Page images
PDF
EPUB

A DAY WITH THE CORONER.

THE life of a Coroner in a mighty metropolis like London must be an odd one. His grim duty leads him day by day into palaces and cottages, back-slums and noble mansions. In a certain sense he is a modern Charon, whose pass is required ere a company of corpses, some days more, some days less, can find quiet burial. They say ghosts listen for the sound of the crowing cock before they retreat to their narrow beds; so mortals, suddenly deprived of life, must have the permit of twelve good men and true and the coroner's signature, ere the sexton will lift a shovel in their behalf.

Being desirous of having one day's experience of the accidents and offences which pick out, as it were-we will not say by accident, for there is a natural law in these cases as in all others the lives of a certain percentage of our population, I asked permission to accompany my friend, the able medical coroner for the central district. Permission being obtained, I was ready at the office at the appointed hour. "Now, you must be prepared," said my friend, "for a good hard day's work. Here are nine cases," said he, consulting an official paper as a gourmand would a bill of fare; "I don't know what they are, or how they will turn out." In short, it was a kind of invitation to take pot-luck.

Our first visit was to Middlesex Hospital, and our first duty to visit the dead-house. Even to those accustomed to the presence of death there is something very startling in the sudden transition from the life and noise of the great metropolitan thoroughfare to the dead-house of a large hospital, tenanted by silent inmates such as these, who but a few days since moved in health and spirits amid the hubbub, dreaming not that they were on the edge of that bourne from whence no traveller returns.

Three blackened deal coffins, placed side by side, with their lids removed, revealed the subjects of the impending inquiry, after a glance at which the coroner returned to the inquest-room.

The importance of being able thoroughly to identify the features of the dead is of the last consequence. It will be remembered that in the Sadleir case, the very fact of the death was disputed, and it was asserted that the body found on Hampstead Heath was not that of the delinquent M.P. Indeed, to this moment it is believed by the Irish that he is still alive. Fortunately the late Mr. Wakley was able to put the matter beyond dispute, as he knew the deceased, and recognized him when the inquest was held.

Conditions, however, are always arising under which it is exceedingly difficult to identify a body, in consequence of the progress which decomposition has made. Such a case occurred some years ago. A body was found floating in the Thames, which the police suggested might be the body of the supposed murderer of a poor girl who was stabbed in George Street. It was of great consequence, therefore, that the corpse should be identified. The features, however, from long immersion in the water, were so swollen and disfigured as to be absolutely unrecognizable.

At this juncture, however, Dr. Richardson suggested that science was able to restore the face of the corpse; and he succeeded in his efforts. Having reduced the face to its original size by the action of a principle known by the scientific terms of "exosmosis" and "endosmosis," and its blackened colour having been bleached by the action of chlorine gas, so much of the face of the dead was made out as to prove that it belonged to a youth of twenty—a fact quite sufficient to prove it was not that of the murderer. Thus science once more has come to the aid of justice. But I must return to the story of my day's doings.

The jury having assembled, the process of swearing them in commenced. It may be as well to observe that, in ordinary cases, the run of the jurors called by the coroner's beadle seems to consist of the small householders and shopkeepers of the parish-certainly a very unlikely looking lot to investigate any knotty case; indeed, my experience gathered during the day was, that the chief labour of investigating the facts falls upon the coroner, and that scarcely one of the jurors sworn in seemed capable of drawing up a verdict. In

important cases the better-class tradesmen or the gentry are generally summoned, and a far higher amount of intelligence is thus at the service of the coroner.

[ocr errors]

The first case gone into was rather complex. Alexander a greengrocer, coming home drunk, fell down the stairs and broke his leg. He had been an habitual drunkard, so much so as to compel his wife, a poor crushed creature, to live apart from him, because "he was too poor to keep me," said the poor woman, crying. "I suppose, if the truth were known," said the coroner, "it was because he beat and otherwise ill-used you,”—a correction of her own statement to which she gave a tacit consent, but which the poor battered piece of humanity, bundled up in rags, would never have volunteered. The ultimate cause of death in this case was singular. The man being a toper, the shock of the accident, a fracture of the femur, brought on delirium tremens to subdue this, opium was given by the hospital surgeon by what is termed subcutaneous incision; that is, a puncture was made in the skin, and a small quantity of the drug was injected beneath it, from the effects of which he died narcotized. A diseased kidney perhaps helped this unlooked-for termination of the case, but it nevertheless was an extraordinary example of peculiar idiosyncrasy in the man's constitution, which could not stand an opiate which would scarcely have injured a healthy child. The primary cause of death, be it remembered, was drunkenness.

