KINDRED LINES: Morgue and coroners’ records
Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 20th Century Social Perspectives, Features, Issue 6 (November/December 2018), Volume 26By Fiona Fitzsimons
The Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, gave power to local authorities to establish mortuaries, and authorised any justice to order the removal of dead bodies to a mortuary. Where death was sudden, violent or unexplained, the body could be brought to a morgue for post-mortem examination before burial. Depending on the result, the death might warrant further investigation by a coroner.
Morgue and coroners’ records are part of the ‘Crown and Peace’ collection held in the NAI. The earliest surviving run of records for the Coroner’s Court in Dublin City only starts in 1900, but the Morgue Register for Dublin City survives from 1871 and continues to 1970.
The Morgue Registers recorded the following information: admission of body (includes the date and the hour); name of the dead (where known); age; sex; late residence; where found (sometimes the only formal attestation of the deceased, particularly in the case of foundlings or homeless); by whom identified; description of remains (male/female, adult/infant); how disposed of (e.g. ‘buried from morgue/hospital’, ‘buried by friends/parents/sons’); property, if any (very often the only property was the clothes in which a person was found, and the coins in their pockets); coroner’s verdict and signature; signature of person to whom the remains or property has been delivered; where inquest was held (if in a place other than a morgue); and coroners’ remarks.
In the earlier records (1871–1900), how people died, and at what age, reflects how our society has changed. There is a high rate of death from domestic accidents, especially burns and scalds. This is not surprising when we consider that in the nineteenth century lighting in homes was provided by candles, oil-lamps and, by the last quarter in the towns and cities, gaslight, and heat by open fires or primitive stoves; likewise, for most of the nineteenth century cooking and laundry were done on an open hearth or kitchen range.
There are also a surprisingly high number of drownings. Some of these may be attributed to dire swimming skills. In the column for coroner’s remarks, there are many instances noted of ‘accidental drowning whilst bathing’. A closer examination shows that the greater number of drownings were of men working on ships and barges, or in the harbours and canal basins where they docked. The registers show a high rate of death from diseases against which we now vaccinate.
Above: ‘The coroner’s jury viewing the murdered body of Margaret Hawse’, from John Fairburn’s chap-book of 1829. (London Collection, Bishopsgate Institute)
Probably the most deplorable evidence in the registers concerns the number of infant deaths. Foundlings were abandoned in public and private gardens or on the streets, or fished out of the Liffey and canals. The coroner’s occasional remarks are brief and imply a resigned acceptance of an appalling situation: ‘died apparently from lack of care’. The 30 years of records under scrutiny correspond to a time when the care of orphaned or abandoned children was in the process of being transferred from the workhouses and channelled into private care (fostering) or institutional custody.
Fiona Fitzsimons is a director of Eneclann, a Trinity campus company, and of findmypast Ireland.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.