Tracing Your Ancestors through Death Records by Celia Heritage

Author:Celia Heritage [Heritage, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REFERENCE / Genealogy & Heraldry
ISBN: 9781783376469
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-03-19T07:00:00+00:00

Although many coroners had legal or medical qualifications, these were not obligatory until 1926. The only criterion needed for the post was to be a landholder, while in medieval times most coroners were chosen from the upper echelons of society. The post was first salaried in 1860; although from 1752 coroners were paid £1 for each inquest conducted and could claim travelling expenses too. Before this they were entitled to receive a fee of thirteen shillings and four pence for every inquest that led to a verdict of murder. Many, but not all, coroners held office for life and the post could remain in one family for several generations.

Up to 1888 a coroner’s jurisdiction was county-wide, but there were usually several coroners in a county and they allocated themselves informal jurisdictional boundaries within it. Many boroughs and other jurisdictions such as the Cinque Ports in Kent and Sussex, the City of London and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster had the right to appoint a coroner for their own area. In 1888 new coroners’ districts were created with one coroner responsible for each. From then on they were elected by the newly-formed county councils rather than local freeholders.

Up to 1926 an inquest took place before a coroner and a jury of between thirteen and twenty-three men. The jury would assess the evidence before them and, under the guidance of the coroner, reach a verdict as to the cause of death. Both the coroner and the jury had to view the body in order for the inquest to be legal. They would note any relevant wounds or marks but, despite this, inquests were notably lacking in any forensic evidence before the late 1860s. Funds were first provided to pay for medical witnesses to attend inquests, and for post-mortems to be carried out to determine the cause of death, in 1836. This was a result of a growing concern that murders were being committed using poison and were going undetected. Before this date, although post-mortems were regularly carried out in the name of medical research, they were rarely part of an inquest and there were many verdicts of ‘sudden death through natural causes’ that did not indicate the actual cause of death. The Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1836 made the production of a death certificate necessary before burial could legally take place. If burial did take place without it, the clergyman responsible had seven days in which he could notify the registrar before he was liable to prosecution. This law was affirmed and extended by the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1874, which emphasized that, in the case of the involvement of a coroner, the death certificate could not be issued or the body buried until authorization to do so had been received from the coroner, although in some rare cases burial still did go ahead with no certificate!

After the Coroners’ Amendment Act of 1926 juries were reduced in number to between seven and eleven people, but they could only reach a lawful verdict if a minimum of all but two members were in agreement.

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