§ 207. I am informed by Mr. Payne, the coroner for the city of London, that he has in some cases felt it to be his duty to send a confidential person to make inquiries for him, before he would act on the ordinary sources of information in holding inquests. I have also been informed that other coroners adopt the same laudable practice, and frequently incur the trouble and expense of previous inquiries by more trustworthy persons, in cases where the alleged cause of death is not manifest. The appointment of medical officers of health might be made without the exercise of any new or anomalous powers to relieve the coroners from such necessity, and at the same time give the public cause to be better satisfied that no really suspicious cases were shrouded and concealed, and that none escaped from inadvertence.[42] I believe that on the uses to be derived from the appointment of the officers in question most coroners would concur in the opinions expressed in the following answer received from Mr. Payne. In reply to your inquiry (respecting the Medical Registrars of Deaths giving notice to the Coroner of such deaths as may appear to them to inquire to be investigated by him), I beg to say that I have long felt there has been something wanting in the machinery by which inquiries into deaths are, or ought to be regulated. In cases of death from external violence, where the injury is apparent, the constable of the district is fully aware of the necessity of applying to the coroner; but in cases of sudden or other deaths where there is no cause apparent to a common observer, there is a necessity for some qualified person forming a judgment as to the expediency of a judicial inquiry into the cause of death, and I know of none so well qualified to form such a judgment as a member of the medical profession. The office of _searcher_, when properly carried out, was useful as far as it could be in the hands of old women, but that could only apply to cases in which external violence was apparent to the view on searching the body. I believe, however, that the office has now ceased to exist, and the present mode of registering deaths does not supply any means of detecting unnatural or violent deaths. I am therefore quite of opinion that a Medical Registrar (chosen for his ability and _discretion_) who would not unnecessarily annoy the feelings of private families, and yet make himself acquainted with the death by personal knowledge, would be a valuable addition to the present mode of ascertaining and registering deaths. _Advantages to Science from the Improvement of the Mortuary Registration._