3-008-611 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Mr. Wakley, M.R.C.S., 1862. British coroner, surgeon, writer and politician. 'In 1835 he was erected M.P. for Finsbury, after two previous defeats, and continued to represent that borough until 1852...He was also proprietor and editor of the Lancet...In Parliament, and as Coroner for Middlesex, he fought for the advancement and honour of medicine and his brethren. As a member of the House of Commons he was the first to assert the claims of the medical profession to public consideration. He won for them the Medical Witnesses Act, which annually brings a large revenue to medical practitioners and secures the better administration of justice...When he contested, at enormous cost, the coronership of Middlesex there was probably no other medical man who would have had a chance of success. He challenged his right to that office on the ground of his medical skill; and he has, by the dignity and efficiency with which he executed the duties, proved to the world the truth of the principle that a Coroner should be a medical man. It is by his great example that he has opened the way for other medical men to become Coroners too'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.