Guest Post … from Aldric
It may not be a changed mind.
It may be two different documents.
“He died on the shore at Somerton” is the language of the inquisition itself, the cover page: “And I, the said Justice of the Peace and Coroner, do say that I am unable to say who the deceased was. He died on the shore at Somerton on the 1st December, 1948. I am unable to say how he died or what was the cause of death.” Signed 14 March 1958.
He heard the evidence at the same two sittings, 17 and 21 June 1949. What happened in 1958 was that he put his hand and seal to the instrument, and an inquisition has a place to fill in. His remarks at adjournment were not that instrument. They were him thinking aloud about what the evidence could not carry: “The evidence is too inconclusive to warrant a finding”, and, at the close of it, “I therefore adjourn this inquest sine die.”
Look at what he refused to put in the signed version. No poison, no glucoside, no leaning either way on self-administration. Cause he left empty, because the medical evidence would not carry it. Place he filled with the only place the evidence ever put the man: the shore where the body was found.
If there was a 1958 hearing with fresh evidence, I have not found the record of it. The file cover of 53/1958 carries the two 1949 hearing dates plus 14-3-58, and the enclosures are the exhibits C1 to C18. That reads like paperwork being closed, not a case being reopened.
An open question worth the digging: why 1958, and why then.
