The " Crowner's Quest " The report of the Departmental
Committee, presided over by the Master of the RAS, on Coroners'Courts contains drastic recommendations. And so it should. The office of coroner is ancient and there is no good case for abolishing it, but the laxity displayed in some coroners' courts in the absence of rules of evidence, and the excessive exercise by a minority of coroners of the little, brief authority in which they find themselves dressed, are good reasons for a wholesale reform of the system. The salient recommendations are that in future all coroners appointed shall be either barristers or solicitors, that rules of procedure for the conduct of coroners' courts shall be framed by a representative Rules Committee, and that the coroner's enquiry shall be confined to the question of how, when and where a death took place, the issues of civil and criminal liability being alike excluded. Another sound recommendation is for the abolition of the charitable but often dishonest verdict of " suicide while of unsound mind " in favour of a simple declaration that the deceased died by his own hand. Much the most contentious proposal is that in a case of suicide the Press shall be permitted to report only the finding and none of the evidence. A desire to spare the feelings of relatives can be sympathised with, but curtailment of the rights of the Press is always to be viewed with misgiving, and in this case there is a clear balance of advantage in favour of the existing freedom.
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