Athelstan Braxton Hicks (19 June 1854 – 17 May 1902) was a coroner in London and Surrey for two decades at the end of the 19th century. He was given the nickname "The Children's Coroner" for his conscientiousness in investigating the suspicious deaths of children, and especially baby farming and the dangers of child life insurance. He would later publish a study on infanticide.
Career Hicks was a barrister at law who entered the Middle Temple in 1872Email from the Archivist, The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. 2 October 2018 and was called to the bar in 1875. He was a special pleader on the Western Circuit and at the Middlesex Sessions. He was for some time a student at Guy's Hospital, where he gained considerable knowledge of medical jurisprudence. He was Deputy Coroner of the City of London and Borough of Southwark, the City of Westminster and the West London District. He was appointed Coroner in 1885 for the South-Western District of London and the Kingston Division of Surrey. For a time he served on the Joint Committee of the British Medical Association and the Coroners Society, of which he was honorary Secretary.
He wrote a pamphlet entitled "Hints to Medical Men Concerning the Granting of Certificates of Death" (London: William Clowes, 1889).
He made several reforms, notably that inquests were no longer held in public houses, and an improvement in providing local mortuaries.
He insisted that a full post-mortem be carried out on bodies. In 1898 he took a doctor, James Mackay, to court for perjury; Mackay had claimed to have performed a post-mortem on a 17-week child but when two other doctors examined the body they found no evidence that Mackay had done so.
Some of his more unusual inquests were the Pimlico poisoning by chloroform, the inquest on a body of a baby sent to the Home Secretary, the 'Lambeth Poisoning Case', the 'Tooting Horror', and the "Railway Murder" of Miss Camp.
One of his inquests, Elizabeth Jackson, has been linked, probably incorrectly, with the Jack the Ripper murders.
In the case of the 'Lambeth Gangs' he dealt with the murder of Henry Mappin by a street gang, the original Hooligans, who threatened witnesses and himself.
In the 'Battersea Cancer Cure' inquest he dealt with an unqualified "Dr Ferdinand" who advertised his claim to be able to cure cancer. It was not until the Cancer Act 1939 that advertisements for cancer cures were made illegal.
At the end of the 19th century there were more suicides from carbolic acid than from any other poison because there was no restriction on its sale. Braxton Hicks and other coroners called for its sale to be prohibited.
He gave evidence in 1890 and 1896 to the Select Committee on the Infant Life Protection Act, 1872.
In 1899 Braxton Hicks wrote to the Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, about the Police Order issued by the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, Sir Edward Bradford, and the recovery of bodies in the Thames. In 1900 he succeeded in a reform of coroners being notified of the deaths of lunatics held in Poor Law Institutions.
In the Kingston District in 1901 he held 201 inquests: 121 males and 79 females with one case of treasure trove. The verdicts were murder four (three newborn children), manslaughter one, suicide 23, accidental 51, suffocated in bed four, found drowned 10, excessive drinking 13, want of attention at birth three. Infants under one year accounted for 42 of these. There were also 810 inquests in the South-Western district.
Infanticide Infanticide was common in the Victorian period for social reasons, such as illegitimacy, and the introduction of child life insurance additionally encouraged some women to kill their children for gain. Examples are Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered many of her 15 children as well as three husbands; Margaret Waters, the 'Brixton Baby Farmer', a professional baby-farmer who was found guilty of infanticide in 1870; Jessie King, hanged in 1889; and Amelia Dyer, the 'Angel Maker', who murdered over 400 babies in her care.
Finding the dead bodies of murdered babies on the streets was common; 276 were recorded in London in 1870. Braxton Hicks held many inquests for bodies of children found in the street or on the banks of the Thames, such as in the 'Battersea Mystery', where the body of a baby was found by the Thames after being thrown into the water alive. The father was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years. This was unusual; for example, in the inquest of newborn baby that died of head injuries, the jury concluded that there was not sufficient evidence on its cause.
In many cases of infanticide the jury returned verdicts of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown but the police could not identify the child's parents. In another inquest in 1891 on the body of a baby girl found in the Thames "we have had about ten similar cases" where "as soon as the child is born, its head is knocked all to pieces and the body is then thrown into the river".
Obtaining convictions for the manslaughter of infants was difficult. For example, the case of Matilda Muncey, a registered baby farmer, who had had 36 children of whom 12 had died. She had an unregistered child, Evelina Marsh, who died of malnutrition. She was acquitted of manslaughter and was only fined £5 for neglecting to register the child and sent to prison for a month for not giving information to the coroner. The judge commented "that nothing was more likely to kill or more difficult of proof than the improper way of feeding."
