1 70 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



also forcibly illustrates the statement made by Judge Williams, 

 on the 30th November, 1S93, in the Melbourne Athememn, 

 that '■'■ scores of people are poisoned and laid in the ^^roiiiid, and the 

 crimes are never detect edi'' The same opinion is held )>y many 

 persons, whose opportunities for judging are above the average. 

 The evidence given last year before the committee appointed Ijy 

 the House of Commons, to enquire into the lax system of death 

 certification, directly corroborates the judge's statement, as any 

 one may see in the British Medical Jour na. for April, ISIay and 

 June, 1893. It was proved that medical certificates of the cause 

 of death were connntmly given for 2s. 6d. each, upon the state- 

 ment of an alleged witness of the death, but without the certifier 

 seeing the corpse ; and, that the supposed deceased was alive and 

 well, though the insurance upon his or lier life had been paid 1 It 

 was also stated that some practitioners used printed forms of 

 their own, coloured and printed in simulation of the death 

 certificate forms issued gi-atuitously hy the Registrar-General, 

 Ijut omitting the clause stating that the certifier had attended 

 the deceased in his last illness ! The consequent frauds upon 

 Insurance Companies were neither few nor infrequent. From 

 fifteen to twenty thousand pei'sons are buried yeai'ly in England 

 without any medical certificate or enquiry. 



In Victoria, a confiding puljlic believes that a medical certifi- 

 cate of the cause of death is given in every case, and that the 

 resulting security to human life is ample, notwithstanding Judge 

 Williams' startling statement. But it is a fact, however 

 incredible it may seem, that there is here no statiitorv provision 

 for such a certificate at all ; and, although, death certificates ai e 

 received by Registrars (for merely statistical purposes only), yet, 

 for the security of human life, they are woi'thless I When there 

 is a medical attendant, the certificate is generally signed by him : 

 when there is no medical attendant, the certificate is accepted 

 from any person attending or present at the death, or the 

 occupier of the liouse in which it occun-ed, or a clergyman. But 

 it is entirely overlooked when accepting (as indispensable for 

 .statistical purposes) the certificate of the medical attendant, that 

 as his conduct in that capacity is always liable to be called in 

 tjuestion, his own guarantee of it can be wortli no more than that 

 of any accountant of the correctness of his own accounts, when. 



