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It was dated from a small town not far from Hatch End: DEAR SIR: Mr. John Phillips of this firm, who is coroner for the district, has desired me to answer the enquiry contained in your official letter of the 13th. The number of inquests held upon bodies recovered from the Thames in the neighbourhood to which you allude, during the present year has been seven. Four of these have been identified.
An amphitheater, fitted up for the convenience of the jury and those interested when inquests are held, surrounds the table, which is placed in the center of the floor, thus enabling the subject to be viewed by the coroner's jury and other officials who may be present.
The jurors who sat upon both the inquests hearing of the rule that was obtained to set aside the second verdict, had voluntarily sent me up these affidavits in the most handsome manner.
The juries for trying causes in this and the Sheriff's Courts, are returned by the several wards at their wardmote inquests at Christmas, when each ward appoints the persons to serve on juries for every month in the year ensuing. This court is also a court of equity, and gives relief where judgment is obtained in the Sheriff's Court for more than the just debt.
"The tangle-foot all went down the pussyfoot's neck, so I left 'Robbie Burns' in the car. By the way, don't forget to ring up about that car. Old Mut-mut cut the cushions to ribbons; that bit of evidence might save my neck." Finucane smiled pleasantly. "You seem to have left a trail of coroner's inquests behind you," he said. "All in the day's work," said Dick. "But not, thank God! in to-night's."
A great number of coroners' inquests were reported from Mayo, but those inquests were no real indication of the number of deaths which occurred there from starvation; there were not coroners enough to hold inquests, and four-fifths of those that were held were not reported.
In this affair, Sir Charles Wolseley did more to serve the cause of Liberty and the People, than was done by all the Aristocracy and all the Country Gentlemen in England put together. Sixteen persons had been murdered, and upwards of Six Hundred had been badly wounded, on the Sixteenth of August. Coroners' Inquests had been held, without effect, upon several of the bodies!
But "natural causes" is the euphonious name given by intelligent juries to starvation, when inquests are held in the underworld. Herein is a mystery: in the land of plenty, whose granaries, depots, warehouses are full to repletion, and whose countless ships are traversing every ocean, bringing the food and fruits of the earth to its shores, starvation is held to be a natural cause of death.
There were military companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, "hurdy-gurdy houses," wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a church.
I'm not saying they're not agreeable, well-informed, and mild in their habits; but they lean overmuch to corduroys and coroners' inquests for one's taste farther south.
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