§ MR. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S.W.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the circumstances attending an inquest held in Blackpool, on Monday, on the body of a woman found dead in a house in that town, in which no evidence, medical or other, as to the cause of death was submitted to the jury; and that the jury insisted, in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Coroner, upon a post mortem examination of the body being made; whether application has been made to him for authority to exhume the body for this purpose; and what he proposes to do in the matter?
§ MR. MATTHEWSYes, Sir; my attention has been called to this matter, and I am informed by the Coroner that the deceased was found dead in her own house on the 21st June. The police having no suspicions of foul play, and the body being greatly decomposed, the Coroner did not think a post mortem necessary, and for sanitary reasons ordered the burial of the body, which had been duly viewed by the Jury, at the earliest possible period. The Jurorsat the inquest, which was held in the afternoon of 23rd June, the body having been buried in the morning of that day, declared their inability to find a verdict in the absence of medical evidence. The Coroner accordingly issued his precept for the exhumation of the body, and an inquest was held and medical evidence given, with the result that the verdict was death from natural causes. I do not propose to take any action, as I do not gather from the facts before me that the Coroner has failed in his duty.