LAWS OF MARYLAND

Ch. 21

to the penalties under § 5-409 of this subtitle,
to which a public officer is subject if the
officer fails to notify the Board under
subsection (a)(1) of this section. The
Commission to Revise the Annotated Code notes,
for consideration by the General Assembly, that
the State Anatomy Board believes the provisions
of subsection (a)(2) of this section should be
mandatory since, if no person assumes
responsibility for final disposition,
notification of the Board presents the only
alternative for disposition.

Throughout this section, the word "control" is
substituted for "charge and control" and
"possession", for conformity.

In subsection (a)(1) of this section, the clause
"if, after a reasonable search, the public
officer has not found a person who will take
control of the body for its final disposition" is
substituted for the ambiguous standard "required
to be buried at public expense or at the expense
of any institution supported by the State ..."
The former standard was obsolete on its enactment
by Ch. 669, Acts of 1949, since, with creation of
the State Anatomy Board, these burials ceased.
Further, the former standard suggested,
inaccurately, the individual could not be buried
with public money. See 36 Op. Att'y Gen. 99
(1951), which states that former Article 43, §
159 applied only to use of public money to bury a
body under the control of a public agency and
does not include burial allowances.

The revision is based on provisions of the public
local laws of Baltimore City and Baltimore
County, which served as the basis for the
Statewide law. As enacted by Ch. 163, Acts of
1882, a Baltimore City or Baltimore County
officer with control of a body "required to be
buried at the public expense" was required to
give the body to a physician on request. The
laws excluded a body of an individual who, during
the illness that resulted in death, asked to be
buried, a body claimed by "kindred to the
deceased", and the body of "a stranger or
traveler, who died suddenly..."

Ch. 166, Acts of 1890, amended these public local
laws to include bodies to be buried by an
institution supported by Baltimore County or
Baltimore City, to provide for disposition with
"the anatomy board", to allow a friend to claim
the body, and to provide criminal penalties as to