Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/13

 remuneration of medical men called to assist at post-mortem examinations. In 1840 he succeeded in preventing the post of public vaccinators being confined to poor-law medical officers alone by obtaining a modification of the wording of Sir James Graham's vaccination bill. In 1841 he strongly supported the extramural burial bill [see ]. In 1846 he brought in a bill to establish a uniform system of registration of qualified medical practitioners in Great Britain and Ireland. Though the bill did not pass, it led to the thorough sifting of the question before a select committee, whose deliberations resulted in the Medical Act of 1858, in which Wakley's registration clauses were adopted almost entire. Wakley did not, however, entirely approve of that act, holding that there should be more direct representation of the body of the profession in the medical council instituted by the act. Among other important parliamentary work, he obtained the material reduction of the newspaper stamp duties in 1836. He was an ardent reformer with strong sympathies with the chartists, an advocate for the repeal of the Irish union, a strenuous opponent of the corn laws, and an enemy to lawyers. He retired from parliament in 1852, finding that the pressure of work left him no leisure for his duties. On the foundation of ‘Punch’ in 1841 Wakley's parliamentary action became a favourite theme of satire, and he was constantly represented in the pages of the new journal. His assertion in speaking against the copyright act in 1842 that he could write ‘respectable’ poetry by the mile was singled out for special ridicule, and received a genial reproof from Tom Hood in his ‘Whimsicalities’ (London, 1844).

In 1851 he commenced in the ‘Lancet’ a most useful movement by issuing the results of analyses of food-stuffs in general consumption by the nation. The inquiry, conducted under the title ‘The “Lancet” Analytical Sanitary Commission,’ was an uncompromising attack on the prevalent adulteration and sophistication of food. The investigation, commencing in London, was carried in 1857 into several of the great provincial towns. It immediately caused considerable diminution in adulteration, and in 1855 a parliamentary committee was appointed to consider the subject. The result of the inquiry was the adulteration act of 1860, known as Scholefield's Act [see ], which rendered penal adulterations which affected the health of consumers. Wakley was only moderately satisfied with the act, which did not deal with the fraudulent aspect of adulteration, and which left the appointment of analysts to the option of the local authorities. The former defect was amended in the Sale of Foods and Drugs Acts of 1875 and 1879.

Wakley is perhaps better known to memory as coroner for West Middlesex than as radical politician or medical reformer. He held the opinion that the duties of corner required a medical rather than legal education. He supported his views in the ‘Lancet’ by numerous examples drawn from contemporary inquests, and on 24 Aug. 1830 presented himself to a meeting of freeholders at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, as the first medical candidate for the post of coroner of East Middlesex. He was narrowly defeated at the poll, but on 25 Feb. 1839 he was elected coroner for West Middlesex. His efforts to raise the status of coroner's juries and establish a decorous mode of procedure at inquests aroused considerable dislike, and he was accused of holding too frequent inquests, especial objection being taken to his holding inquests on those who died in prisons, asylums, and almshouses. On 10 Oct. 1839 the Middlesex magistrates refused to pass the coroner's accounts, but a committee from their body, appointed to investigate the charges, completely justified Wakley's procedure. His position was finally established on 27 July 1840 by the favourable report of a parliamentary committee appointed to inquire into these and subsequent points of dispute. The numerous instances of practical sagacity and of professional skill which Wakley gave in conducting inquests gradually won popular opinion completely to his side. His humanity gained enthusiastic praise from Dickens, who was summoned to serve on a jury in 1841. The most conspicuous example of his power was in 1846 in the case of Frederick John White. In the face of the testimony of army medical officers, the jury, instructed by independent medical witnesses, returned a verdict that the deceased, a private soldier, died from the effects of a flogging to which he had been sentenced. Their verdict produced such an impression that this method of military punishment fell almost at once into comparative disuse, and was almost unknown when formally abolished by the Army Act of 1881.

Wakley acquired some fame as an exposer of charlatans. It was chiefly through his action that [q. v.] was brought to justice in 1830. In the same year, on 4 Feb., he discredited Chabert, the ‘Fire King,’ in the Argyll Rooms, and on 16 Aug. 1838 he conclusively showed at a séance held at his house in Bedford Square that [q. v.], the senior