H. R. Oswald

Oswald was born on 8 February 1852 in Trichnopoly, Madras, India, the son of Surgeon General H.R. Oswald who was serving in the Indian Army.[2] He was privately educated in the Isle of Man and later Edgbaston, Birmingham, before moving on to the Royal High School, Edinburgh.[2] Oswald originally intended to enter the Indian Civil Service but changed his mind and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh.[2] He then went into practice as a medical doctor, achieving his MD from the University of Edinburgh in 1881.[3] Then, in 1890 he entered the Middle Temple to train as a barrister, being called to the bar in 1894.[2]

Oswald became the deputy-coroner in the Central and Western districts of London, and later in the South-Western and Kingston districts.[2] In 1902 he became the coroner for the South-Eastern district. He moved to the Western district in 1919, a post he held until he retired in 1930.[2]

Oswald presided over between 20,000 and 30,000 inquests.[2] Among the notable ones were the first inquest about death from a motor car (1904),[4] a case involving Ronald True,[4] the death of Freda Kempton from a drug overdose in which the dealer Brilliant Chang was implicated (1922),[5] and deaths caused by the 1928 Thames flood of London.[6]

His reminiscences were published in 1936 by Stanley Paul as Memoirs of a London County Coroner.

Oswald married twice, firstly to Jean Moir-Byres with whom he had a daughter. Jean died in 1907. He married again in 1908 to Ethel Mary Cundell.[2] Oswald died in early 1940 in the Salisbury district of Wiltshire.