Documents & Records
Coroners' Records - British Columbia
Basics
There are two types of B.C. coroners' records:
Inquests - investigations by a coroner's jury, leading to a ruling on the cause of death. Inquest files may comprise a variety of documents, including witness statements, transcripts, autopsy reports and other items.
Inquiries - investigations carried out by a coroner alone. Documentation usually consists of a single form.
B.C. inquest records cover the period from 1859 to 1967. Inquiries run from 1859 to 1970. However, access to inquiry records less than 100 years old and to all coroners' records after 1909 is subject to the B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Many records relating to the deaths of residents of Chinese origin are found in B.C. coroners' records.
Finding the Records
Finding the record of a coroner's inquest or inquiry consists of two steps:
- Search an index to locate a reference number.
Indexes to B.C. coroners' records from 1879-1937 are available at the Vancouver Public Library. Online indexes are available for the years 1859-1871 and 1872-1892 (see Searching the Indexes).
- Use the reference number to locate the corresponding coroner's record.
Records for 1859 to 1892 are available on microfilm at the Vancouver Public Library. Records from 1893 to 1909 are available only at the B.C. Archives. See Finding Inquest and Inquiry Document for more information.
See also: Coroners' Records on the Vancouver Public Library website.
Searching the Indexes
There are two separate indexes to coroners' records, one covering the colonial period, 1859-1871, and the other covering the period from 1872-1937.
Index - 1859-1871
The online index to B.C. coroners' records, 1859-1871 is available in the online finding aid for GR-1328. The index is incomplete, and includes only three named Chinese individuals, as well as two identified simply as "Chinaman". This reflects the fact that large-scale immigration from China did not begin until the 1880s, when Chinese labourers were brought in to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The link above also includes information about locating additional and unindexed pre-1871 coroners' records.Index - 1872-1937
If you are looking for records relating to deaths that occurred between 1872-1892, see the B.C. Archives' online finding aid for GR-1327. The finding aid lists the names of individuals for whom there are coroners' records. The list is divided into two sections, corresponding to two microfilm numbers, B02372 and B02373. If you find a name for which you would like to see the corresponding coroner's record, make a note of the file reference, for example, 44/90 (Foo Yow) and the microfilm number. For information on obtaining records, see Finding Inquest and Inquiry Documents.If you are looking for a death that occurred between 1892 and 1937, you will need to look at online description of GR-0432, a record set comprising registers and indexes to coroners' inquiries and inquests that occurred between 1874-1937. It has been microfilmed in 10 volumes on two reels, B.C. Archives' B07894 and B07895, available at the Vancouver Public Library. It is not necessary to check GR-0432 if the death occurred between 1872-1892 (see previous paragraph).
If you know the date on which the death occurred, refer to reel B07894:
Volume 1 1889-1900; 1874-1888 Volume 2 1901-1918 Volume 3 1919-1929 Volume 4 1929 (beginning with inquest 356) to 1937 If you know the name of the person who died, refer to reel B07895:
Volume 5 1879-1891 Volume 6 1889-1905 Volume 7 1906-1911 Volume 8 1912-1915 Volume 9 1916-1922 Volume 10 1923-1937 Note that while Chinese people are included in the main sequence of alphabetical entries in Volumes 5-9, Volume 10 has separate indexes for Japanese, Chinese and East Indian names, following the main sequence.
If you find a name in the microfilm indexes for which you would like to see the corresponding coroner's record, make a note of all the information in the reference. This includes the year file number, name of the person, whether it was an inquest or an inquiry, and the place, for example:
1913 151 Yip Wing Wycliffe
Finding Inquest and Inquiry Documents
Access to coroners' records created in or before 1909 is unrestricted. Once you have found a coroner's reference number in an index, you can obtain the original document to which it corresponds from the B.C. Archives. You will need to supply the information from the index and the number of the microfilm containing the original document.
1859 - 1871
Coroners' inquest and inquiry documents for 1859-1871 are on B.C. Archives microfilm B02446. The microfilm is available at the Vancouver Public Library. Records are found on the reel in the same order that they are listed in the online description of GR-1328.1872-1909
Once you have found an index reference (see above), look at the online description of GR-1327 to determine the number of the microfilm containing the corresponding full documentation of the inquiry or inquest. For example, record number 49, created in Cumberland in 1908, and corresponding to Chung Lung Fong , will be found on microfilm B02383, which contains records 233 (1907) to record 5 (1909). Records from 1893-1892 are available on B.C. Archives microfilms B02372 and B02373, available at the Vancouver Public Library. Records from 1893 to 1909 are available only at the B.C. Archives in Victoria.
For additional information on locating B.C. coroners' records, see the B.C. Archives' Coroner's Records Guide (1859-1970).
Top of page: Detail from VPL 8584
