Before particularising the course of practice of such an officer, it appears requisite to state other grounds on which intervention appears requisite for the verification of the fact of death, and the mode of death, by the inspection of the body previously to interment. § 188. It is admitted that some additional arrangements are yet wanting for the complete attainment of the proper civic and technical purposes of registration:—as depositaries of pre-appointed evidence of the fact of death, to determine questions of private rights:—as depositaries of evidence for purposes of medical science and public health, to show the extent and prevalence of common causes of disease incident to different occupations and different localities—and of the data for tables of insurance, as well as for the recovery of sums assured, where the proof of age is not admitted in the policy. Any one who is unknown to the local registrar may go and register as a fact his own death, of which a certified copy of the registry will, according to the 38th clause of the Act, be evidence in a court of law. Cases of the registration of false statements have already been detected; some have been made with the view to successions and to the obtainment of property. False registrations have been made amongst the labouring classes as to the place of death, to gain interments in distant parishes at cheaper rates. Fictitious deaths have been registered to defraud burial societies, and the registrar’s certificate of such deaths have got in use by vagrants as a means of obtaining alms. In Manchester a woman having obtained and used one certificate of a fictitious death, soon after obtained another similar certificate, and in order to deter parties from visiting the house, she got the cause of death registered as “malignant fever.” § 189. On the continent, wherever the mortuary registers are well kept, and arrangements are made for the protection of the public health, the fact and time of death, and the identity of the deceased, is verified on the spot, by inspection of the body by a competent responsible officer of public health. Vide instance and effects at Geneva, stated in the General Sanitary Report, p. 174. § 190. It is proposed that the verification of the fact of death, and ascertaining its cause, by inquiry on the spot, should be confided to the officer proposed to be appointed as an officer of public health. The present local registrars might act as auxiliaries; the proposed appointment would be an additional security for the accuracy of the mortuary registration, and would improve that branch of the local machinery for registration.