View report page

23
In June, 1955 the London county council intimated that they
proposed to reduce from the end of the year the number of Coroners'
districts from four to three, and the number of Courts to two in each
district. As far as this borough was concerned it would, under the
scheme, come into the "southern" district, together with nine other
boroughs in south and east London, and the two Courts would be at
Poplar (the other side of the Thames) and Southwark. This seemed
unreasonable because of the following considerations amongst others:—
(1) The proposed southern district, although one of three districts in
which the London County area would be divided, would contain
well over one-third of the population and almost one-half of the
acreage. In fact the population is 38 percent of the total for the
County and the acreage is 48 percent.
(2) The abandonment of the Coroner's Courts at Greenwich and
Lewisham would mean that the whole of the work of this vast
southern area would be concentrated at Southwark and Poplar.
Since Poplar is north of the river with poor communications this
would mean in fact that nearly all the work for the eight boroughs
south of the river would be concentrated at Southwark.
(3) The Coroner's Court at Southwark is, as the crow flies, some seven
miles from the southern part of Lewisham and some eight and a half
miles from the eastern part of Woolwich. This means that by
ordinary communications it is considerably further from these
areas. If, therefore, people have to travel by train and by bus the
cost may be considerable, the time consumed would be large, and
the general difficulty of approach would be much greater than at
present.
(4) Although the ordinary person who attends a Coroner's Court may
be unlikely to do so more than once or twice in his life nevertheless
that person is usually in a state of high emotional stress. For
example it may be a mother whose young child has died. Therefore
everything should be done to relax the stress as far as practicable;
travelling inconvenient distances to strange areas is not likely to
do this.
(5) In view of the above, it was thought that should the Courts at
Poplar and Southwark be retained there should be a third Court
further to the south-east. Although the Lewisham Court has
advantages with regard to structure, layout, convenience of situation
on lines of transport and so on, this does not necessarily mean that
the Lewisham Court should be the third one in the area; it might
be that the Court at Greenwich would have advantages over the
one at Lewisham. It was, however, certain that a third Court
somewhere in this area was desirable.
(6) Mortuary accommodation together with postmortem facilities has
usually gone with the Coroner's Courts. The mortuary facilities
here are reasonably good and in fact Lewisham takes in a
considerable proportion of the mortuary and postmortem work of
the boroughs of Greenwich and Woolwich. It would therefore
appear to be a suitable centre for continuing that work, more
particularly while the Coroner's Court is there.