Requiem for the ‘people’s judge’

Jack Straw has finally got his wish: despite valiant efforts in the Lords, his Coroners and Justice Act has castrated one of our most ancient and overlooked institutions. Why? Because the ‘people’s judge’ was just too good at winkling out inconvenient truths.

The office of coroner has existed in this kingdom since the year 1194. The medieval version was chiefly concerned with the protection of Crown revenue and determining responsibility for violent deaths as a means of raising fines. But seven centuries of gradual evolution resulted in a coroner rather more concerned with the welfare of the public.

The modern incarnation emerged in the Victorian era when large numbers of deaths were being caused by novel hazards such as factory and train accidents. The coroner called those responsible to account and sought to prevent similar occurrences in future. In those more enlightened times, coroners were elected: in 1826, rival candidates for a jurisdiction in the East Riding brought nearly 2,000 freeholders to the Castle Yard at York for the vote. The Victorian politician and reformer, Dr Thomas Wakley, expressed the importance of the office thus: ‘The coroner was the people’s judge, the only judge the people had the power to appoint. The office has been specifically instituted for the protection of the people.’

Historically, the beauty of the coronial system has been its dogged independence. Coroners are not judges, but judicial officers, under the aegis of the Lord Chancellor but employed and paid for by local authorities. Their function has been to hold inquisitorial proceedings (unique in the British legal system) with the express requirement fearlessly to determine the truth surrounding a violent or unnatural death. Their wide-ranging powers have enabled them to call for evidence and witnesses from all quarters and to root out injustice where other organs of state have failed.