Twelve years' experiences of a London coroner / by W. Wynn Westcott.

  • Westcott, W. Wynn (William Wynn), 1848-1925.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Twelve years' experiences of a London coroner / by W. Wynn Westcott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    charitable donations. In the district there are the St. Luke’s Hospital for the Insane and the Bethnal House Asylum (also Hoxton House, now closed), of which the medical officers are not paid; Brooke House, Clapton, and Northumberland House, Green Lanes, take paying patients, and the medical officers have been paid. Section 22, subsection 2, of the Coroners Act, 1887, is open to two different constructions; it excludes from payment the medical officers of a county or other lunatic asylum, public hospital, infirmary, or other medical institution, whether supported by endowment or by voluntary subscriptions. Is an infirmary or an asylum “ endowed ” if supported by the parish rates'? There are no cottage hospitals in the district; these fall under the ban of the section, being kept up by subscriptions. The house surgeon or physician of a hospital is only paid these fees if a person is found to be dead when brought into the institu- tion. Such cases are deaths from street accidents, and sudden deaths in the streets or other public places; overlain babies and infants who have died suddenly, especially at night: these are occasionally taken in a parent’s arms to a hospital to avoid expense, rather than to a private medical man, or in preference to calling a private practitioner to the house where the death occurred. Although the L.C.C. has expressed its willingness that doctors should be paid at least the same travelling expenses as common witnesses —a few pence per mile (a recent concession) —in practice nothing has been paid, as neither of the hospitals in the district is far from a court—not two miles—the shortest distance for which a fee is payable. The Coroners Act, 1887 (Section 22 [1]), states that the coroner mat/ summon as a witness to an inquest any legally qualified medical practitioner who attended the deceased at his death, or during his last illness; and also, if the deceased was not so attended, the coroner may summon any legally qualified medical practitioner who is at the time in actual practice in or near the place where the death happened. It will be observed that this mode of obtaining medical evidence is permissive and not obligatory; nevertheless, in my district this procedure has been generally followed. The selection of a consultant physician, surgeon, or pathologist, to the