Case No. 2 was that of Henry a carman. Having been drinking freely, he managed, whilst walking beside his horse, to get his foot under the animal's hoof; he was thrown, and the wheel of his car passing over his ribs fractured them, and he died from inflammation of the lungs. The verdict here was inflammation of the lungs brought on by an accident whilst in a state of intoxication.

Case No. 3 was that of William a tailor. In reeling out of the doorway of the Red Lion, where he had been drinking, he slipped, and twisted and broke his leg. A "compound comminuted fracture of the tibia and fibula," said the youthful house-surgeon, with strict professional accuracy. Amputation was performed, and the man died of delirium. tremens. A verdict was drawn up to that effect, and the poor widow, bursting out into tears, sobbed out that she was left perfectly destitute. When death comes to members of the comfortable classes it is bitter enough;-to lose a

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

loved husband, what in the whole world is apparently so overwhelming? Yet what is such a blow to that which falls upon the poor? A working man by some accident is hurried out of life, and the poor widow loses not only the companion of her life, but the bread of herself and helpless little ones. The reader will realize the horrible position of the poor widow; and yet the coroner sees such cases every day, and the poor creatures are left to sink back into that maelström of human suffering styled "the world," and the sun shines day by day as though life was a bright festival.

St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, was our next destination. The hospitals generally furnish those cases for inquest which result from accidental death. In many institutions of this nature an inquest-room is provided in the building itself, but the authorities of St. Mary's have not done so; and after visiting the dead-house, and inspecting the deceased, a woman and a boy, both evidently Irish by their physiognomy, the coroner and his beadle adjourned to a public-house, where a fresh jury had to be sworn in. After contemplating the face of the dead, it gives the mind a slight shock to have to wend one's way through the crowd of a taproom, and to have to sit in an apartment smelling of stale tobacco, and presenting all the disorder of the last night's debauch. "We shall probably have some trouble here," said the coroner to me, sotto voce, as I see the witnesses are mostly Irish." The deceased, Anne Gardner, was a charwoman, and had died in the hospital from exhaustion following an amputation of the foot. The first witness called was her sister, a gaunt Irishwoman with a face through which the skull seemed to protrude, if we may so speak. The poor woman kept up a crooning noise until called upon to give her evidence as to the cause of the accident, which was confused enough to justify the coroner's anticipations. In answer to the query, if the deceased had told her when in the hospital how the accident happened, she replied, "Her sister had told her that she 'knocked at the door and it was not opened," "—that "the blood was all up the stairs, just as though a bullock had been killed."

66

The woman knew no more than this, and she kept repeating her tale as though she were throwing valuable light on the matter. The next witness, a short, red-faced, and determined-looking Englishwoman, told her story in a very dif ferent manner. She had gone out on Saturday night to buy

provisions for the family, leaving deceased, who lodged with her, at home; the deceased having apprised her that she also was going out to get a bottle of gin. When she returned at twelve o'clock at night, having forgotten her key, she was obliged to ring her husband up, and on opening the door he remarked that the stairs were very wet; on getting a light she perceived that they were wet-but with blood, which was traced up to the woman's room. On knocking, the deceased answered that she knew all about it, and would clean it up before her landlord was down in the morning. With this reply, singularly enough, the woman was satisfied, and went to bed. Having some misgivings, however, she demanded admittance to the room early in the morning, and the woman, apparently, from the sound, shuffled to the door on her hands and knees, and opened it. "There was not a thing in the room," said the witness, "but that was covered with blood." The bones of her leg, near the ankle-joint, were broken, and through the night she had been bleeding most profusely. As the poor creature was too exhausted by the hæmorrhage to give an account of the accident she had met with, it could only be inferred from the appearances in the house. The door not being opened to her, and fearing to let her landlord know that she was out so late, and, but too probably, being drunk at the same time, she had attempted to step from the doorway across a low parapet wall on to the parlour window-sill, a stride of four feet and a half; in doing so, she fell into the area, for the blood was first observable at the kitchen door, through which she obtained admission.

From this point traces of blood were observable up the kitchen stairs to the front door, which, it is inferred, she opened, to take in the gin-bottle and a small basket which she had deposited there previously to attempting to get in at the window; from thence the life-blood of the poor creature doubled back through the passage, and was traceable up to her bedroom. It is not to be wondered at that the poor woman never rallied from the operation of amputating her foot, as, indeed, nearly every drop of blood was previously drained from her body.

Since it was pretty evident that the poor creature never would have made an attempt to enter the house in the manner she did unless she had been intoxicated, and as, moreover, her landlady was obliged to confess that she was

« EelmineJätka »