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thousands of persons are each year buried in the United Kingdom 

 without even this formahty. The attention of the puhhc and of the 

 Government has been drawn to the subject again and again, but 

 neither the pubhc nor the Government hke to be made un- 

 comfortable, and nothing has been done to amend it. So far 

 back as 1843 Mr. Chadwick, in his report to the Board of Health, 

 on the subject of Intramural Interment, devoted an entire chapter 

 to the dangers of our existing system, and the necessity of an 

 alteration in our law as to the verification of the cause of death 

 (Dr. Cameron). Again, in 1851, in the Report of Health on 

 Extramural Sepulture, the second paragraph reads as follows : — 

 " We have also received much evidence showing the practical evils 

 that result from certain defects in the present system of the 

 registration of deaths, the facility consequently afforded for the 

 perpetration of crime, especially in the case of infants reputed to 

 be stillborn, and the neglect which is more common than is 

 generally apprehended of calling in medical assistance to infants, 

 children and others, when sick ; the importance of verifying the 

 cause as well as the fact of death has been very generally and 

 urgently represented by magistrates, coroners, clergymen, and 

 medical men." In the report of the Registrar- General for 1884, 

 out of a total of about half-a-million of deaths, only ninety percent, 

 received medical certificates. The returns showed this remarkable 

 fact that in one year 20,000 people were buried without any 

 medical certificate whatever. In Scotland things are said to be 

 much worse. Here there are no coroners, but instead procurators- 

 fiscal, and these only investigate cases that they suspect have died 

 from crime. Dr. Allison, once a well-known Edinburgb physician, 

 stated that in Scotland there is full opportunity for the perpetra- 

 tion of murder, without investigation by any responsible officer. 

 He remembered two cases, within two or three days, of children 

 overlain and killed by their parents while in a state of drunken- 

 ness, and no note taken of the circumstances by anyone " There 

 is another difficulty which will soon have to be met by legislation. 

 It is this, that cremation is practically lawful, and can be carried 

 out in any place, at any time, and almost under any circumstances. 

 In 1769, the body of Mrs. Pratt, in accordance with her wish, was 

 burnt in Tyburn, burying-ground. Bat this case was taken little 

 heed of, until Dr. Pryce burnt the body of his own child, a few 

 years ago, on a Welsh mountain. This became a test case. A 

 trial was instituted at Cardiff in February, 1884, at which Mr. 

 Justice Stephen gave his well-known charge on the law of crema- 

 tion, the gist of which is that unless the cremation process consti- 

 tutes a public nuisance, or leads to a breach of the public peace, 

 no action can be taken to prevent such an operation of cremation 



