Tough the cause of death was undoubtedly investigated in ancient times, it was likely an ancillary duty of tribal elders, magistrates, priests, or other authorities. The frst instance of an official office charged with the investigation of death, as we know it today, was probably the English coroner.
Tough officials with this responsibility are reported as far back as 871 A.D., in the time of Alfred the Great, the beginning of the coroner system in England is generally taken to have been in 1194, with the publication of the Articles of Eyre, the Eyre being a system of roving “circuit” justices in England in the twelfth century. These itinerant judges traversed the land to hear cases and dispense justice, but due to the long intervals between their visits (an average of seven years), it was necessary to have local officials perform careful investigations and keep records of tenses so that the cases could effectively be brought before the justices when they finally did arrive.
Without proper records, many cases were never tried. This would not do, as many of them involved production of revenues for the monarch, at that time Richard the Lionhearted. Richard, a Norman king, was an absentee ruler with a penchant for expensive foreign wars that placed a heavy strain on the royal coffers. In addition to his travels and the need to equip large numbers f troops, he also managed to become captured and imprisoned in Germany during his return from the Holy Land in 1192. A huge ransom was required to secure his release and return to England in 1194. These expenses created an acute need for revenues, so no stone was left unturned in a desire to collect all taxes and other dues to which the Crown was entitled under the law. There were many such assessments, creatively applied in the name of law and order, to enrich the king at the expense of his subjects.
It was customary at that time to seize the property of felons, and because suicide was considered a crime against God, the property of those taking their own lives was also forfeited to the Crown. Furthermore, villages were penalized with a fine, or amercement, whenever a murder or other legal infraction occurred in their jurisdictions, a punishment for allowing civil disturbances to occur or for not properly following the complex system of laws in the realm. Sometimes the victims of these murders were members of the conquering Norman class who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in the midst of local Saxons bent on revenge. To prevent having large umbers of its Norman noblemen dispatched by the indigenous population, the Crown levied a fine known as the flex murderous on the lord of any village or territory in which a Norman was killed. And naturally this fine was passed on to the populace in the form of a tax. Even the object actually causing a death (referred to as a deodand) was subject to presentation to the Eyre, and t could be confiscated in the name of the Crown because of its culpability in the death or injury of a person. So if a person were injured or killed by a cart, animal, or farm implement, this item would likely be appropriated by the court, possibly depriving a farmer of the means of his livelihood.
It is obvious that the king had a vested interest in making certain that all of these types of cases were properly investigated and documented to ensure that all potential revenues were discovered. The law enforcement facers in each English county (shire) were the sheriffs (from shire reeve), but many of these officers were Saxons. Not only were they less than enthusiastic about supporting the Norman king, but they also had a well-earned reputation for embezzlement, to the detriment of the Crown’s accounts, so another investigative authority was needed to counter their authority in favor of the king.
To this end, the twentieth Article of Eyre established the office of Custos Placitorum Coronae, or “keepers of the pleas of the Crown,” to represent the king’s interests in locales throughout the country. The title coroner was a derivation of the Latin coronae for “crown,” or perhaps of the term crowner, one who represented the interests of the king. Originally these men were knights, men of some wealth and means (presumably to lessen their propensity to embezzle funds), and their concern with death investigation was based entirely on the king’s financial interests. In addition to death investigation, they were responsible for investigating almost any aspect of life that could conceivably yield revenue for the king, including confiscation of buried treasure and shipwrecks (“treasure troves”). In their pursuit of funds for the king (and themselves) coroners developed a reputation for greed and corruption that approached that of the sheriffs, so needless to say, they were not particularly popular with their local constituents. In later years, other fficials, such as justices of the peace, took over much of the original investigative functions, while the coroners’ duties became focused exclusively on death investigation. They were empowered to hold public trials or “inquests,” in which they questioned witnesses and empanelled juries to hear evidence regarding deaths and to make determinations as to how they came about. The coroner’s inquest continues to persist today, and the office of the British coroner represents one of the oldest continuous judicial agencies in existence.
During its colonial period, England exported much of its culture and legal system throughout the world, including the American colonies. Not surprisingly, the office of coroner was a part of this export.
A search of the archives of the Plymouth Colony19 reveals multiple references to coroners’ nquests. The governor of Maryland appointed a sheriff-coroner in 1637, and the duties of the coroner are recorded in the state archives of that period.
Another early American coroner was reported to have been appointed by William Penn. As the nation grew and developed, the office became an integral component of local governments, responsible for investigation of death in a particular jurisdiction, though the incumbents were traditionally not physicians. Unfortunately, some coroners developed reputations for bribery, embezzlement, and lack of integrity as part of the political “spoils” system, resulting in a relatively low public opinion of the field.
As in the British system, the American coroner was a quasi-judicial figure, and not a medical professional, so in the absence of adequate medical training and experience, early coroners applied lay knowledge and common sense to the problem of death investigation.
Early in the development of the coroner system, the lack of medical involvement in death investigation was of no consequence. Medical knowledge and science were rudimentary at best, and even physicians viewed disease and death through superstitious and magical lenses. As no professional had a better grasp of the causative factors in a death than any other, no particular educational requirements were necessary or appropriate for the coroner. Trough the centuries this no medical coroner system of death investigation changed little in British jurisdictions and their progeny. But in Europe, developing scientific and medical expertise was more readily brought o bear in death investigation as advances were made in the sciences, 2-5,10,16 with the first formal lectures in forensic medicine given at the University of Leipzig in the middle seventieth century.
In this way, the continent was far ahead of the Anglo-Saxon model. There are numerous examples of cooperation between the medical profession and the law in Europe, and one such case in point is the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, a code of law promulgated in 1553 in Germany. In it, expert medical testimony was required in cases of murder or traumatic deaths. Even the practice of autopsy examination (more properly known as the necropsy) was more readily accepted in Europe than in Britain.
The first significant move toward formal studies in forensic medicine in the British Isles was in Scotland, where a chair of “medical jurisprudence and police” was established at the University of Edinburgh in 1806.
