Queer Verdicts.

Hastings Standard, Issue 17, 15 May 1896, Page 4

Queer Verdicts.

The duties o! those who serve on coroners juries do not ordinarily suggest anything very funny, and yet some laughable results come from their work, particularly if they do not exactly understand what is expect of them. _ Art amusing story is told of a verdict brought in by a certain jury, empanelled to inquire into the cause of the death of a man supposed to have committed suicide. The verdict was brief and to the point, the foreman saying simply— " We, the jury find the deceased guilty, as charged." Another jury examined a great many witnesses, in the case of a man run over by a railway engine. The verdict was—" We find him to have come to his death by being cut in two by a railroad engine, whereby he could ot breathe, hence he choked to death." A coroner's jury- in the provinces heard all evidence in the ease of a man killed by a runaway team, and brought in the following verdict:—" The jury finds the dead deceased to have come to his death at the hands of a runaway team the horses thereof being blameless, they being frightened by a dog. It is told of an old German, that sat stohdidly and stupidly on a coroner's jury, and listened to all the evidence, after which he walked over towards the corpse, with some degree of curiosity. Lifting the cloth, he started back, turned to the other jurymen in amazement and affright and cried out " Mine Gott, sheutlemen dot man is dead!" A jury in a certain rural community deliberated three hours over the corpse of a woman, burned by the explosion of a kerosene lamp. The following verdict was then announced in writting—" Resolved that the diszeazed was hurt to deth. The joory," A man supposed to be a tramp was found dead in the New Forest. A jury inquired into the cause of his death, irad reported as follows : —" The j undoes not find that the dead man has been foully dealt with and is of the opinion that he died simply because his time had come, and there was no getting out of it."