16 FEBRUARY 1889, Page 3

The Coroner for East Surrey, Mr. A. Braxton Hicks, writes

to the Times denouncing the practice of insuring children's lives to pay the expenses of their burial. He says the insurances act as a temptation to the parents to neglect them, or feed them with improper food, and sometimes even to kill them, as in the excessively numerous cases of " over-laying," —that is, in plainer words, suffocating in bed. He believes that the mortality among children is seriously increased by insurance, and offers a number of practical suggestions, all of which, we think, may be reduced to one. When a child is insured under the age of five, let the money be paid to the undertaker direct, and not to the insurers. Insurance offices claim a right of this kind in all cases of fire, and it might be extended to children, without adopting any new principle of State interference. A burial is so serious a tax upon the unskilled labourer, that it would not be just to prohibit in- surance altogether, or compel him to apply to the parish authorities for a free burial, which, indeed, the very poor con- sider a special disgrace. There is something mortifying, to those who believe in progress, in the idea of such legislation ; but the doctors in the crowded towns of the North could, we fear, produce horrible evidence as to the necessity for it.