Morbid Fact Du Jour For August 2, 2011

Today’s Shady Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Although today we think of coroners as esteemed medical professionals, there was a time when they were untrained elected officials. In New York City, political party bosses regularly fixed elections to reward loyal supporters with the lucrative position. A 1915 report estimated that the city spent $172,000 annually on “unqualified coroners, their mediocre physicians and their personal clerks, who spend most of their time on private affairs,” or lining their pockets. In addition to drawing their salaries, coroners worked on commission. They could – and usually did – bill the city for every body they examined; one assistant coroner “investigated” the same drowning victim more than a dozen times, claiming each time that it had bobbed up at a different location on the Hudson River. Coroners had been known to allow families to claim bodies only if they agreed to let a certain funeral home, which paid a kickback, handle the arrangements. Coroners had other sources of income as well. They sold fake death certificates and thereby covered up murders, criminal abortions, and suicides. One example involved a man who had been found dead in his bed, with a bullet wound in his mouth and a revolver in his right hand. The gun contains three loaded cartridges and one exploded one. The coroner gave the cause of death as “rupture of thoracic aneurism”.

Culled from: The Poisoner’s Handbook