Catalogue description South Yorkshire Coroner (Sheffield City District)

http://www.calmview.eu/SheffieldArchives/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=CC1&pos=1

Records for the area of the West Riding of Yorkshire for which the Sheffield City Coroner was responsible have been removed from CC1 and listed as CC3.

South Yorkshire Coroner (Sheffield City District)

Restricted. Access to coroner's court records is restricted for a minimum of 20 years under section 32 of the Freedom of Information Act. The records are also subject to a concurrent restriction of 75 years under the Data Protection Act. Please refer to Sheffield Archives staff for advice on how to access these records.

• Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire
• South Yorkshire
• Coroners Records
• Coroners Inquisitions
• Coroners Court
• Coroners

From The National Archives Operational Selection Policy OSP 6 (6.21) 'Records Created by and Relating to Coroners 1970-2000':

The functions of coroners and their relationship to local authorities have evolved over eight centuries. The medieval coroner performed a number of duties connected with the fiscal rights of the Crown but gradually the holding of inquests into cases of sudden or suspicious death became and remains the primary function. A residual fiscal duty is determining whether finds of valuable objects qualify as 'treasure' and consequently belong to the Crown.

Deaths are reported to the local coroner by the registrar of births, marriages and deaths who has a duty to do so (and voluntarily by others, e.g. doctors or the police) if there is reason to believe the death may have been due to anaesthetic, abortion, industrial injury or disease, neglect, poisoning, accident or violence, or was otherwise sudden, unexplained or attended by suspicious circumstances, or occurred in prison. Where further enquiries indicate that the death was natural, the coroner will inform the registrar and disposal of the remains may proceed. In other cases a public inquest will be held, with or more usually without a jury, to establish whether the death was natural. Where homicide is suspected, the inquest will be adjourned and the proceedings subsumed within the trial. There is no right of appeal against coroners' decisions but they are subject to judicial review in the Divisional Court of the High Court of Justice; this may be instituted by any properly interested person.

Coroners are independent judicial officers holding office under the Crown and operating in accordance with the Coroners Act 1988 and the Coroners Rules 1984. Since 1926 coroners and deputy coroners have been required to have either medical or legal qualifications; the majority of today's coroners have trained in law.

Since the Local Government Act 1888 coroners have been appointed to salaried posts by local authorities. Coroners' districts do not necessarily correspond to local authority or police authority boundaries, so many local authorities and police authorities have more than one coroner's district and some coroners' districts straddle other boundaries. Each district is locally managed and support arrangements differ according to local circumstances. In general coroners' officers are police civilians from the local police service which may also provide accommodation. Coroners' court accommodation may be shared with the magistrates court which is jointly funded by the local authority and The Department for Constitutional Affairs.

Prior to the reorganisation of local government in 1974, the records of the Coroner's Court for the West Riding were organised in divisions. There were thirteen divisions in all:

Bradford City;

Craven District (nr Skipton);

Claro District (nr Ripon);

Doncaster Borough;

Doncaster District;

Halifax Borough;

Halifax District;

Huddersfield Borough;

Leeds City;

Rotherham Borough;

Rotherham District;

Sheffield City;

Wakefield District.

With the creation of South Yorkshire in 1974, the new county was covered by two coroners districts: the Eastern District comprised Doncaster and Rotherham; the Western District covered Barnsley and Sheffield. The records of these districts are now held by their relevant archive services.