Sixteenth-Century English Accident Inquests, 1500-1600

Gunn, Steven and Gromelski, Tomasz (2025). Sixteenth-Century English Accident Inquests, 1500-1600. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857912

This data collection consists of a spreadsheet with details extracted from 8888 coroners' inquests into accidental deaths in sixteenth-century England held at the National Archives.
Tudor England was a dangerous place. There were plagues and wars, perilous childbirths and shocking infant mortality. But what risks did people face as they went about their everyday lives?
Thousands of coroner's inquest reports on accidental deaths preserved at The National Archives allow us to investigate. These reports cover almost the whole of England, town and country, young and old, men and women, rich and poor. They tell us about working practices in farming, industry and housework and about leisure activities such as football, swimming, bell-ringing and riverside flower-picking, even the risks of getting too close to performing bears. They show contrasts between men's and women's lives, between different agricultural regions, between different times of day and seasons of the year. They show changes across the century, such as the replacement of archery by guns. They underpin this book: Steven Gunn, Tomasz Gromelski, An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death (London: John Murray, 2025).

Data description (abstract)

Sixteenth-century English accident inquests complete deposit is a spreadsheet with details extracted from 8888 coroners' inquests into accidental deaths in sixteenth-century England held at the National Archives. It was created as part of a project funded by the ESRC from 2011 to 2015, ‘Everyday life and fatal hazard in sixteenth-century England’ (reference RES-062-23-2819). The aim was to explore everyday life through the circumstances of accidental death. The inquests date from every year of the sixteenth century and come from almost every county in England, though because of their divergent administrative systems Lancashire, Cheshire, County Durham and the city of London are not included. The data collection underpins the book An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death (London, John Murray, 2025). The deposit contains both a csv file version and a version in Excel. It is fuller than the previous deposit ‘First deposit of sixteenth-century English accident inquests’ and includes corrections to data presented there.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Gunn Steven	University of Oxford	http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3226-2083
Gromelski Tomasz	University of Oxford	http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9967-650X

Sponsors:

ESRC

Grant reference:

ES/I005218/1

Topic classification:

History

Keywords:

EVERYDAY LIFE, INQUESTS, CAUSES OF DEATH, ACCIDENTS AT WORK, ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME, TRANSPORT ACCIDENTS, ROAD ACCIDENTS, HAZARDS, ACCIDENTS AND DISASTERS, SOCIAL HISTORY

Project title:

Everyday life and fatal hazard in sixteenth-century England

Grant holders:

Steven Gunn

Project dates:

From	To
31 March 2011	29 September 2015

Date published:

07 Jul 2025 09:10

Last modified:

07 Jul 2025 09:10

Coverage and Methodology

Temporal coverage:

From	To
1500	1600

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
31 March 2011	29 September 2015

Geographical area:

England

Country:

United Kingdom, England

Data collection method:

Every sixteenth-century coroner's inquest in The National Archives classes KB8 and KB9 returning a verdict of accidental death or possible accidental death was recorded and the details entered in the following order: the term of the legal year in which the inquest report was submitted to the court of King’s Bench, numbered within each year from 1 (Hilary) to 4 (Michaelmas); a number for each accident, prefaced by a letter for the decade in which the accident occurred; the TNA reference for the document; a reference to any printed version of the document; the sixteenth-century county in which the inquest was held; the parish in which the inquest was held; the date of the inquest; the coroner who presided; the victim’s surname; the victim’s Christian name; the victim’s gender; the victim’s residence, if given; the victim’s status, if given; the victim’s relationship to another family member, if given; the victim’s age, if given; the victim’s condition at the time of the accident, if given; the date of the accident, if given; the month of the accident, if given; the day of the week of the accident, if given or calculated; the time of the accident if given; the activity in which the victim was engaged; the narrative of the accident; the object or person given as causing the accident; its interaction with the victim; a second object or person given as causing the accident; its interaction with the victim; the injury caused; the time of death; any other people involved; the valuation (in pounds, shillings and pence sterling) of any objects involved in the accident and subject to forfeiture; the valuation of the goods, chattels and lands of the victim or a possible murderer, if given; any further comments on the presentation or reception of the report.

Observation unit:

Individual

Kind of data:

Numeric, Text

Type of data:

Historical data

Resource language:

English, Latin

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

Certain aspects of these transcriptions cannot be relied on for statistical purposes. As the documents were read by two researchers over a period of some years, absolute consistency in practice cannot be guaranteed. This applies in particular to the precision with which certain aspects of the wording of the report are reproduced (for example references to misfortune or the suddenness of events); the modern forms in which personal names are rendered (for example Jane or Joan for Johanna); whether qualifications to ages are included (for example whether seven years and more or at least seven years are given in full or as seven); whether fractions of numbers are rendered as fractions or decimals; whether original spellings of place names are given in addition to modern versions; whether the case or tense in which Latin terms are rendered is that in which they appear in the document or that in which they are generally given in a dictionary; the English terms by which Latin terms are translated (for example, childish or puerile, infant or child, widow or relict, garden, yard or garden / yard); whether the status ascribed to coroners (gentleman, esquire etc) is given with their name; and the amount of detail in which the membership of juries and the proportions of signatures or marks in those signed by jurors are noted.

Rights owners: