THE LATE INQUEST.

Press, Volume III, Issue 95, 27 December 1862, Page 3

THE LATE INQUEST.

The ' Canterbury Standard' produced an Extra on Chr.tmas day, containing a report of a Coroners Inquest which was held on the body of the late Dr. HiJson. It was. no doubt, a matter of great interest to some curious persons to learn that an unfortunate man had drunk himself to death, and had died of delirium tremens in the Hospital. One would have thought that the shortest paragraph would have been sufficient to record an event, sad and painful, bu unfortunately common enough in this colony. The peculiarity of tbe case, however, was that the Coroner had ordered the disinterment of the body for the purpose of holding an Inquest. That the police should have represented any reports of an unpleasant nature which they may have heard in the proper quarter, is not surprising. Any symptoms of activity in gentlemen so singularly well dressed is rather or the naiure of an agreeable surprise than otherwise. But that the Commissioner of Police, who, we presume, is instructed in the law, should have allowed his subordinates to apply for an Inquest, and still more that tbe Coroner should have disinterred a body upon such evidence, is an act of indiscretion which the public regard with some alarm. Dr. Hilson died in a public hospital under proper medical treatment. The Coronor has no right whatever to hold an inquest over a body under such circumstances. It is a gross insult towards the medical men employed, to interfere in such a case Had there been any suspicion, even the very slightest, of .wrong dealing oi tbe Coroner would have been quite right to interfere ; but we have the report before the public, and there was not one jot or tittle of evidence to justify the Coroner in dragging this miserable case out of the oblivion in which* it ought to have rested. The whole thing is a wanton insult to the memory of the man, and to the feelings of his friends. Dr. Coward has already committed some grave mistakes as Coroner; he held an luquest not loug ago with closed doors, the only eflect of which could have been to deprive the jury of evidence which might have been forthcoming to establish a presumption of foul play. He has now taken the very *.rong measure of disintering a body after Christian burial, without the faintest shadow of evidence that the death had been oilier than natural, and that when tbe death had taken place under the medical treatment of the most respected medical men in the place, one being tbe public medic-d attendant at the Hospital. For our own parts we have little care what becomes of our miserable bodies when the spirit is gone: but that is not the general feeling. Men and women do not ordinarily like the idea cf being summoned from their quiet graves by the cackling of old women. They do not like to be called on to appear in court in their cere clothes to testify to the activity or the credulity of a new police force. They do not choose that after the tomb has closed over their failings and virtues alike, their infirmities are to be made the sport of public i

curiosity. If this Inquest has been called for, there is not one of us who may not be "sat upon" in a similar manner; there is not a family whose private history, aud private feelings, may not be made the subject of an impertinent coroner's queries, or a news catering editor's comments, or a street singer's ballad. A great abuse of official authority has been committed which the public will not at all like to see repeated.