EVIDENCE AT INQUESTS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 5

EVIDENCE AT INQUESTS

PUBLICATION OF LETTERS. CHANGES THOUGHT DESIRABLE. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright). LONDON, Feb. 28. Sir John Gilmour in the House of Commons to-day announced the appointment of a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Wright to inquire if it were desirable and practicable to make changes in law practice regarding coroner’s inquests. Mrs Tate asked whether steps could be taken to prevent the publication of details of last letters by suicides, except where the coroner thought it would be in the public interest. .Sir .John Gilmour said this could be left to the committee. The Lancet comments on the action of the coroner in publicly reading the letters left by the du Bois sisters, who jumped from an aeroplane following receipt of the news of the death in a crash of two Air Force officers. While agreeing that the letters were material evidence, the Lancet says the coroner might have given them to the jury privately or spared the feelings of the living by more judicious selection of passages read to the public. The paper instances the passage where one girl i isaid the aviator to -whom she was attached intended to break off his engager ment in order to become engaged to ■her.