Reports by Coroners to Quarter Sessions on cases heard in previous quarter for the purposes of justifying expenses claims
Background
The office of coroner is an ancient one established by statute in 1194. The main duty of the coroner in recent centuries has been to determine the cause of death of a deceased person where the death was sudden, unexpected or suspicious.
In general, the coroners' own individual case files have not survived. For some coroners' districts registers of cases have survived, but because they provide extremely limited information, they are not worth consulting. For this reason, the survival of this series of coroners' reports to the Staffordshire Court of Quarter Sessions is particularly welcome.
The coroner's expenses were paid by the 'county community' as represented by the Staffordshire Court of Quarter Sessions. Each quarter the coroner submitted a report to the Quarter Sessions listing cases, arranged by police district, explaining any special expense required, such as allowances for the attendance of distant officials at the place of inquest. The report usually includes a series of police constables' reports on individual cases. These records can be consulted at Staffordshire Record Office under the reference Q/APr/7.
For coroner's inquests outside the period 1850 to 1861 we recommend searching for reports in local newspapers.
This Index
This index covers the surviving series of coroners' reports to Quarter Sessions for the period 1850 to 1861. The index contains the following information:
- Document reference number
- Session
- Police District
- Case number
- Surname
- Forenames
- Age (if known)
- Year of death
- Date of death (if known)
- Parish
- Place (e.g. hamlet, street, colliery, public house)
Searches in the index can be made by Surname, Parish and Year of Death