Coroners' Records

What will I find?

Deaths are usually reported to a coroner if they are sudden, by the police or a doctor

The coroner will seek to establish a medical cause of death, sometimes by conducting a post mortem. The coroner may decide the death was of natural causes, if not he will order an inquest. An Inquest is a fact finding enquiry - who died where and when and how the death arose.

The Coroner then prepares a report (the Coroners Report). The Coroner has a legal obligation to retain all files for 15 years - individual Coroners then decide what happens to them after that, which will account for regional variations in survival.

If it is not known which coroner dealt with a death, it will normally be mentioned on the death certificate. Every coroner keeps an index of all deaths reported to him or her, and so should be able to confirm whether a particular death was dealt with by their office.

The current coroner should know which archive service (i.e. town, county, national) would have been involved.

An applicant will need the current coroner's permission to have access to the report, unless it is more than 75 years old.

Inquests and Postmortems

A postmortem or autopsy is a medical examination to establish the actual medical cause of death.

An inquest is an inquiry into the circumstances, to establish the reason for the death.

You can have a postmortem without an inquest, and an inquest without a postmortem.

Your first indication that there was an inquest is on a death certificate. The “Informant” will be the Coroner, and the date of the inquest is usually given.

In some instances, an inquest is carried out as routine. This link covers the rules in more detail. (Note that these procedures have evolved over time, and may not have been standardised in Victorian times)

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