Which account of my ancestor’s death is true?
QMy 3x great grandfather, Henry Hattam, died in May 1856 in an accident on his way to Truro Fair. The coroner reported that as Henry headed o for Truro, his carriage turned over. Henry survived for only 20 minutes. His wife was reported to be badly bruised and the children unhurt. However, The Cornish Telegraph stated that Henry’s family were severely injured and the accident was caused by someone throwing gravel onto the road which startled the horse, pitching Henry over the carriage and killing him on the spot. How do I know which report is true?
Dorothy O’Connor
AThe coroner’s inquest into the death of Henry Hattam took place on Thursday 15 May 1856 at Redruth, and was reported in the Royal Cornwall
Gazette on 23 May, and in the Launceston Weekly News, and Cornwall & Devon Advertiser on 24 May. The wording in both reports is more or less identical, something that was not unusual in newspapers at the time.
However, the report in The Cornish Telegraph, published on 21 May, appears to be an account of the accident and not of the coroner’s inquest.
The main difference is that this account includes the information that “some person threw some gravel or earth into the road over a hedge, which startled the horse”. In contrast, the reports of the inquest state, “There was no drag attached to the carriage, and when the horse was stopped it was found that one of the straps of the breeching was broken; and this was the only way they could account for the horse having started off in the way he did.”
Where The Cornish Telegraph obtained its information will never be known, and its veracity must be uncertain. It is less probable that the evidence given at the inquest was invented, and its report seems to go out of its way to refute any other suggestion for the cause of the accident.
Any surviving records of coroner’s inquests could include information that was additional to that reported in the local press, such as witness statements. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the original record of this inquest survives. In theory, all pre-1875 records are legally protected but many have been destroyed over the years. Surviving records are likely to be held at the local record office, in this case Kresen Kernow (‘Cornwall Centre’) in Redruth ( kresenkernow.org); but its catalogue regrettably does not refer to any surviving records for sessions at Redruth.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the original record of this inquest survives