=Source.=--_The London Medical Repository_, Vol. X. p. 267.
_George Man Burrows on Parish Registers._
But I must reiterate, that it will be a work of supererogation
to offer either remarks or proposals for establishing improved
registers of marriages, births, baptisms, burials, diseases, &c. or
for attaining any of the other objects upon which I have dilated,
unless all denominations of religion in the whole of the united
kingdom be included.
On recapitulation, it appears that the principal defects in the
present system are:
1. Registers of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials, or bills
of mortality are not kept in every place of religious worship; nor
in hospitals and infirmaries having private burying-grounds.
2. Children who die unbaptized are not entered in any register or
bill of mortality.
3. Registers of baptism do not set forth the place and date of
birth.
4. Registers of burial do not specify where a person died, as well
as where he lived, nor his condition, whether single, married, or
widowed.
5. There is no certificate provided, showing in what parish a
person died, with other necessary particulars, as to age, the
disease, &c.
6. A corpse may be removed from a parish within the bills of
mortality of London to one without, and the burial be omitted in
the returns.
7. There is no medical authority for ascertaining and certifying
the nature of the disease of which a person died, &c.
8. The names of diseases in the bills of mortality are either
unintelligible, or so arranged as to confound diseases very
distinct in their characters.
9. In respect to ages, the periods are injudiciously divided; so
that many of the purposes to which the bills are applicable in
medical and political science are defeated.
10. The law enforcing the keeping of Registers is defective; and
does not adequately regard political, civil, or medical information.
11. All parishes and places of worship within that circle
denominated the bills of mortality of London, are not included in
the weekly or general annual returns; nor is there any existing
authority to enforce their being made, and regularly entered.
* * * * *
Among some of the advantages in medical, political, and moral
science, which would result, were proper parochial registers and
bills of mortality established and kept throughout the united
kingdom, the following present: