CORONERS’ JURIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5390, 6 July 1878, Page 3

CORONERS’ JURIES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

(From the Sydney Mail.) In these days of telephones and phonographs ironclads and what not—evidences of the world’s progress and the march of intellect—is it too much to hope for or expect the invention of some substitute for want of intelligence on the part of coroners’ juries? They are hot content with the old “ crowner'a” phrase of “ Died by the visitation • of God,’’ or the less sympathetic, if somewhat more laconic, verdict of “ Served him right but they must now affix a short homily by way of rider for their own gratification, if not for the benefit of the interested friends of the departed. Not many weeks ago a Queensland jury found that an unfortunate creature ' “died by the visitation of God, accelerated by exposure and neglect,’’ And nearer home, that is, to wit, at Mnrrurundi, and within the last few days, a jury found that a poor fellow who had been killed on the railway, and upon whose body they had been sitting, died “ through being accidentally run over by a horse-box, such accident being attributable to the defective state of the break attached to such horse-box." Through the defective state of this particular piece of rolling stock a widow and several children have been left,—and left, as the report adds wit" terrible significance, “unprovided for.” Thill deceased was in the discharge of his dubiety, when the defective horse-box annihilated him and the stay of his family. Will the jury say it is quite by accident that rolling stock, with cracked axles or defective breaks, run up and down our lines? Is no one to be held responsible for these defects ? Another jury, still nearer to the metropolis, went to the other extreme on Monday. This body (the jury) was of the old heterogeneous compound tailors, publicans, hairdressers, tobaconists, oystermen, and sb on. After listening to the evidence with the gravity of, saints, which evidence clearly showed that the wrongful act of a workman at the foundry had caused his own violent death and that of a fellow-workman—in fact, the deceased before his death admitted his fault—the jury found that the explosion was tho cause of . accident. And then they took upon themselves to pronounce upon the mode of conducting operations at the Atlas Foundry Works. According to their notions it is very' wrong to have water near a furnace containing molten iron, when that iron cannot escape except by tho foolhardy conduct of those in charge. Had’ the men been killed by the molten iron instead of the steam which it generated, this learned jury would no doubt have been, equally ready to enter upon a disquisition as to tho. impropriety of having molten iron in a furnace at all.