a preliminary enquiry,
and whenever an autopsy is necessary a request has to be made for a Jury to be summoned and the Coroner has to proceed to the Government Civil Hospital and view the body and take the evidence.
In many urban cases the circumstances to be enquired into require the utmost delicacy of treatment and the greatest minuteness of investigation. Sometimes it is a death occasioned by pressure, sometimes by the falling in of a roof, sometimes by the explosion of a boiler, sometimes by the result of a collision in the harbour, and occasionally by murder.
In all these cases the surrounding circumstances have to be investigated. The scene of the death has to be visited, and frequent adjournments to be made. In a case which I recently held one hundred and eighty pages of depositions had to be taken, and the enquiry lasted for exactly a month, and in several other cases twenty or thirty pages of evidence have been taken and the enquiry adjourned from day to day. Minute points of law constantly arise, and the Coroner has to keep his undivided attention sustained.
The journey to the Civil Hospital is through the thickest part of the Chinese town, and at the inquest it is the view of a body in a less advanced stage...