William Hewitt

“ Yet I most heartily coincide in acknowledging the integrity and worth, of Gentlemen pursuing vocations, for which they have alone been amply educated; and it is only when they assume a position, or accept office to execute duties they are incompetent to perform, as is frequently observed, that I deem it my duty to wield my pen against such appointments: not less for the sake of humanity, than for the dignity, and I might add, the disregarded importance of the medical profession, to which I have the honor to belong. ”

“ To combat successfully with so restless and powerful an agent as the ocean, requires great consideration and attention; for the obstacles presented on this coast are of no ordinary character. Among them may be enumerated powerful tides and currents, a confined space for a large body of water upon extraordinary occasions, cliffs of a soft yielding nature, a limited and irregular shore, with cavities and projections, either a dead flat or hollow descent from low water mark towards the cliffs, constitute a beach of the worst character. ”

“ Let us inquire—first, the cause of the German Ocean gaining upon the Norfolk coast? secondly, whether every portion is the subject of such visitation, attended with similar results? and thirdly, whether art can arrest its progress?
The German Ocean, from its being intersected with numerous shoals of sand, some of immense length and breadth, presents a greater variation in the tides and currents than probably any other ocean in the world; and from its exposure to variable and violent winds, renders the navigation extremely dangerous. ”

“ Where coroners are empowered to act as judges, as in taking an inquisition of death, the act of one of them is of the same force as if they had all joined.
The office of Coroner being by election, does not determine by the demise of the king.
The jurisdiction of coroners is limited to the county, liberty, or precinct, to and for which they are elected and appointed, and cannot be enlarged by any private act or delegation from the crown.
By the common law, if a man had been stricken in one county, and died in another, it was doubtful whether he were indictable or liable in either ”

“ As the moon travels, this vast body of waters rears upward, as if to watch its motions, and pursues the same constant rotation. However, in this great work of raising the tides, the sun has no small share, it produces its own tide constantly every day, just as the moon does, but in a much less degree, because the sun is at an immensely greater distance. ”

“ The office of Coroner is of great antiquity, for in the days of Alfred, King of England, they existed, for he punished with death, a judge who sentenced a party to suffer death upon the coroner’s record, without allowing the culprit to traverse or be tried in another court. ”

“ After his great discovery of the law of gravitation, he found it an easy matter to account for the whole phenomena of the tides. The moon, like all the rest of the planets, has been found to attract and to be attracted by the earth. This attraction prevails throughout our whole planetary system; the more matter there is contained in any body, the more it attracts, and its influence decreases in proportion as the distance, when squared, increases. This being premised, let us see what must ensue upon supposing the moon in the meridian of any tract of the sea. ”

“ Their knowledge of medical jurisprudence, if to a certain extent comprehended, must be far too limited to conduct enquiries of grave importance. The want of sound medical knowledge must prove the hindrance, because it is frequently observed when medical gentlemen give evidence, they use technicalities employed in the profession, and by stepping into details, they bewilder their hearers, and sometimes themselves also. ”

“ These arbitrary laws, enacted in the earlier period of England’s history, when ignorance prevailed, and barbarism allowed the honoured and the wealthy to impose exactions cruel and oppressive, on those beneath them, may possibly have in many instances, from humanity, been omitted. At all events, as knowledge advanced, we find that not only have those which pressed so heavily upon the poor industrious fishermen been cancelled, but that others have been reduced to an extent compatible with the necessary protection to property exposed to the pilferer, from lamentable accidents on the coast. ”

“ Here the coroner rested satisfied with this superficial enquiry in search of truth, and addressing a readily assenting jury, advised a verdict should be recorded that the deceased died by the “Visitation of God;” and thus was suffered to escape, one of the finest opportunities to expose and punish the unpardonable vanity of a dabbler in physic, who openly, yet certainly, disclosed the fact that he and his fraternity are allowed to deprive with impunity the lives of the weak minded, the most to be pitied among Her Majesty’s subjects. ”

