Quarter Session Records & Petitions

[Megan Roberts]

Whilst searching for criminal records I have realised that these records hold a wealth of information that is useful for general family history.

For instance they can hold the coroner's accounting records for the various inquests that he has held, and that might list the name of the deceased, when and where the inquest was held, and the cause of death. The main purpose of the account was for him to get paid for his costs, but to do so he had to be able to justify where he had been.

For anyone who has an Ancestry subscription they have "Lancashire, England, Quarter Session Records and Petitions, 1648-1908", so if you have an ancestor who died and you think that there might have been an inquest, it would definitely be worth a look.

I suspect that the downside would be for those records that haven't been digitised and indexed, it would be a case of back to old fashioned searching methods.

[pwholt]

Coroners' Bills 1752-1796 for Wiltshire were published by Wiltshire Record Society in 1981, so do consider whether there is a similar society in the county you are interested in which might have done the same/similar. Record Societies are useful for all sorts of records which can add nuggets on our ancestors, such as meeting house certificates, settlement certificates, early trade directories and monumental inscriptions to name a few by WRS. (Sorry that I've been tardy in posting these comments.) pwholt