Wynne Edwin Baxter (1 May 1844-1 October 1920) was an English lawyer and coroner who conducted the inquests of most of the victims of the Whitechapel murders of 1888-1891.
Biography[]
Wynne Edwin Baxter was born in Lewes, Sussex in 1844, and he was educated in Brighton before becoming a lawyer in 1867. He served as vice-president of the Provincial Newspaper Society between 1871 and 1877, Under-Sheriff of London and Middlesex from 1876 to 1879 and 1885 to 1886, Junior High Constable in 1878, and the last Senior High Constable in 1880. He relocated to London in 1875, starting a solicitor's practice and advertising agency on Cannon Street. In December 1886, he was elected Middlesex county cororner, and he presided over the inquests into the deaths of several Jack the Ripper victims. He speculated that the murder was attempting to obtain certain female organs for sale to doctors along with a medical periodical, but the theory was disproved soon after Baxter suggested it. He was appointed a Life Governor of the London Hospital in 1889, conducting the inquest into the death of the "Elephant Man" in 1890, and he later conducted inquests into the deaths of eleven German spies and 20 of the civilians killed in the 13 June 1917 bombing of London during World War I. He died in 1920.