Looking into Inquests

 A great online zoom session today as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival - Gideon Haig: The literature of Inquests (sub-titled 'The wife's gone, the kids are dead')

Author and journalist Gideon Haigh described the history, mystery and literature of inquests, and why they are sometimes more powerful than fiction, and why they can reveal as much about the way a person lived as how they died.

Gideon Haigh has contributed to more than 100 newspapers and magazines, and published more than 40 books. He has won Premier’s Literary Awards in three states, two Waverley Library Prizes and a Ned Kelly Award for True Crime. 

Gideon related facts, and photos, from a number of inquests that had resulted from murders, suicides and accidents, and of particular local interest one was from the bus crash in Horsham. In February 1951 a railway locomotive struck a tour bus on the Dimboola Road level-crossing.

 

There was newspaper coverage of the crash nationally (you can check them out on Trove) and if you can find a copy there was also a commemorative page in the 'Wimmera Mail Times' of June 20, 2007.

The level crossing no longer exists, as the Carpolac rail-line to Natimuk closed in 1986, but you can still see the rail corridor alongside the Horsham College oval. There is a monument to the event next to the footpath at the site.

Back to Gideon's talk, he gave a brief explanation, from the inquest files, of how the crash occurred, along with some of the photographs of the tour bus from the file. 

'The Literature of Inquests' was not morbid, but engrossing and a real insight into the role inquests play in life and death and in history. Here is a link to the session and a warning - as mentioned, it does include photographs from inquests, that some may find disturbing.

Still with inquests, PROV have also published the article 'Untimely Ends' on place, kin and culture in coronial inquests.