MURDER MADE EASY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

MURDER MADE EASY.

SENSATIONAL DISCOVERIES ABOUT

: DEATH CERTIFICATES. • The Westminster Budget says The thing seems too horrible. lb is as though we had been for an hour with a new Dante into a now Inferno, a yet more sordid Hell, bub none less terrible. . , The thing seems impossible that thousands of innocent and peaceful souls might be made away with this very night, and no man the wiser; that childhood and age in these free islands lie alike at the 'mercy of Ghouls more hideous, because more cunning, than the past has known ; that far and wide among rich and poor the tender associations of death are desecrated by cupidity and all manner of outrage. Yet here lies the proof of it, in no poetic garb, but in all the solemn authority of Parliamentary papers. Ail the tragedy that lies behind this dry muster of evidence and statistics must be guessed, since it cannot be told; but that there is tragedy, black enough and plenty of it, with a dash of grim farce besides, needs no keen wit to discern.

Let the facts speak for themselves. There are many pages of them, and we have no space for superfluities. Briefly, then, this Select Committee on Death Certification, and the disposal of the dead, after holding 21 sessions since March last, concludes that l,! vastly more deaths occur annually from foul play and criminal neglect than the law recognises," and that in various ways "the existing procedure plays into the hands of the criminal classes." THE FATE OF YOUNG AMD OLD. Firab comes the class mosb evidently fruitful of mischief, that of "deaths nob medically certified." This had been undoubtedly diminishing of late years, yet it stands in proportion to the total of deaths at 2'7 per cent, in England, s*B in Scotland, and 6*7 in Ireland, rising in isolated districts to very high percentages, such, a? B*s in North Wales, and no less than 42 in Invernessshire. Tables handed in by the Registrar-General for Ireland also show strikingly that the percentage is low in deaths at an age when men and women are self-supporting and economically valuable; and that, as the committee finds, "it increases on each Bide of that age period precisely as childhood or old age renders the deceased, as a class, a burden on their friends." In other words, thers is an illicib farming of old age as well as of babyhood; We commend the thought to too-enthusi-astic projectors of old age pensions.

"CUOWNER'S quest law."

An examination of the procedure in respect to the registration ana certification of deaths seems to show an extraordinary survival of antique bumbledom. The only person who must decide whether a death is suspicious, although the coroner may receive information from any sources, is the registrar; and, the committo mildly observes, " it may be doubted if he is always a competent person for the discharge of such a responsible duty." Then as to the other main party in the matter, " there are no regulations in force under which a coroner exercises the functions of his office." So that we have progressed mighty little since nearly three centuries ago, when a certain conversation took place in Mr. William Shakespere'a pages between two " clowns," one of whom asked in astonishment: •'But is this the law?" and received the confident reply Ay, marry is'b, crowner's quest law." In a sense, indeed, it is worse than that, for the coroner often makes inquiries also through the beadle or policeman, leaving those intelligent functionaries to decide whether an inquest be necessary. As to the verdicts of coroners' juries, this is an old subject of comment; bub we cannot refrain from quoting two delicious specimens, on the authority of Dr. Ogle:— " Man, died from stone in the kidney, i?hich stone he swallowed when lying on a gravel path in a state of drunkenness." "Child, three months old, found dead, but no evidence whether born alive."

lb appears that many coroners neglect to state the nature of the fatal disease, thinking this unimportant. There also seems to be a habit of getting conjectural opinion out of police surgeons from a mere inspection of the body, in order to save the cost of a;pos(mortem examination. The option is given to the surgeon, but he only gets his fee if an inquest has to bo held. Sir C. Cameron happily describes this as a new departure in '•payment by results." SECRET MURDERS MADE EAST. In the class of " uncertified" cases are included those in which no doctor has attended, and in which the coroner does not think an inquest necessary. These are registered by the registrar upon any information ho can get. Ib is no part of his duty to make personal investigation, and only the coroner can delay registration for inquiries to be made. " Much of the information as bo the cause of death obtained in these cases is very far from trustworthy," the committee finds. This may be merely from the ignorance of the informants ; but " there appears to be nothing in the existing procedure to prevenb a fictitious cause of death being assigned in case of a person who has been gob rid of by foul play, and for a burial certificate to be issued upon registration of such information. In short, the existing procedure plays into the hands of the criminal classes. This is a startling confirmation of Sir Edwin Chadwick's declaration in 1888 that) "Secret murders were proved to bo far more common than the public had any conception of." With a view of cutting this terrible evil down to a minimum, the committee recommends that medical officialsprobably the local medical officers of health—should be appointed throughout the country to inquire into the cause of all deaths nob certified in the usual way by the medical man in attendance.

