In what condition is the corpse usually, or frequently, retained?—Amongst the Irish, it does not signify of what disease the person may have died, it is retained often for many days, laid out upon the only bed, perhaps, and adorned with the best they can bestow upon it, until the _coronach_ has been performed. Thus fevers and other contagious diseases are fearfully propagated. I remember a case of a body being brought from the Fever Hospital to Bullin-court, and the consequences were dreadful; and this spring I removed a girl, named Wilson, to the infirmary of the workhouse, from a room in the same court. I could not remain two minutes in it; the horrible stench arose from a corpse which had died of phthisis twelve days before, and the coffin stood across the foot of the bed, within eighteen inches of it. This was in a small room not above ten feet by twelve feet square, and a fire always in it, being (as in most cases of a like kind) the only one for sleeping, living, and cooking in. I mention these as being particular cases, from which most marked consequences followed; but I have very many others, in which the retention of the body has been fraught with serious results to the survivors. Will you describe the consequences of such retention?—Upon the 9th of March, 1840, M—— was taken to the Fever Hospital. He died there, and without my knowledge the body was brought back to his own room. The usual practice, in such cases, is to receive them into a lock-up-room, set apart for that purpose in the workhouse. I find that upon the 12th his step-son was taken ill. He was removed immediately to the Fever Hospital. Upon the 18th the barber who shaved the corpse was taken ill, and died in the Fever Hospital, and upon the 27th another step-son was taken ill, and removed also. Upon the 18th of December, 1840, I—— and her infant were brought, ill with fever, to her father’s room in Eagle-court, which was ten feet square, with a small window of four panes; the infant soon died. Upon the 15th of January, 1841, the grandmother was taken ill; upon the 2nd of February the grandfather also. There was but one bedstead in the room. They resisted every offer to remove them, and I had no power to compel removal. The corpse of the grandmother lay beside her husband upon the same bed, and it was only when he became delirious and incapable of resistance that I ordered the removal of the body to the dead-room, and him to the Fever Hospital. He died there, but the evil did not stop here: two children, who followed their father’s body to the grave, were, the one within a week and the other within ten days, also victims to the same disease. In short, five out of six died.