DISGRACED solicitor Jeremy Cave has resigned as coroner for the western district of North Yorkshire including Selby,

The convicted fraudster contacted the head of the country's judiciary, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Derry Irvine, from the jail where he is serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence.

A spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department confirmed that the resignation had been accepted and that no decision had been made about Cave's successor.

Cave also faces a solicitors' disciplinary hearing on March 27, which could see him struck off. Cave has been a deputy or full coroner for more than ten years and a solicitor since 1980.

Earlier this year, a jury at Teesside Crown Court convicted Cave, 53, of Sowerby, near Thirsk, on six charges of theft. They heard that he siphoned £155,000 over several years from the estates of dead clients and others into his business account to bolster his firm's finances.

He had denied the charges.

He has not sat on an inquest since the Lord Chancellor suspended him on full pay on June 27, 2001, the day after police charged him and the day before his first court appearance, at Northallerton Magistrates Court.

His deputies have handled his work for him ever since.

In July 2000, the Law Society closed down his one-man solicitor's firm in Thirsk as part of its investigations into his fraud.

Updated: 11:19 Wednesday, March 19, 2003