On the Examination of Bodies Found in the River

Abstract

As one of the surgeons to the Thames division of the Metropolitan Police I have the opportunity, shared by my colleagues, of examining every year a considerable number of bodies found either in the river or on the foreshore. The problems which arise in the performance of this apparently simple professional task are so various, and so important from the medico-legal point of view, that I have thought there may be some interest in narrating one's experiences. I should premise that my own district is the Surrey part of the Thames, from Putney to Kew, a stretch of river in which, for various reasons, many bodies are found. The river is, of course, at the Barnes section, tidal and fresh, and it will not be forgotten that the conditions differ therefore very much from those of waters which are not tidal, or are salt. Some of the most important published papers narrating the appearances of drowned bodies refer, it should be remembered, to the appearances noted when large numbers of persons have met their deaths within a few moments of each other, and under identical physical conditions-as in shipwrecks, and the Regent's Park skating disaster. But the experiences of a police-surgeon extend to an extraordinary diversity of sets of conditions; bodies of all ages being