Page images
PDF
EPUB

General Report of the Board.

LAW RELATING TO VITAL STATISTICS.

Chapter 202, Laws of 1897, provides as follows:

SECTION 1. It shall be the duty of parents, and of every house-holder, to give notice of the birth of any child occurring in said house-hold within thirty days after the birth thereof, to the health officer of the Board of Health existing in the city, village or town in which the birth occurs, and in case no health officer exists in such city, village or town, the said notice shall be given to the city or town clerk; the keeper of a work house, house of correction, prison, hospital, or almshouse, and the master or other commanding officer of a ship, shall give like notice of every birth occurring among the persons under his charge; said notice shall give the full name of the child (if it have any), color, sex, name of other issue living (born of the same parents), full name of father, occupation of father, full name of mother previous to marriage, hour, day of week, of month, and year of birth, the place, town or township, and county in which born, birth place of father, birth place of mother.

SECTION 2. Said notices shall be made on blanks furnished by the Secretary of State through the Register of Deeds of each county, and shall contain at the bottom, a blank for the registry of any important information, not already recorded, and also a space for the health officer, town or city clerk, to certify that the above is a true return of said birth and of the other facts there recorded, together with the date thereof.

SECTION 3. It shall be the duty of the health officer of every Board of Health in this state, or in places where no Board of Health exists the city or town clerk or assessor, to collect all of the births that occur in the city, town or village in which he is an officer, and at the end of each month to certify all such notices of births as he may have received or collected, and forward the same to he Register of Deeds of the county in which such births

occur.

person, shall

SECTION 4. No undertaker, sexton, or other bury or prepare for incineration, in any city, village or town in this state, or remove therefrom a human body, until he has received a permit so to do from the health officer of the said city, village or town, or his deputy, or if there be no health officer in such city, village or town, from the city or town clerk, and no such permit shall be

General Report of the Board.

issued until there has been delivered to such health officer, or clerk, as the case may be, a satisfactory written certificate containing the full name of the person deceased, maiden name, if wife or widow, color, sex, race, occupation, age (giving years, months and days), names and birth place of father and mother of deceased, birth place of dedeceased, name of wife of deceased, name of husband of ceased, date of birth of deceased, condition (whether single, married, or widowed), date of death, residence at time of death, primary and secondary cause of death, place of death, duration of disease, whether deceased was ever a soldier or sailor in the service of the United States, place of burial, name of undertaker or other person conducting the burial or incineration, date of certificate, number and date of burial permit, and said certificate shall be signed by the physician last in attendance on deceased; if any there was, who shall state the primary and secondary cause of death according to the best information he can obtain, or in case of violence, by a coroner, or by a justice of the peace. If there be no attending physician, or if the certificate of the attending physician cannot be obtained, for good and sufficient reasons, early enough for the purpose, any physician, employed for the purpose, shall, upon request of the said health officer, or clerk, make such certificate as is required of the attending physician, and in case there is no physician obtainable, early enough for such purpose, the said certificate shall be made by a justice of the peace.

SECTION 5. Blanks for this purpose shall be furnished by the Secretary of State through the Register of Deeds of each county, in the same manner as blanks for the return of births, and shall contain a space at the bottom for the registry of any important facts not already recorded, and also for the health officer, town or city clerk, as the case may be, to certify that the above is a true return of the said death and all the other facts there recorded, together with the date thereof; and it shall be the duty of the said health officer, city or town clerk, to return the same, duly certified, at the end of each month, to the Register of Deeds of the county in which such death occurs.

SECTION 6. It shall be the duty of the Register of Deeds in each county to furnish at the expense of the county, to the said health officer or clerk, suitable blanks and instructions for burial permits, said permits shall bear the date when issued, giving permission for the removal of the remains of the person deceased, name and date of death of deceased, cause of death, location or

General Report of the Board.

cemetery where buried, name of person to whom the permit is issued, and the name of the attending physician, coroner, other physician. or justice of the peace who signs the death certificate, and when issued shall be signed by the health officer, or clerk, issuing the same.

SECTION 7. The term physician in this act shall only apply as provided for in section 1436 of the revised statutes of the state of Wisconsin.