Ada Chard-Williams The 1898 inquest on the body of a three-month-old girl who was strangled, "one of a series of cases in which children other than newly-born infants had recently been murdered and thrown away." There were other similar cases. He carried out the inquest on Selina Jones, whose body was washed up on the Thames at Battersea in 1899, and had been strangled by Ada Chard-Williams, a baby farmer who was later hanged at Newgate prison.
Amy Gregory Braxton Hicks held the inquest in 1895 on the death of Frances Maud Gregory, aged six weeks, the child of Amy Gregory (23), whose dead body was found on the ice in the Old Deer Park, Richmond. The mother was convicted of strangling her illegitimate child but granted a reprieve from execution by the Home Secretary. There were calls for more lenient sentences for infanticide leading to the comment "one reason why in all ages infanticide has been so lightly regarded is that it is a crime of which no man can in his own person by possibility be a victim. It is quite right that Amy Gregory should not be hanged; but the further cry that she should not be punished, is a plea that all women should be absolute over the lives of their little children." "Are we really going half-mad with pity for everybody except the totally defenceless? If not, why in the name of Christianity, as well as common-sense, do we object to the Home Secretary protecting babies of three months from being throttled?"
Overlaying Overlaying, where the child is accidentally smothered in bed, was common especially in overcrowded conditions or where the parents had been drinking. Braxton Hicks announced that he would disallow the expenses of the parents where he thought that the parents had been careless.
At an inquest in 1895 on the death by over-laying of a second child to a couple who had earlier received a caution, when the jury returned a verdict of accidental death he said
There had been "during the last ten months no less than 500 cases had occurred in which children had been suffocated while in bed with their parents, in London alone." He estimated that a third of the allegedly accidental deaths of children were due to suffocations.
However, he operated a poor box and could be generous when confronted with poverty: "it was no use reading the father a lesson on sleeping in a crowded room, for he was hard-up and could not pay for large apartments. The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death," and expressed its opinion that the father had done the best he could in the circumstances."
Friendly Societies Act 1875 In 1889 Mr Braxton Hicks wrote a letter to The Times about the dangers of child life insurance, as outlined in the Friendly Societies Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 60) which provided for payments on death of children, denouncing the practice of insuring children's lives to pay the expenses of their burial. He wrote that the insurances act as a temptation to the parents to neglect them, or feed them with improper food, and sometimes even to kill them, as in the excessively numerous cases of "over-laying" or suffocating in bed.
Infantile InsuranceSome people assert, rather rashly, that the deaths of a great number of infants are directly due to the fact of their being insured, or, in other words, that children are deliberately murdered for the insurance money; but, except in a few cases, insurance is only one of the possible causes which lead to the deaths of infants.
If parents are negligent to their children, the fact that they are insured must naturally act upon an evil mind as a direct inducement for further negligence. Or, if an infant is sickly, there is an inducement to allow "nature to take its course," which it does, if the child is insured, in a very speedy manner.
The industrial insurance companies allow policies to be effected by people who have no insurable interest (properly so called) in the lives of the insured. They are effected by persons who have a direct interest in the death of the insured—such as illegitimate children, children of poor people who have large families, and aged people whose life is a burden to those who have the care of them.
As regards illegitimate children, I am informed that it is the rule in some offices not to take such lives; but I know of my own knowledge that this rule is almost invariably broken.
Children are often insured whose lives are in a precarious state, and insurances are effected by people who have the charge of such children to nurse for a weekly payment; but such insurances are not effected until there seems a reasonable chance of the child dying and the payments of the mother are in arrear, so that on its death—and the sooner that occurs the better it will be—the nurse will be able to recoup herself for the loss out of the insurance money. Again, the agents for the companies are paid by commission, and though, no doubt, that is the only practicable mode of payment, commercially speaking, yet it has a direct inducement for their taking insurances with very little inquiry. A frequent cause of death in children is what is called "Exhaustion from malnutrition," and the method by which this is brought about is so simple that it is no wonder it often occurs. All the parents have to do is to stuff the child with improper food; the more they give it the weaker it gets; and then, when it can eat nothing liquid, they tell you that they give it what they have themselves, beef, pork, &c., and are then surprised, or pretend to be surprised, that the child dies.
It is impossible in such a case to determine absolutely if such feeding is done purposely or from ignorance; but the impression in my mind, formed from such cases, is that in the majority there is a great deal of method, as, although these people may be uneducated, they are quite cunning enough to know that such a treatment can be carried out with impunity, and I have known them to continue such a course of treatment even after being warned by a medical man as to the probable results.
Another frequent cause of death in infants is from "Suffocation while in bed with the parents." Out of 103 inquests held last year in which a verdict of "Accidental death" was returned, 32 were on children who had so died.