Deaths in the Bath

Abstract

A retrospective survey of fatalities in the bath during the period 1934–83 is presented. The deaths were investigated in the Department of Legal Medicine at the University of Ghent. More than half of the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide intoxication (52 per cent). The remaining deaths were due to suicide (20 per cent), natural causes, e.g. epilepsy or cardiac arrest (8.5 per cent) or to accidental drowning, e.g. unattended infants (8.5 per cent). We found two cases of homicide; one being the murder of a child, the other a case of manual strangulation, the body having subsequently been placed in the bath. In one unusual case the autopsy was not performed until after the body had been buried for eight months. Although murder was suspected, neither the autopsy nor toxicological findings revealed the exact cause of death.