SECTION 8. Every physician, coroner, or justice of the peace, as the case may be, who shall comply with the provisions of this act in furnishing certificates of the cause of death, shall receive for each such certificate returned to the Register of Deeds, through the health officer, or clerk, as the case may be, and certified to as provided for in this act, the sum of twenty-five cents, and every health officer, or clerk, as the case may be, who collects and transmits to the Register of Deeds of any county, any birth or death, as provided for in this act (duplicates not allowed), shall receive for each certificate so returned and certified to, the sum of fifteen (15) cents, the said fees to be audited and paid out of the county treasury on an itemized account, in accordance with the provisions of section 1026 of Sanborn & Berryman's Annotated Statutes.

SECTION 9. This act shall not apply to cities having a population of one hundred and fifty thousand or more inhabitants, but in said cities in which there is a health officer or health commissioner who is authorized by law to issue burial permits upon the certificates of physicians, the said health officer or health commissioner shall not receive a certificate of the cause of death from any person except a physician, as provided for in Section 7 of this act, or a coroner, and the said health officer or health commissioner shall, if such physician or coroner shall fail to return such certificate to the Register of Deeds within thirty days, file in the office of the Register of Deeds of the county in which said death shall occur, and within forty eight hours after the expiration of said thirty days, a certificate containing the facts set forth in the certificate as provided for in section 4 of this act, and filed in the office of the health commissioner by the physician who signed the same, and such health officer or health commissioner shall receive from the county in which said death shall occur, the same fee for filing such certificate with the Register of Deeds as is provided for physicians by Section 8 of this act.

SECTION 10. It shall be the duty of the Register of Deeds of each county in this state to make such monthly

General Report of the Board.

or quarterly reports of births and deaths, on blanks furnished by the State Board of Health as the Secretary of the said Board may designate in said blanks, to enable the State Board of Health to study the vital statistics of the state.

SECTION 11. It shall be the duty of the District Attorney in each county to enforce these provisions of law, and any person violating any of the provisions of this act, or neglecting, or refusing to make a certificate, as aforesaid, or making a false certificate, or a false statement therein knowingly, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten (10) dollars nor more than fifty (50) dollars for each and every offense, or by confinement in the county jail for a period of not less than thirty nor more than sixty days, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

SECTION 12. Sections 1023, 1024, 1024a, and 1028, and such portions of Sections 1025 and 1026 of Sanborn & Berryman's Annotated Statutes, and all other acts and parts of acts, inconsistent with or contravening the provisions of this act, are hereby repealed.

SECTION 13. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 1897.

This law has been passed after a great deal of thought and consideration of its operation, and it is hoped that the citizens of the state will consider it of enough importance to aid in having it enforced thoroughly in their respective localities. No law of this kind can be so framed that it will please or meet with the approval of all, and neither can such work be accomplished without some self-sacrifice and unpaid labor on the part of those who aid in collecting vital statistics. But every citizen should recognize the importance of carefully collected vital statistics to that extent that he should be willing to go to a little trouble in -the matter. The state furnishes the individual with many privileges, and in return the individual should be willing to render the necessary aid in furnishing the important information relating to the growth and decay of the state, which only vital statistics can show. It is a sad commen

!

General Report of the Board.

tary on our modern intelligence not to be able to furnish the world, if called upon, with a correct record of the births and deaths of a great and intelligent state like Wisconsin. It has been stated by some that it is too much work for the health officer to collect births in his jurisdiction, and that it cannot be done; that the parents will not report cases of births to the health officer, and that the health officer cannot be expected to go about and collect the same. But in time it is believed that many parents will aid in furnishing the necessary data, and the health officer should do the rest, for which he receives a fee. As boards of health are organized in nearly every town, village and city in the state, and as these boards are directly interested in vital statistics, it would seem that it better becomes the duty of such boards to collect these statistics than any other body. Then again, as it is the duty of the health officer to be familiar with all parts of his jurisdiction, he must of necessity visit all parts of it from time to time, and surely it cannot be a great hardship for him to collect the births in his jurisdiction as he goes about in the performance of his other duties, either as a public official, or if a physician, in his professional capacity. If he be a physician, to make such collections surely cannot be to his disadvantage, for it brings him into contact with the people whom it is greatly to his advantage to know. Then again, is it not the duty of every good citizen to aid in collecting this important information? Surely it would seem so, and it is hoped and believed that after the law has been in force a short time, to the extent that it is generally known, it will not be so hard a task as at first sight it may appear.

As to the record of deaths, this is of the greatest importance to the health officer. To know how many deaths occur, and the cause of the same furnishes data that no enlightened community can afford not to possess, and ex

« PreviousContinue »