§ MR. MACDONA (Southwark, Rotherhithe)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has seen an account of an inquest held at Guy's Hospital on the 7th instant upon the body of a young woman who had been rescued alive from the Thames by the efforts of a Rotherhithe lighterman, named Robert Burridge, but that the Coroner disallowed Robert Burridge the ordinary fee, usual in such cases, because the woman was rescued alive; and will he bring in a Bill to amend the law in such a way that watermen and lightermen and others anxious to save persons from drowning would receive the same reward as if they had waited until life was extinct?
§ MR. ASQUITHAs the fee referred to as the ordinary fee is one for bringing a dead body on shore which may be found in a navigable river, I do not see how the Coroner could, in this case, have authorised its payment. I am not prepared to propose legislation for the purpose of offering rewards to people who save lives.