“ The shoals of sand in the offing, in certain localities, are numerous and irregular, their dimensions and situation variable, and while they afford a partial protection to the coast, are decidedly injurious to vessels liable to be stranded.
To make the sea subservient to our wishes, and agreeable to our design, in other words, to make it perform the duty of bringing its contents from the bottom of its waters towards the cliffs, to protect them, if possible, for ages, let us consider its auxiliary, the wind, the effects, whether beneficial or injurious. ”

“ Therefore it may be assumed, that great tact and discrimination is required in the examination in any case where medical evidence is of paramount importance, and consequently it may be believed, that unless gentlemen are properly educated, so as to be able to elicit important truths connected with the science of medicine in all its branches, as well as the legal points in coronership, they cannot be capable of conducting inquiries, in all the integrity, which these solemn occasions demand. ”

“ Evaporation by solar heat is another cause of oceanic currents, of which the great current setting through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, is a remarkable example. A stream of colder water always flows from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. It must happen in many other parts of the world that large quantities of water, raised from one tract of the ocean by solar heat, are carried to some other, where the vapour is condensed, and falls in the shape of rain, and this, in flowing back again to restore equilibrium, will cause sensible currents. ”

“ A poor agricultural labourer, William Swann, came to an untimely end, through circumstances of an aggravated character, leaving a widow and nine children to deplore his irreparable loss; for among this, the humblest classes of society, there are ties of affection naturally entwined by which they are endeared to each other, more than is frequently observable among grades of a similar character in towns or cities. ”

“ The rotation of the earth on its axis is another cause which can only come into play when the waters have been already set in motion by some one or all of the forces above described, and when the direction of the current so raised happens to be from south to north, or from north to south, the principle on which this operates has been long recognized in the case of trade winds; thus, when a current flows from the Cape of Good Hope towards the Gulph of Guinea, it consists of a mass of water, which, on doubling the Cape, in latitude 35°, has a rotatory velocity of about 800 miles an hour ”

“ In either case, if a party having a competent degree of skill and knowledge, makes an accidental mistake in the treatment of a patient, through which mistake death ensues, he is not thereby guilty of manslaughter.”
“But if where proper medical assistance can be had, a person totally ignorant of the science of medicine—takes on himself a violent and dangerous remedy to one labouring under disease, and death ensues in consequence of that dangerous remedy having been so administered, then he is guilty of manslaughter ”

“ The height to which tides rise, and the violence and velocity of the currents, depend in a great measure on the actual configuration of the land, the contour of a long line of continental or insular coast, the depth and breadth of channels, the peculiar form at the bottom of the seas—in a word, on a combination of circumstances which are made to vary continually by many igneous and aqueous causes, and among the rest, by the tides and currents themselves. ”

“ It is no inglorious vanity in Englishmen to consider the laws of their country afford an example for other nations to follow. Founded on the lasting rock of integrity, shewn in the strict regard for the liberty of the subject, they command the obedience and the admiration of thousands. ”

“ The workings of Nature itself, under the control of an Allwise and Omnipotent Being, ever exhibit a restorative as well as a destructive power. Its laws and constitution being no where directly revealed to us, are only to be inferred from the inspection of particular facts, obtained from observation and experiment, the only trust-worthy guides to the knowledge of Nature. ”

“ But it must be borne in mind, that a jury of men labouring in other vocations, living in a remote village, seldom attending coroners’ inquests, whose education is so limited, as not to be competent to seek for information, which the knowledge of medical jurisprudence inculcates, are the reasons why they must and do rely on the coroner to extract the evidence required ”

“ Upon these shores the sea seldom beats with any great violence, as a large wave has not depth sufficient to float it onwards, so that here only are to be seen gentle surges making towards the land, and lessening as they approach. ”

“ Coroners are officers at common law, because they deal principally with the pleas of the crown; and, possibly, the name may be derived from the manner of holding the inquest in corona popupuli. The Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench is, by virtue of his office, principal coroner of England; and may, if he pleases, exercise the jurisdiction of coroner in any part of the realm. ”