Chapter VII: Section 9: “Notwithstanding anything in subsection (1) of section

three of the Coroners’ Act, 1887, a coroner after due inquiry into any case referred to him may decide not to hold an inquest if he is satisfied that the deceased died a natural death.... For the purposes of an inquiry under this section, the coroner may order a _post mortem_ examination, and the cost of such examination, being such sum as the Secretary of State may by regulation prescribe, shall be defrayed as if the examination were made in connexion with an inquest.”

In section 10, there is provision for the appointment of standing “medical investigators or pathologists” in each coroner’s district to assist the coroner in his inquiries and inquests and to make _post mortem_ examinations. The next section refers to the payment of ordinary medical witnesses, as opposed to the coroner’s “medical investigators or pathologists.” Section 12 of the Bill makes some sentimental provision in connection with the coroner’s jury and the question of “viewing the body.” It is of no great importance or interest one way or the other. Section 13, on the contrary, is of definite value from a legal standpoint. “Every coroner,” it settles, “shall cause a record of every inquiry and inquest to be kept, and shall transmit such record to the clerk of the [county] council or borough council, as the case may be, and it shall become the property of such county council or borough council, as the case may be, and such record shall be so made and transmitted as the Secretary of State may by regulation prescribe.”

In section 14, it is provided that “The Secretary of State may frame rules and orders for regulating the procedure or practice of coroners’ inquiries and coroners’ courts, and forms of proceedings therein, the fees to be charged for copies of depositions, records, or any document in the custody of the coroner or the local authority, and any other matter not regulated by statute on which it may, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, be desirable to prescribe the practice of coroners, and may from time to time amend such rules, orders, forms and fees.”

It is to be hoped that this section will be the means of establishing the rules of procedure on an exact basis. Also, there is no reason why the rules relating to evidence should not be applied with as much strictness in a coroner’s court as in a Metropolitan Police court. It is true that in numerous cases a coroner’s inquest savours more of a _quasi_-scientific investigation than a legal inquiry, but it should be borne in mind that it is primarily concerned in upholding the law by checking or discovering crime. Candidly, a better appreciation of this aspect of his functions would improve a coroner’s status among legal practitioners. Whether a man died from cerebral hemorrhage or syncope is really of little importance, provided he did not die by some unnatural means. The everlasting verdict, “Death from Natural Causes,” is far too frequent. Admittedly, where a medical practitioner has refused to certify the cause of death, the coroner has in the past been bound to order an inquiry, but in numberless instances the result of a great deal of trouble has merely been a verdict of natural death. Of course, this is not to be construed to apply to cases originating in suspicion. Where there is suspicion, there should be an inquest. Where there is no suspicion as a _raison d’être_ for an inquest, there should be no inquest.[8] This would do away with hundreds of useless and even expensive inquiries. The “medical investigators or pathologists” of the new Bill should often be able to satisfy themselves, by the appearance of the body and the circumstances attendant upon the death, without having recourse to a _post mortem_ examination.

It might be fairer to the pathologists were they to receive a fixed remuneration per annum, irrespective of the number of bodies subjected to scrutiny or to internal examination. The remuneration could be based on yearly averages, when the perfectly natural incentive for an extra two guineas would be absent in deciding them in favour of a _post mortem_ or against the necessity for it. It is not suggested that a reputable pathologist would be much influenced by a trifling fee, but where he is to receive payment for doing a thing, and nothing for not doing it, he perforce does it. Then, too, where a person has the power to decide whether or not the carrying out of a _post mortem_ is necessary, there is a tendency for him to give more attention to all the various circumstances of the death than he might otherwise feel himself obliged to do. A highly qualified man, with the power of independent judgment, does not deliberately set himself a task unless he believes its performance to be essential. By giving some such power to the “medical investigators or pathologists,” a great deal of superfluous work would be saved. The question of reducing every coroner to a fixed salary--_i.e._, a salary not dependent on the number of dead bodies on which inquests are held--would be a further advantage both to the coroners and to the community. The system of so much per head per corpse is obsolete; if it is not exactly obsolete, it ought to be so.

The second part of the Coroners’ Law and Death Certification (Amendment) Bill is concerned with questions of death certification and burial. Section 16 of the Bill, which is the first in Part II., sets out that “No death shall be registered under the Registration Acts without the delivery to the registrar of a certificate of death duly signed by a registered medical practitioner, or by a coroner, after holding an inquiry or inquest.” The next section goes on to say that, “Before giving a certificate of death, a registered medical practitioner shall personally inspect the body and identify it as the body of the person named in the certificate whom he has attended during his last illness, and shall _certify to the fact of death as well as to its cause_.” (The italics do not appear in the Bill.) Sections 18 and 19 are uninteresting, merely containing, as they do, particulars of the form of death certificates and the method of filing the same.