The scene of myriad grisly deaths, late nineteenth-century St. Louis was a hotbed for homicide, suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and workplace accidents. The role of the city's Gilded Age coroners has not been fully examined, contextualized, or interrogated until now.
This Gilded Age social history of death investigations in the urban Midwest examines the role of St. Louis coroners and how ordinary people informed coroners' investigations and verdicts. Case studies explore the lives of the deceased as well as their families and communities, press coverage of the deaths, and the coroners themselves.
