Hidden treasures at the PROV

It is remarkable what you can find when you look around and don't follow your normal lines of research, as I discovered this week.

While looking for something completely different I discovered that the Public Records Office of Victoria, a website I visit regularly, contained a hidden treasure.  Normally when I go to the PROV website, I proceed straight to their Online Collections page to explore records which have been digitised.  It is only when I am planning a visit to the PROV Reading Rooms (for me a 200+ km trip each way, so I don't get there very often) that I go further afield to order records to have available to view when I visit.

It was while exploring these undigitised records that I discovered that the PROV has been quietly working on digitising their collection of Coroner's Inquests into Deaths.  While the entire collection is not yet available online, considerable progress has been made and more years are added to the online database as the work is done.  As the project is not yet complete there is nothing listed on the PROV's Online Collections page yet.

An inquest is a legal inquiry held to establish the exact medical cause of death of an individual in certain circumstances. Where the inquest found a death was the result of a crime, it could also commit an accused for trial.  The inquest records relate to deaths that occurred when a person died suddenly, was killed, died whilst in prison, drowned, died whilst a patient in an asylum, or was an infant ward of the state and died under suspicious circumstances, among other circumstances.  The PROV holds inquest records up until 2003 with records up until 1985 on open access. From 1986 onwards the records are closed to the public and to access these records you will need to make a request to the Coroners Court.

Currently the years between 1840 and 1961, and between 1972 and 1985 are available online, with work still progressing on the 1962 to 1971 records.  So I spent an exciting hour or so putting in names to see what came out.  I am now wading through the results of no less that 8 Coroner's Inquests into the deaths of various family members, from Edward Beseler who died in the Ararat Lunatic Asylum  in 1918 of senility and heart failure to Mary Gray Pummeroy who died at the Alfred Hospital in 1886 as a child from burns accidentally received.

When next I have a spare hour or so I will have a good rummage around on the PROV website to see what other treasures I have been missing because I don't explore the website thoroughly - and I'll be having a closer look at other websites where I normally proceed straight to a certain point and don't pay enough attention to new additions and developments.