![]() The first election to the position of coroner was held in Plymouth Colony in 1636 but in most states the position remained an appointed one well into the antebellum period. Colonial charters gave the power to appoint coroners to the governor or his council, though the office gradually became elective in certain states and districts. (“Come, my spade,” he concludes, the only real gentlemen are the “garderners, ditchers, and grave-makers.”īy the time the coroner came to colonial America, his duties had stabilized around the investigation of untimely deaths. Thus in Hamlet does the gravedigger complain that a rich suicide has gotten a Christian burial because the “great folk” have paid off the ‘Crowner’ and are allowed to “drown or hang themselves” as they see fit. (Think of the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood mythos.) And the coroner comes down to us as the representative of a distant, rapacious state. Thus, the sheriff comes down to us through English literature as a local tyrant. The sheriff kept the peace among the living the coroner kept the crown’s pleas against the dead. Gradually, a basic division of labor emerged between coroner and sheriff. Thus, when a dead Norman was found on a village commons (which evidently happened a lot), the Crowner levied a fine called the ‘Murdrum,’ from which the word murder derives. In such cases, the coroner fined the whole village. Every failure to follow protocol resulted in a fine (which incentivized peasants to drag bodies to different jurisdictions or hide them altogether). Meanwhile the body had to rest undisturbed until the coroner could arrive to see if the king could turn a profit in the Reaper’s wake. According to law, the “first finder” of a dead body was required to raise the & “hue-and-cry,” assemble a posse to hunt for suspects, and notify local officials, who in turn notified the coroner. ![]() ![]() In the case of accidents, objects associated with the death could be seized and sold or given to the church as a “deodand”-an appeasement to God. Where the coroner suspected homicide or suicide, the crown could claim the perpetrator’s estate. When someone stole from the royal fisheries? The coroner documented it and made sure not only that fines were paid but that all such revenue made it to the royal treasury.įrom the very beginning coroners took particular interest in sudden deaths because they represented potential windfalls for the crown. When something of value washed ashore after a shipwreck? It belonged to the king. When someone found buried treasure? It belonged to the king. The duties of the new office were highly varied, but the charge was simple: generate revenue by promoting the king’s rights and interests. The new coroners (or ‘Crowners’ as they were called for centuries) did not hold court but rather documented the claims the king could make when finally his court rolled into town. This was a particular problem for Richard I (Richard the Lion-Hearted) who desperately needed money to finance his crusades, wars in France, and (once) his own ransom.Įnter Walter Hubert, legendary bureaucrat and architect of the 1194 Articles, which, among other reforms set up a new cadre of county officers tasked with ‘ keeping the pleas of the crown’ ( custos placitorum coronae). Justices took years to complete their circuit, during which time villages were at the mercy of the county sheriff, who grew fat squeezing the peasants without kicking much up to the king. This process was called “ holding the pleas of the crown.” By 1194, the process had become grossly inefficient and prone to abuse. In medieval England, itinerant justices traveled the countryside along the ‘Eyre’ (the judicial circuit) inspecting villages, holding court, settling disputes, and levying fines. The first formal mention we have of the ‘coroner’ is in 1194 in the Articles of Eyre.
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