Probably like others, and 'course being
very nice
, I have now had a supplementary rummage in the 19th c. newspaper database for info about Thomas Davies's death, extending the search onwards to mid-April 1847; but the net came up empty.
It strikes me as highly unlikely that the inquest would have been deferred until March, absent very unusual/suspicious circumstances. And if such circumstances had existed, we can be reasonably confident that they would have attracted the press's attention back to the matter. So my best guess is that the inquest happened pretty promptly in the usual way, and the report on 19 January reflected the evidence already given before the coroner. If that hypothesis is correct, it remains odd that the
Chronicle failed to mention the source for its brief para. And it is also odd that the registration of the death was so long deferred -- was the coroner just too busy with his private practice to keep up-to-date with his county paperwork?
If anyone wanted to try and pursue the matter, there could be surviving records in the coroner's law firm's archive (at Ruthin RO?). There may also be some very basic bare facts (at least the date of the inquest) in the Assize records (TNA?); or maybe post-1830 that material went in with Quarter Sessions (Ruthin RO). There certainly would have been something of that sort before Wales came into the Assize system in 1830, because I know that Bryn Ellis of Clwyd FHS and the Montgom. FHS has done a lot of good work using the old Great Sessions rolls at the NLW to extract info from the coroners' expense claims, which always specified brief details about each inquest.
JL, those TNA catalogue refs to Chelsea pensioners look interesting. I think that when you tested the initial link (the one you diagnosed as defective) you might just have found that it would have worked second time round, i.e. if you had waited a couple of seconds and then re-clicked. I have no cookie-blocks in place, but still find that such PROCAT links often fail first time yet nearly always work on second click (first go gets halted at their search screen, second one drills right on down to the individual piece number).
Anyway, try this one too (WO97/522/156), as a test (workings shown):
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=7&CATID=-3943457I am quite keen on him, due to his being born at Derwen; but of course he could be entirely the wrong age. He was discharged aged 44, but I cannot deduce the year in which that occurred. Maybe you know how to tell?
The real solution would be to access his papers online via FindMyPast's much trumpeted WO97 collection. Their website now boldly states
The Chelsea Pensioners Record Series WO97 is now complete and includes 1,041,092 records. Look out for the WO96 Militia Records, coming soon ...
I am not a subscriber of theirs, but searching is free . . . and, of course, I can find neither hide nor hair of the WO97/522/156 man in FindMyPast's index. Plus no obvious way to call up his file using his TNA ref.; hope someone else knows how.
Rol