Internship Project 2007-2008

Allegheny County Coroner Case File Records

In 1982 the Coroner’s Office of Allegheny County transferred inquest case records, 1887-1973, to the University of Pittsburgh.  The inquest case records, referred to in this document as Coroner Case Files, are public records open to all, as affirmed by the Allegheny County Coroner’s Office.  The records were created by the Coroner’s Office to satisfy public law.  Beyond the final inquest report, materials in the files may include eye-witness testimony, grand jury reports, physician notes, affidavits, press clippings and other documentation.  As a whole, the information is valuable to researchers studying a variety of topics pertaining to societal and legal issues.  It is imperative that the Coroner Case Files be rehoused in order to ensure their long-term preservation.

Beyond documenting the medical and legal proceedings of questionable deaths in Allegheny County for over a century, the files provide unique perspectives of nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial dangers, urban problems, social values, diseases, and dislocations, as well as the state of medical knowledge and practice at the time.  Though the files certainly contain evidence of sensational murders, they also portray ordinary and accidental deaths, many of which were related to work. One dramatic example is the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892.  When striking steel workers battled with Pinkerton detectives hired by Henry C. Frick, eight workers and three detectives were killed. The coroner was called in to investigate the deaths, and today the files are exhibited online as part of our Labor Legacy Web site, accessed at: http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/HSteadCaseFilesSteelworkers.html

Crystal Eastman used the Coroner Case Files in her acclaimed yet criticized investigative study of labor conditions. Her book, Work Accidents and the Law, published as part of the Pittsburgh Survey series, is the culmination of extensive research on industrial fatalities in Allegheny County during 1906.  The study also sought to interview family members to verify how their economic situations were affected.  Publication of the Survey, in part, helped set the foundation for worker’s compensation law, which was drafted by Eastman.

 At the end of World War I, labor organizers renewed their efforts to unionize steel workers.  Fanny Sellins, one such organizer, was actively engaged in rallying workers in western Pennsylvania  On August 26, 1919, Sellins was demonstrating with a group of workers outside of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company mine in Brackenridge, when she was shot and killed by police. Deputy Coroner J. R. Borland originally attributed Sellins’ death to “shock and hemorrhage following gun shot to the left temple” and reported that she was probably a murder victim.  Perhaps bowing to political pressure, he later changed his view to self-defense on the part of the police, creating a furor. The Sellins case file can be viewed online at: http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/Sellins.html for a massive steel strike.

The Coroner Case Files also contain a wealth of information about race, ethnicity, and gender, of enormous interest to researchers today.  Recently, a descendent of Verna Haley, who died in 1918, called the ASC to inquire about her great-aunt’s death.  The case file includes the testimony of witnesses who not only characterize the defendant, who was later convicted of murder, but also comment on an unusual illness, quite likely the flu, that affected the family household.  Testimony provides details of family life, including who was caring for the sick, and that the family did not have access to a telephone.  The accounts also suggest why the murder may have occurred, that Verna Haley was employed in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and that she was a twenty-three year old African-American woman who died of a laceration to the throat at the hands of a jealous admirer.  Evidence of domestic abuse, trauma, abortion, and injuries suffered by women are prevalent throughout the Coroner Case Files, even if not described in modern terms.

Work Expectations January 2007- May 2008:

We need assistance from interns to help preserve and arrange these records.  The Coroner Case Files are arranged by docket number for each year.  Interns will work to ensure that the order and preservation of the documents are retained as it reflects the original order imposed by the Coroner’s Office and provides the simplest method for retrieval.  The Case Files, some of which contain testimony and other historical materials, will be unfolded and flattened. Decaying fasteners, such as rubber bands, rusty clips, pins, etc., will be removed and placed into folders and identified.  Interns will be trained in specific preservation techniques for the project.  Interns will keep weekly journals pertaining to their encounters with social history reflected in the documents and will meet with their supervisor weekly to discuss findings.  It is anticipated that the journal entries will allow the intern to create an essay focusing on a particular social problem by the end of the semester.

Please contact Archivist, Kate Colligan, katec@pitt.edu