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127
When a death occurs under such circumstances,
information is given to the local registrar, or to the
police, who refer the matter to the Coroner. The
Coroner directs his officer, who is sometimes a
police constable, to make enquiries and report to him.
If the circumstances of the death as reported to the
coroner do not in his opinion call for an inquest, he so
informs the local registrar, who enters the death as
arising from natural causes. Thus there having been
no inquest, and no medical certificate, the cause of
death remains uncertified. Now as the RegistrarGeneral
has pointed out, such certificates as "natural
causes," “visitation of God," "found dead," &c., are
valueless for statistical purposes, and he justly remarks
in his forty-fifth annual report "I feel bound to repeat
the complaint made in my last report that the class of
cases in which more than in any other there is a right
to expect careful and complete statement of the cause
of death, namely, those cases in which there is public
enquiry at public expense into the circumstances
attending deaths, by no means fulfils the just expectation."
There is said to be an advantage in employing
the Coroner's Officer to make these enquiries, seeing
that the greater number of uncertified deaths occur
amongst the poor, who are found to give information
more readily to anyone of their own class than to a
medical man, probably a stranger to them.