But the greatest anomaly of all in relation to the verdicts of coroners’ juries is the murder verdict at an inquest. Why should a perfectly irresponsible body, for a coroner’s jury _is_ an irresponsible body in deciding the guilt of an accused murderer, find _A_ guilty of the wilful murder of his wife _B_ before the Grand Jury[31] has even found a true bill against _A_? The practice is utterly absurd. (It may be said here, in parenthesis, that it seems a waste of public money to carry on a police court prosecution and proceedings before the coroner in connection with the same murder charge. It should be noted that an accused person can be committed for trial on the coroner’s warrant, though it is usual for the police magistrate to do the committing.) It will be remembered that the notorious Crippen case occupied the attention of a coroner and his jury for some little time. There, certain fleshy remains found buried in the cellar of a house in an outlying district of London, formed the subject of the inquiry. It was alleged that they were portions of a woman’s body. No bones were discovered by the police, and a good deal of speculation was rife as to fixing the flesh with the hall-mark of identity. It was admitted from the outset that the flesh in question was human flesh, but beyond this a difficult task seemed to lay before the authorities. It was made less irksome by the presence of an operation scar, which turned out to have been on the body of Crippen’s wife. The coroner’s jury ultimately found that the flesh was the flesh of Cora Crippen, _alias_ “Belle Elmore,” and that H. H. Crippen, formerly her husband, was guilty of her wilful murder. There was no reasonable doubt as to the accused man’s guilt from the first. He had carried on a practice as a medical quack, and in the course of his business had employed a typist, Ethel Le Neve, or Neave, with whom he cohabited. The Crippen woman disappeared somewhat suddenly; inquiries were then set on foot by her friends to ascertain the truth, which the husband failed to supply. Soon after receiving a visit from a police-inspector, H. H. Crippen himself disappeared, and it was only after frantic efforts had been made that the man was discovered to be on board a vessel in mid-Alantic. Accompanied by his mistress, he then fell an easy prey to his pursuers--after half Europe had been searched for him in vain. The murder of which he was accused was a peculiarly atrocious one. After poisoning his victim, he had deliberately set his partial knowledge of anatomy to account by dismembering the corpse, disposing of the bones and secreting the flesh. The man’s remarkable nerve, employed in a legitimate channel, might have made him successful in life, instead of making him the object of a hue-and-cry from St. Petersburg to San Francisco. The story in detail, is newspaper history.