On average, roughly half a million British citizens die each year. Of those fatalities, only a tiny fraction, around thirty thousand, are referred to a coroner for an inquest into the cause of death. The proceedings are reserved for sudden or “unnatural” ends, or for when a person dies in the custody of the state—in a prison cell, for example. Since the 1980s, they have also been legally required for all violent deaths abroad, after a campaign inspired by the fate of Helen Smith, a British nurse who fell from a balcony in mysterious circumstances in Saudi Arabia.
