A There are several types of records that you can find on a case such as this. First is the death entry. This will confirm when your relative died, where and of what cause. You can find an entry relating to any ancestor who died in Scotland be
tween 1855 and 1955 on the ScotlandsPeople website (
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk).
When you find the entry you may find a note in the left margin: "RCE" or "Reg of Corr Ent", followed by a volume number, page number and date. This refers to the Register of Corrected Entries held by the General Register Office for Scotland. Corrections on death certificates come about as a result of a precognition from a procurator fiscal giving additional or amended information on cause or circumstances of death. The entry in the RCE may refer to a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI), which would have taken place in the local Sheriff Court.
Since 1895, a number of deaths have been investigated at FAIs. Originally only for deaths in industrial accidents, FAIs now include deaths where it is felt to be in the public interest to hold an FAI and, crucially for your research, deaths in prisons. In practice they are rare, and never held into suicides. An FAI is held to establish exactly how a death occurred and records can include statements from witnesses and experts as well as the official verdict. The records of FAIs held at Sheriff Courts are held by the National Archives of Scotland (NAS).
The NAS also holds the records of prisons in Scotland as part of the records from the Scottish Home and Health Department. Here you will be particularly interested in the prison registers (NAS ref: HH21) and also the governor's journals (NAS ref: HH12).
The most important thing the prison register will tell you is why your ancestor was in prison, as well as when they were sent there and by which court. From this, you may then be able to find the court records relating to the trial.
However, if no FAI was held into your ancestor's death, the governor's journal for the prison he was held in may prove to be your best source of information about the death.
The governors of the prisons in Scotland kept daily journals of the goings on in the prison. Mostly, these journals are very brief notes of who has been admitted or liberated, and inspections carried out, but they do also record include entries on the deaths of prisoners, which can sometimes provide you with quite detailed information.
• If you have a question for the Genealogy Clinic e-mail the team at
familytree@scotsman.com We will endeavour to deal with all enquiries as quickly as possible, but we regret that we cannot enter into personal correspondence.
• ScotlandsPeople is a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.
