Two Versions of an Inquisition: Inquests and Public Inquiries into Individual and Mass Deaths

In the last seven years the coroner’s courts have arrived at a crossroads in their eight hundred year history. Their role in the detection of crime, long in decline, has been formally abrogated; but in their role as guardian of public safety, they have been more prominent than at any time since the early nineteenth century (Ward, 1984f, p 12).