Farncomb, Edward

Updated October 7, 2016

Solicitor. Solicitor in Chancery and attorney of the Queen's Bench, England.

HONG KONG. Court official, solicitor (first Solicitor to practice here).

Coroner (appointed 9/3/1842, vice Samuel Fearon, resigned 4//1845). Solicitor (admitted 10/1/1844). Entered into partnership with William H. Goddard (3/21/1846), under the firm of Farncomb and Goddard; the partnership was dissolved in the same year (7/4/1846)

• Farncomb, on October 1, 1842, held Hong Kong's first Coroner's inquest, into the cause of death of a Chinese man whose body was found floating close to the pier in the morning of the same day bearing a gun-shot wound. The deceased was said to be one of the thieves who, on the previous evening, had broken into the property of British merchant John Francis Hight. Hight had fired a random shot at one of the thieves. The jury returned a verdict that "the deceased was shot by the pistol" and the inquest went no further.


• When the position of coroner was left opened in 1842, Farncomb asked for the job and was so given on a temporary basis, his remuneration, however, was not fixed pending instructions from the Home Government. A final decision was made in 1845 and on March 27 he received a letter from the Colonial Secretary informing him that the government would pay him $5 for each inquest. For this sum, he was required to copy out the written proceedings and lodge with the Chief Magistrate, and furnished his own stationery and printed forms. Farncomb was so upset about the pittance of the offer that he said if the government would not pay for his valuable time, they might reimburse his actual outlay. He duly resigned.

Selected bibliography: Norton-Kyshe, James William, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, Tracing Consular Jurisdiction in China and Japan and Including Parliamentary Debates, and the Rise, Progress, and Successive Changes in the Various Public Institutions of the Colony from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Hong Kong: Noronha & Co., 1898, Vol. I., pp.XIX, 16, 92.