Homicide and Serious Assault Records of Charleston, South Carolina, 1878-1912

Douglas L. Eckberg

Douglas Eckberg is studying homicide and serious assaults in Charleston County and two others (Aiken and York counties) in post-Reconstruction South Carolina, working through newspapers, coroner’s inquests, and criminal indictments.  With the support of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, he undertook a pilot project in 2005-6 to digitize those records.  The records included here use as raw data official records of all homicides and all serious assaults and armed robberies in Charleston County, taken from Court of General Sessions Indictments records and Coroner's books. The period covers the years 1878 through 1912.
 
Included here are
  1. A comprehensive index of the images of both Coroner's and Indictment records (in a single MS-Word file). The index is in two portions -- the first part covering the Coroner's Books and the second part covering Indictment forms.
  2. A detailed spreadsheet presenting all homicides and possible homicides found in the records (in a single MS-Excel file).
  3. JPG images of all homicides and other violence from, first, the Coroner’s books and second, the Court of General Sessions Criminal Indictments (in compressed files [Zip] of the digital images).

Indexes to Charleston, South Carolina Homicide and Serious Assault Records 

Index to Charleston South Carolina Homicides and Other Violence, SC Archives.doc

Detailed List of Homicides and Probable Homicides, 1879-1912

Comprensive Charleston Known Homicides 1879-1912 (Indictment and Coroner's records).xls

Coroner’s Inquest Books (ZIP files of JPEGs)

Vol. 1, 1878 - 1880 Images 
Vol. 2, 1883 - 1893 Images 
Vol. 3, 1898 - 1898 Images 
Vol. 4, 1898 - 1900 Images 
Vol. 5, 1902 - 1905 Images 
Vol. 6, 1905 - 1906 Images 
Vol. 7, 1906 - 1908 Images 
Vol. 8, 1908 - 1910 Images 
Vol. 9, 1910 - 12 Images 
Vol. 10, 1887 - 97 Images 

 

Indictments (ZIP files of JPEGs)

Box 21 Images 5899 - 6701, and 1136 - 1142
Box 22 Images 6072 - 6315, and 1143 - 1151
Box 23 Images 6316 - 6764, and 1152 - 1156
Box 24 Images 6765 - 7055
Box 25 Images 7056 - 7216
Box 26 Images 7217 - 7416
Box 27 Images 7417 - 7847
Box 28 Images 7848 - 8258
Box 29 Images 8259 - 8583
Box 30 Images 8584 - 8837
Box 31 Images 8838 - 9175
Box 32 Images 9176 - 9548
Box 33 Images 9549 - 9600, and 199 - 433
Box 34 Images 434 - 978
Box 35 Images 979 - 1134

 [zip] - Some links on this page are to compressed .zip files requiring extraction. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact cjrc@osu.edu.