The Queen v. Beaney : extraordinary charge of murder against a medical man, in consequence of a diseased womb being ruptured after death : with medical notes and observations / by C.E. Reeves.

  • Reeves, C. E. (Charles Evans), 1828-1880.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Queen v. Beaney : extraordinary charge of murder against a medical man, in consequence of a diseased womb being ruptured after death : with medical notes and observations / by C.E. Reeves. 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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    defend a person at a Coroner’s Inquest as at a Police Court. The present system is a bad one. Coroners, like most other men, are anxious to get three guineas for holding an inquest, and naturally like to look up every case that will bear an inquiry, and at the same time put the same sum into the pockets of their friends, who perhaps give them (if not in meal, in meat) a percentage. And what do they care whether the case demands one or not; the Crown purse is both long and well filled, and there is no controlling power to judge whether an inquest is held without being required. A strong feeling exists in England against Coroners’ Inquiries. Dr. Taylor, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, says in his Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence :—“ The con- clusion to which experience leads in reference to these inquiries is that the system affords no certainty for the detection of crime; that it affords no protection to those who are wrongly charged with crime ; and, lastly, that in some cases it screens a criminal by a verdict based upon an imperfect inquiry, in which important medical facts are either misunderstood or misinterpreted.” Nothing could be more pertinently applied than this to the inquiry as to the cause of Mary Lewis’s death. The world has grown a little older since the time of Edward I., but Coroners’ Inquiries are conducted now as then. In Australia, instead of the well-known “Bumble,”* it is the policeman who hunts the cases up ; but the Coroner and the twelve intelligent men— shoemakers, tailors, sweeps, and costermongers—are the same. No man who comes to Australia need fear, if he dies without friends, and if a Coroner’s protege attends him, that a “ crowner’s quest won’t sit on him” in the same kind of long room, that the same amount of beer will not be consumed, and the same verdict * We apply our “Bumbles” to better use in Australia; we call them Bumble Bees, and stick them in high posts, to uphold the dignity of science, or anything else that we think their figures and uniforms will ornament.