "found dead," &c.,
there were, as usual, many of persons who had died from ordinary
and curable visceral diseases ; and it is impossible to resist the
conviction that there had been culpable neglect on somebody's part
in the failure to obtain medical assistance for the deceased; for the
illnesses must have extended over many days, and been attended with
obvious symptoms of a more or less serious and painful nature; and
there would have been no occasion for inquests had medical certificates
been forthcoming. The mere return of the cause of death
by a jury in such cases seems to me scarcely to meet the requirements
of justice, considering that the death of any person—but
particularly of one very young or very aged—from a disease like
pneumonia or bronchitis, when there has been no medical treatment,
raises a presumption of neglect which would justify a verdict
of "manslaughter," quite as much as in the case of the "peculiar
people," who, whilst treating their sick with care in other respects,
refuse on mistaken conscientious grounds, to employ medical
assistance.
METEOROLOGY.
The mean temperature of the air at Greenwich in 1880 was 4°·49
Fahr., or 0°·1 below the average of the forty years, 1841-80. The
averages of the four quarters respectively were 39°.8, 52°·8, 61°·3 and
43°'7. The highest reading by day (87°·5) was taken in the week