CORONER'S RECORDS, WANTAGE DIVISION

Arrangement of catalogue

COR/WT/1 Case papers

COR/WT/2 Notifications of deaths

COR/WT/3 Annual returns

COR/WT/4 Miscellaneous

Acc. 898: 1-4

Case papers, loose papers, annual returns and recapitulations were originally bundled together. Those for the period 1875-1879 (when W.D. Wasborough was Coroner) were bundled according to date in annual bundles with the annual returns on top. From 1879 (with the election of L Jotcham as Coroner) case papers began to be numbered and from then until 1893 they were bundled in groups of fifty according to number with loose papers, annual returns and recapitulations interspersed according to date. In 1893 the system again reverted to annual bundles, this time in reverse order with January at the bottom and December at the top and at the very top the annual returns. The death of L Jotcham in 1905 and the appointment of his son W. C. Jotcham resulted in a new sequence of numbers for case papers but the bundling system remained unchanged right up to the end of the series in 1912.

For reasons of convenience and consistency bundles have now been rearranged in annual groups beginning in January and ending in December. Loose papers, annual returns and recapitulations have been extracted and stored separately, as have the copy of the petition of the Justices of the Peace of Berkshire to the Privy Council for the boundaries of the four coroner's districts to be redrawn and the bill for drawing up the specifications for a patent for J Henry Johnson found at the end of the 1876 bundle and the correspondence from the County Treasurer to the Coroner and his deputy found between case papers No 19 and No 20 in the 1906 bundle.