UNVERIFIED CERTIFICATES. Bub (and this brings us to our second class of cases) hardly less safo are we at present when a doctor's certificate can be produced. The most varied frauds arise mainly out of the practice of giving certificates without verification of the death. Thus attempts have sometimes been made to get a certificate of death in respect to a living person with an eye upon his or her insurance money. Or si certificate may be obtained from a medical man who has been quite recently in attendance, although the cause is really entirely unconnected with the former patient's disease. The importbanco of personal verification is urged on the further ground that " in some instances a skilled observer only would be able to pronounce whether life was extinct"as to which there may now occasionally be an awful doubt—and because nob only should the fact of death be ascertained, bub the body should be identified. In a spirit of friendliness medical men sometimes make out certificates alleging another cause of death than the true one. The committee recommends that the same penalty should in future attach to such conduct as to falsely attesting marriage certificates, and that, on the other hand, a fee of 2s 0d should bo payable to the doctor out of public funds for each ordinary certificate signed. KILLED BEFORE DEATH. ; The catalogue of fraud is by no means ended yet. The blank forms of certificate, it appears, are so loosely guarded that it is easy for an unscrupulous person to obtain them for purposes of forgery. Notwithstanding recent precautions medical men often give certificates to applicants—sometimes two, three, and four in respect to one deathfor transmission to. unregistered friendly societies which accept them as evidence. There is great carelessness* in some hospitals. "In the case of death of persons who have been out-patients, and this applies especially to children, there is little difficulty in obtaining a certificate of death from some member of the Btaff on a statement of the relatives that the patient seen some time previously by some other member of the staff deceased." This is extraordinary enough; but Mr. Lowndes told the committee a story of a surgeon who gave a death certificate while the patient was still living, four days before he died;'and the committee finds that "in pome cases where medical men carry on branch dispensaries by the aid of unqualified assistants, it is the practice to sign beforehand a number of blank forms of certificate and to hand them to the assistant for him to fill up as occasion may arise."

THE PROVINCE OK" THE "QUEER UNDER-

TAKER."

The clerk of a burial board, Mr. Walter Brown, gave a ghostly turn,to his evidence in the following passage — 7 " You do not want a certificate to bury a body. You can dispose of a body 'a the

London Cemetery without any certificate at all"— he went on to explain how). "If any gentleman here was murdered, to put it plainly, and you had a queer undertaker to v disposeof ■ that: body, ho could dispose of it without anyone being any the '' ** £ 4 *■ # ' -3 ' The'statement is un refuted. Indeed, the law only demands, where there Is no burial certificate or coroner's order, a notice from the person ; officiating >at the funeral to the registrar within seven days. ! That notice is not even given in some cases, and it is rarely sought to recover the penalty of £10. The committee recommends that 'burial certificates from the registrar should now be always required, ib being a penal offence to dispose of a body without. In case of an epidemic the regulations might be suspended by Government. The changing hands of a burial certificate and its use to procure the interment of other bodies should also be prevented.

STILL-BIRTHS. A singular part of this ugly question Is that of still births. For the burial of such children there are of course special facilities, and the number so buried is enormous. In Manchester ib is about five per cent, of the total interments, and in nearly half these there has been no competent testimony, as to the cause of death. . The law seems here to make murder as easy as possible, 11 Persons interested in hiding a , crime could, of course, give such certificates, and a certificate from a mother of an illegitimate child would be regarded as sufficient authority for burial. There is, . without doubt, much crime under this guise. The mere fact' of a saving in the funeral fees is a temptation to fraud while, as the committee says, " the absence of legal requirement that such births should be registered prior to disposal of the bodies is fraught with very serious. danger to child life." It is recommended that a certificate from the medical man or the coroner should henceforth be required.,

| SUNDRY . BURIAL SCANDALS. ■ Into this gruesome subject we will not enter at any length. It is proposed that in future it should be an offence not to dispose of a dead body within eight days, except by a ' magistrate's permission, and that burials in private grounds, which are at present unrestricted, should be subjeob to regulation. The precautions of the Cremation Society before cremation are approved, except that they should be made compulsory. And finally ib is advised that authorisation from the Home Secretary should be required for embalming, a process in which " an opportunity is afforded for hiding evidence of the cause of death in cases where it may have been effected by poison." '