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13 November 1888
There is no reason to regret that the duty of holding an inquest in the Dorset-street tragedy devolved upon Dr. Macdonald. In as many hours as the other coroners have taken days, he managed to satisfy himself and the jury as to the “how, when and where” of the unfortunate woman’s death. Dr Macdonald is to be complimented on his expedition. Nothing is to be gained by the prolongation of such an inquiry, and the nauseating of the public by the iteration of unsavoury details. No one but morbidly minded people, whose tastes are best left unministered to, wants to know in exact scientific language the brutal manner in which the body of the victim was gashed and mutilated. Experience has shown that the reading of such details has resulted in imitations of these crimes, and the less the public appetite for unwholesome detail is fed the better it is for the community. The duty of the coroner and his jury was a simple one. They satisfied themselves as to the identity of the woman and the manner of her death. Unhappily, no evidence was forthcoming to enable them to incriminate anyone, and for the seventh time, this unsatisfactory conclusion had to be recorded – “Murdered by some person or persons unknown.”
There is no reason to regret that the duty of holding an inquest in the Dorset-street tragedy devolved upon Dr. Macdonald. In as many hours as the other coroners have taken days, he managed to satisfy himself and the jury as to the “how, when and where” of the unfortunate woman’s death. Dr Macdonald is to be complimented on his expedition. Nothing is to be gained by the prolongation of such an inquiry, and the nauseating of the public by the iteration of unsavoury details. No one but morbidly minded people, whose tastes are best left unministered to, wants to know in exact scientific language the brutal manner in which the body of the victim was gashed and mutilated. Experience has shown that the reading of such details has resulted in imitations of these crimes, and the less the public appetite for unwholesome detail is fed the better it is for the community. The duty of the coroner and his jury was a simple one. They satisfied themselves as to the identity of the woman and the manner of her death. Unhappily, no evidence was forthcoming to enable them to incriminate anyone, and for the seventh time, this unsatisfactory conclusion had to be recorded – “Murdered by some person or persons unknown.”
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