Badge - Inquest
Object
Badge
Production date
2021
Object number
2024.375
Physical Description
Metal square badge, black enamel background with purple enamel keyhole.
Object history
Inquest is a charity providing expertise into the investigation of state related deaths, and providing support to the bereaved.
It was founded in 1981 following the negative experiences of Blair Peach's family, friends and partner Celia Stubbs after he was witnessed receiving a fatal head injury from a police officer in 1979. Blair Peach was a Hackney based teacher and Anti Nazi League activist
This badge was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of Inquest, and was owned and worn by Nik Wood, a Hackney based volunteer with the charity.
It was founded in 1981 following the negative experiences of Blair Peach's family, friends and partner Celia Stubbs after he was witnessed receiving a fatal head injury from a police officer in 1979. Blair Peach was a Hackney based teacher and Anti Nazi League activist
This badge was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of Inquest, and was owned and worn by Nik Wood, a Hackney based volunteer with the charity.
Personal experiences
Experience shared by Nik Wood, a Hackney based volunteer for Inquest:
In September 1999 we heard two gunshots, and it was the police shooting a man called Harry Stanley in Hackney's Victoria Park Road. They'd had a phone call from a man in a pub who says "there's an Irishman with a gun" and on this sound basis they shot him dead. But he was a Scotsman with a coffee table leg, and for five years we battled away with that. There is an organisation called Inquest and we got engaged and involved with all those things.
Inquest provides legal, media and personal support, somewhere to chat, for the families of people who have died as a result of acts of omission or commission by organisations with power to detain: police, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, immigration detention centres, that sort of thing. Clearly the high-profile ones are the shootings like Harry Stanley. But the major part of the work now is terrible physical health care in psychiatric hospitals, and terrible healthcare in prisons. There are two plagues raging through prisons at the moment. One is overdoses and one is suicides.
It’s not like lots of charities where you do a service for the public sector, a service for governments. It’s about keeping the government on their toes.
Associated Person
Material
Metal
Dimension
Height: 25mm
Width: 25mm
Width: 25mm
On display?
No
Inscription
INQUEST