Coroners Inquest for a baby

[jackiefr]

Hello,
I would like to know if the Coroners Inquest Records exist for 1898. The details are:

Mary Wilhelmina Wendt died 6 January 1898. The death was recorded at Chipping Sodbury on 8 January 1898. The certificate says "Certificate received from Edward Mills Grace, Coroner for Gloucestershire. Inquest held Seventh January 1898". The cause of death was "Accidentally suffocated whilst in bed with her parents".
I have done a newspaper archive search on several sites with no luck.
There is no birth record for this child who was 3 months old when she died.
Thank you

[mirl]

Do you have a few more details such as the parents names, including the mother's maiden name and when married, and any siblings with when and where born.

[dawnsh]

If the records survive, and many don't, then they should be deposited at Gloucestershire Archives

http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/

go to their online catalogue and put coroners into the search engine

http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/online-catalogue/

If you can't find anything obvious in the catalogue then contact them and ask if they have any of Edward Mills Grace's papers.

Not all newspapers for the area are online and not all coroners inquests were newsworthy.

[carol8353]

Hello,
I would like to know if the Coroners Inquest Records exist for 1898. The details are:

Mary Wilhelmina Wendt died 6 January 1898. The death was recorded at Chipping Sodbury on 8 January 1898. The certificate says "Certificate received from Edward Mills Grace, Coroner for Gloucestershire. Inquest held Seventh January 1898". The cause of death was "Accidentally suffocated whilst in bed with her parents".
I have done a newspaper archive search on several sites with no luck.
There is no birth record for this child who was 3 months old when she died.
Thank you

The exact same thing happened to my grandma's youngest brother who died in May 1901 also aged 3 months. The death cert says there was an inquest but we've never found anything in the papers to give anymore info than the death cert does.

Carol

[jackiefr]

Thank you. I have emailed the coroners office but no reply so far.
The babys parents were Theodore Frederick Wendt and Elizabeth Fairhurst. According to the 1911 census, Elizabeth had given birth to 12 children 10 of whom were still living. We have been able to find births for 10 of the children but Mary and Reginald (the 12th) do not seem to be registered. The children were born in several places - Wirral, Barry, Marsden in Yorkshire but no record of these two. We did find the death of Mary - as she was 3 months old when she died, her birth should be in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 1897.

[philipsearching]

Unfortunately, I think you are unlikely to find surviving records.

Inquest records are rarely kept for more than 20 or 30 years unless the case is unusual or results in an important prosecution.  Given the high rate of infant mortality at the time, the local paper may not have reported on the inquest.

Your best bet is, as dawnsh has suggested, see if the coroner Edward Mills Grace's papers survive.  There is a good chance that they are in an archive somewhere because Dr. E M Grace was a famous English cricketer (overshadowed by his younger brother W G Grace).

Good hunting.
Philip