No death in the Palace

[webofevil]

I will have regaled a fair few of you over the past couple of years with my favourite fact about Parliament, which is that you’re not allowed to die there. I have to admit to a twinge of regret that suddenly there’s hardly anyone left to spring it on, since it will soon be everyone’s favourite fact about the place.

Anyone attempting to die on the parliamentary estate will find that they left the premises alive and were pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. The reason that convention dictates you can’t meet your maker in the Palace of Westminster is not, as it was first told to me, that anyone who dies there is technically entitled to a state funeral ^[1], but that, as it’s technically a royal palace, a Royal Coroner would have to investigate your death—and, a colleague told me, these days there’s no such thing as a Royal Coroner. (EDIT: In fact there is, but the logistics are so nightmarish, involving juries consisting entirely of the royal household, that it’s better for everyone if the whole business is avoided.)

In fact, a colleague was explaining to me, it’s because when Diana died her body was flown home and taken to St James’s Palace that there was such a ridiculous holdup in sorting out her inquest: “If she’d been held in some local undertaker’s near Brize Norton, the whole thing could have been held soon afterwards in Oxford Crown Court and everything would have been dealt with years ago,” she said. “But no, she had to be taken to a palace, and suddenly they had to involve the Royal Coroner, who was supposed to convene a royal jury. And the whole farce went on from there.”

One thing, though: no-one who has reported this story seems able to produce the actual “law” in question. Given that the law voted third most ridiculous in this survey, a Liverpudlian bylaw that bans women from going topless in public unless they work in a tropical fish store, does not exist (the rule “is something that has been heard of before and does crop up from time to time, but it is absurd,” said a spokesman for the city council; “It is a myth and totally made up. It has no basis in fact” [Telegraph]), there’s no reason to think that there is any such legislation, but everyone has happily gone ahead and regurgitated the press release anyway. I know that in this case it’s only a cute “And finally” item, but laziness like this is exactly how canards get started...

^[1] Apparently no-one has told author Nigel Cawthorne, who is quoted in the Telegraph as saying “Anyone who dies there is technically entitled to a state funeral”. Then again, a quick shufti at the potboilers he has churned out in his time should pretty much disqualify him from being considered an expert witness.

Comments

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

I did see the results of this survey, and some of the laws did look awfully like urban myths, so it's no surprise to find that one of them definitely is.

I'd always thought the thing about dying in Parliament was that you couldn't be recorded as having died there - it's not as if some corpulent bobby is going to spring out in front of a staggering and fading-fast Lord and say, "I'm sorry sir. No dying on the premises. I'm afraid you'll have to take it outside."

The "British jobs for British workers" thing is interesting in that the "quote" itself is a corruption, but the thing that often accompanies it - that Brown said it at the Labour party conference - is just a simple lie, which can be ascertained by spending less than two minutes on Google.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> it's not as if some corpulent bobby is going to spring out in front of a staggering and fading-fast Lord

That's right; you’ll be pronounced dead when you get to hospital or at worst, if you have the bad grace to hop the twig in a spectacular enough manner that there are witnesses, you might be surprised to find that you made it to the pavement outside before you breathed your last.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Dude, this is tantamount to TEMPTING people to strap dynamite to themselves and wander in.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

“The bits of him we were able to identify were definitely still alive in the ambulance.”

[chiller.livejournal.com]

BAhahahaha!

[uniquefergus.livejournal.com]

Urban myths, even easily disproved ones, do have immense staying power.My favourites are the 'who cares if it's true or not' ones, like the fact that Bob Holness played the saxophone solo on Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'.

Which he didn't. Or did he?


No.


btw I now see why I was invited to that Archery tournament in York. I shall politely decline.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Wasn't he also the first ever James Bond, in a radio production of Casino Royale?

[uniquefergus.livejournal.com]

Welllll, a quick glance through t' internet reveals he was either the first or the second (after Barry Nelson), and it was either 'Moonraker', 'You Only Live Twice' or 'Casino Royale'.

But it was on the radio, in South Africa. Probably.

(actually, maybe he did play the sax on 'Baker Street'.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

My god. He's THE MAN.

[uniquefergus.livejournal.com]

His Royal Holness.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

His Holness the Pope.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> things can be law even in the absence of legislation

Point taken, but in this case there's no reason to suspect there was ever any kind of "test case"; instead, it's merely convention. After all, "we don't want to keep a Royal Coroner on the books with cock all to do" surely isn't a solid basis for lawmaking.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Why not just appoint a Royal Coroner?

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

Bagsy me.

-x-

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> there already is one

So there is! But the truth of the whole thing probably resides in this crucial paragraph:

If he empanels a jury to investigate the death, all members of the jury have to be chosen from among the members of the Royal Household.

If someone keeled over in Parliament there would have to be an inquest; for the inquest there would have to be a jury; that jury would have to consist of royals—with their famous fine breeding and consequent keen intellects—and at that point you're already pissing about way too much. Probably better for everyone that you somehow made it over the river to St Thomas's.

[htfb.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the Royal Household include amusing people like the government whips, as well as all the laundry-washers and toothpaste-squeezers and whatnot? I can't see the whips letting a member think that just by *dying* he can get away from them...

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> Why not just appoint a Royal Coroner?

offensive_mango is not slow on the uptake or insane, gentle reader; she asked this quite legitimate question before I edited the copy with the pertinent information that, in fact, there is a Royal Coroner after all.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

So, should Queenie pop her clogs at home - I'm reasonably sure that Buck House is a royal palace - does this also mean a Royal Coroner would have to be appointed? Did a Royal Coroner have to be appointed when the Queen Mum bought the farm (at Windsor, IIRC)?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

No; inquests are for deaths in suspicious or unestablished circumstances...

[trashmcstate.livejournal.com]

In that case, could you not die under normal circumstances in Westminster Palace, or indeed any other royal establishment?

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Right. I mean, presumably if you were a corpulent and elderly Lord who stood up in the HOL, clutched your chest, announced "Crap, I'm dying" and keeled over dead, there's nothing suspicious or unestablished about that. Presumably this boils down more to "who has the right to declare a person dead", and whether that person's jurisdiction and authority applies or is recognised in Parliament.

[lowlowprices.livejournal.com]

If you die in the Chamber, you're entitled to a state rebirth.