Coroners and Crime
The coroner may not be the first person you think about when considering the people connected with a gaol. However, as the judge tasked with investigating sudden and unexplained death, to report the death to the government, the coroner visited the gaol each time a prisoner died.
And this was not a cursory visit. It was his job to investigate whether the death was natural, suicide or accident…or even homicide. A coroner, and a jury of at least twelve men (and they were all men- women did not sit on the jury) carried out a full investigation into all death in prisons. The coroner advised on the law, but it was up to the jury to decide the cause of death. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the jury for a prison death had to include six prisoners. There was no qualification needed to sit on a jury nor any need to own property, as was the case for a jury in a criminal trial. If a prisoner died, the coroner would be notified and an inquest held, usually in the governor’s office at the gaol.
In Newcastle, before 1835, two men were elected each year to the position of coroner- often this would be a medically qualified man and a legally qualified man who shared the task. Following the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, Newcastle appointed a borough coroner, who held office for life. During the lifetime of Newcastle Gaol, there were only five borough coroners. Each of the coroners was qualified as a solicitor and conducted the coroner’s business alongside his other work. The coroners were
1835-1848 William Stoker (who you may have seen discussed in the first episode of David Olosoga’s A House Through Time: Ravensworth Terrace)
1848-1857 John George Stoker
1857-1885 John Theodore Hoyle
1885-1908 Theodore Hoyle
1908-1950 Sir Alfred Appleby
After the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, one of the duties of the coroner was to certify that an execution had been correctly carried out. The first example of this in Newcastle was the execution of John William Anderson in December 1875 for the murder of his wife Elizabeth.
The coroner, JT Hoyle, had held the inquest on Elizabeth’s body following the murder and concluded that she had been unlawfully killed by her husband (there was no doubt: John William Anderson confessed to the police immediately after the murder). A few weeks later the same coroner held the inquest into the death of her husband, following the execution, and certified he had been lawfully hanged for murder.
