Coroners investigate the circumstances surrounding unnatural, sudden, or suspicious deaths.
Unfortunately very few records survive for County Durham for the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. Some of the names of the individuals, for which coroners’ inquest files survive, appear in catalogues which can be searched online.
Coroners’ records are closed to the public for 75 years.
If you are unable to find any reference to an individual in our online database you may find details of the inquest in daily/weekly newspapers of the time. You will find details of our holdings of weekly newspapers on our website.
You can also search The British Library Newspaper Archive online.
