Now! Then! A Sheffield inquest deals less with the death of James Brady than with the storage of his corpse

29 November 1880: A Sheffield inquest deals less with the death of James Brady than with the storage of his corpse

Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 1880/11/30. A Public Mortuary for Sheffield. Sheffield. Get it:

Excerpt

At an inquest held at the Talbot Inn, Blast Lane, yesterday afternoon, on a body which had been immersed in the canal for 14 days, the subject of mortuary accommodation was brought forward. Mr J. Ellis, who acted as foreman of the jury, said that he understood that the landlord of the Talbot Inn had had to stable his horses elsewhere, owing to the dead body having been deposited in his stables for a week [recovered the 13th, buried the 19th]. It was believed that a resolution had been come to a couple of years ago to erect a public mortuary. The coroner (Mr Wightman) remarked that a resolution for the erection of a mortuary in Sheffield could hardly have been passed without his knowing of it. He would be very glad to do all he could to get such a building provided. There was need of one, for he believed there were cases where landlords’ wives and families had to leave their homes whilst there was a dead body in the house awaiting the inquest. Mr J. Ellis then proposed “That Sheffield being of sufficient size to warrant the erection of a public mortuary, and considering that cases where bodies had been in the canal for 13 or 14 days inflicted a grievous hardship on the landlords of hotels to whose houses the bodies were conveyed, there was great need of a mortuary.” The jury agreed to the motion, and requested the coroner to call the immediate attention of the town council to the matter.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Via Chris Hobbs, who has a photograph of the Talbot Inn and all that is known about the fate of Mr Brady, and who notes:

As for the erection of a public mortuary proposed at the inquest, Sheffield had to wait another three and a half years. There is no doubt that the proposal would have been passed on to the Town Council but the Council were noted for being parsimonious when it came to public expenditure. A pattern developed in the nineteenth century whereby the council did not interfere in public matters especially those that may entail the spending of money. They tended to wait until matters became intolerable and then and only then did they take any form of action.

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Original

A PUBLIC MORTUARY FOR SHEFFIELD.
At an inquest held at the Talbot Inn, Blast lane, yesterday afternoon, on a body which had been immersed in the canal for fourteen days, the subject of mortuary accommodation was brought forward. Mr. J. Ellis, who acted as foreman of the jury, said that he understood that the landlord of the Talbot Inn had had to stable his horses elsewhere, owing to the dead body having been deposited in his stables for a week. It was believed that a resolution had been come to a couple of years ago to erect a public mortuary.
The Coroner (Mr. Wightman) remarked that a resolution for the erection of a mortuary in Sheffield could hardly have been passed without his knowing of it. He would be very glad to do all he could to get such a building provided. There was need of one, for he believed there were cases where landlords’ wives and families had to leave their homes whilst there was a dead body in the house awaiting the inquest. Mr. J. Ellis then proposed “That Sheffield being of sufficient size to warrant the erection of a public mortuary, and considering that cases where bodies had been in the canal for 13 or 14 days inflicted a grievous hardship on the landlords of hotels to whose houses the bodies were conveyed, there was great need of a mortuary.” The jury agreed to the motion, and requested the Coroner to call the immediate attention of the Town Council to the matter.

257 words.