Coroners’ Records in England and Wales

Description

Since 1194 it has been the duty of coroners to investigate the circumstances of unnatural, sudden, or suspicious deaths, and of deaths in prison. Their records are extensive, and, until now, notoriously difficult to track down. This little guidebook is actually the first effort ever made to itemize all coroners’ records in England and Wales now in public repositories, and it has made a relatively impossible task relatively simple. Within each county, listed in order of their pre-1974 boundary changes, the records are arranged in three groups: Medieval (generally pre-sixteenth century), Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries, and Modern (generally twentieth century). Within these groups the records are listed by repository. All details were either supplied by archivists or extracted from various manuscript or published calendars. Also included in the work is a glossary of terms and a bibliography.