Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2014 | Page 17

John Matthews
- coroner and
judge with a
different view
By Peter White

J

ohn Matthews describes himself as ‘not being a typical
coroner or judge’, and it is easy to see why.
John was coroner of the Isle of Wight for 18 years until
2012, and still assumes the role of assistant coroner. He
was also a Deputy District Judge from 1991 to 2013, and
a
Tribunal Judge from 2002 – one of only two men in the
whole country to have held all three positions.
But his workload did not end there. Church organist; writer;
lecturer in law and history, and even stand-in Punch and Judy
man to name but a few more part-time occupations. Certainly not
your average coroner or judge!
John is the only member of his family not born on the Island,
simply because in 1943 his father was serving in the Army in
London, and his mother was also there. Two weeks later his father
was sent to Birmingham to serve, and just before the Second
World War ended in 1945, he was sent out to the Middle East, and
his mother returned to the Island.
John’s father came from Shanklin, and his mother from
Sandown. Both his grandfathers were born on the Island, and
three branches of the family stretch back to living here in the 18th
century. “Everyone else in the family has been born on the Island
except for me, and that was purely because of the war,” he said.
But he knows how important it was to draw on his Island roots,
along with his Christian faith, during his difficult and often heartbreaking role of coroner. He recalls: “I did 70 to 80 inquests a year,
totalling more than 1,500 in all. Sometimes it was very harrowing,
particularly when children had died, or when a husband had
killed his wife and then committed suicide.
“I always felt the best days were when I saw a family looking
very frightened and bewildered, but at the end of the day much
calmer. I would talk to people unless they were very angry. I always
felt I had achieved something if after I spoke to them they could
see things clearer.
“An inquest is often the last time a person is talked of in public,
and I always tried to say something nice about the person who
had died. It might have been a hopeless drug addict, but it was
someone’s son, and I would say to the family the world might say

singing
John holding the cup he won for
1986
in
ion
petit
at the IW music com