Coroner's Inquest Wanted

Coroner's Inquest Wanted

Publications & Reports

Bleek criticises the investigative rigour of Police Surgeon Dr Ross's report on the mysterious death of the young Rotterdammer, Miss Oosterbeek, while on holiday in Cape Town. He uses this case to query the general inadequacy of the colony's police services as an institution when investigating the proper causes behind increasingly frequent and suspicious unsolved local deaths. He speculates that this arises from procedural laxity or the incompetence of personnel, taking particular exception to the inane details drawn upon in the report that do little to uncover the truth or lessen the mystery. Bleek argues that a British-style Coroner's Inquest (an institution pursuing fact-finding rather than fault-finding) is needed, as perpetrators escape justice through a lack of thorough investigation. He encourages William Porter and parliamentarians to devise such a bill. Lastly, he proposes hybridising the preferred Dutch Law of Inheritance, which better protects married women, with the superior constitutional rights and liberties expressed in English Common Law for women more generally.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

22/12/1864

Two cut out columns of newsprint text, positioned vertically parallel, pasted onto a plus-sized A4 unlined sheet with visible warping. "Coroner's Inquest Wanted" is subsequently handwritten onto the mount/paper backing as the title.

An original cutting of a Victorian article (no thematic title included in the cut out) by WHI Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, December 22nd, 1864. As for what is meant by the "British institution of a Coroner's Inquest", inquests are held at coroners' courts (but are not trials) with the aim of establishing who has died, and how, when, and where the death occurred. The cuttings include Dr Ross' letter to the editor. It is unclear whether JWG van Oordt (according to Andrew Nash) [2009: 40]) or Jan F. Celliers (who Albert Frank May still calls "sub-editor" of Het Volksblad when President Thomas Francois Burgers approaches him in 1872 [1967: 117]) was the "Editor" whom Dr Ross (possibly William Henry Ross MD [1835-1912]) addresses here.