New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1866-09-04
At the Coroner's

The yield at the coroner's office, either from
cholera or other causes was discouragingly small
yesterday. In DR.. Drew's district there were 10
entries. With Dr. Delery, it only amounted to an
old negro from Virginia, who We hope has Uncle
Ned's wish and been % carried bacll to an easier
and more indolent life than his freedom left him
in this. There being no entries on the books, and
fearful that the apparent decrease of cholera nor
talties was hardly to be credited, We determined
to await the return of the coroner who was at the
moment absent. We amused ourselves meanwhile
by moralizing in this inspectors Office of dead
bodies and to prove that we really did 50, we give
below the result of our lucubratons:
In this city we have no building or room where
the bodies Of the unknown dead are regularly eX.
posed, that is to say, anything corresponding to
the Morgue of Paris or New York. Those repre-
sentatiyes Of the arch destroyer Death in this
city, Drs. Delery andrew, have obviously none
Of the visible and outward symbols of the duties
to which they are assigned scattered around them;
no hour-glass, no scythe, no dagger, or poisoned
bowl.
There is not even the skull, or human skeleton,
which adorns in some localities the doctors
shop-scarcely anything, unless it is some old va
| lise or bundle of clothes, which tells only too
| truly how often crime is connected with poverty.
a Y ou see how it is lis the way the criminal rea-
sons} I had no money, therefore I was obliged to
cut my own or my neighbors throat. It's an
| awkard affair, but it is what has sometimes to
occur in the best of poor families"
But looking about the premises little more
closely you discover soen that your conclusion
was a rash one, and that wealthy Dives is some
times led astray as well as the meanest of US
That pistol (for there is some of the parapherna.
liza of crime about the premises) you now zee was
used by the old mans son, as threat to make his
governor come down little more handsome
And looking over the books of the office you dis
cover that there has been debit and credit
account with Dives himself; that bank
management of his, you may remember, ended
badly, and between us conidentialy UOr his
family are not fond of speaking of the matter) he
cut his throat to avoid similar liberties on the part
of the hGngman.
E But, generally speaking, it is when you are out
of money that there is a body to be sat upon
The murders and suicides are as destitute Of Incl
dent as are the purses which appertain to them ot
coin. None of those delightfully."- horrible ro
mauces which you sit up all night to read; none
of those dark, cventful histories which make y0r
think the best of their species have violently
taken their departure from this vale of tears-art
inscribe6 in these ledgers of Death. People are
much more prosaic nowadays. Wh6n SmitE
cuts his throat, it is because his business hous
(Smith, Jones & Coz is about to fail. And ex
oeptng the case of the young man who ended lf
merely for the sake of being buried in one of Mr.
Moody's shirts, we can't remember ever seein
any romantic suicide,