He wrote a pamphlet entitled "Hints to Medical Men Concerning the Granting of Certificates of Death" (London: William Clowes, 1889).

[4] He made several reforms, notably that inquests were no longer held in public houses, and an improvement in providing local mortuaries.

The verdicts were murder 4 (3 newborn children), manslaughter 1, suicide 23, accidental 51, suffocated in bed 4, found drowned 10, excessive drinking 13, want of attention at birth 3.

[26] 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.

[29][30] 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.

"[36][37] 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.

[39] 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.

[48] 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.

"[49][50] 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.

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.

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.

All these are vague terms and are utterly valueless in such cases, unless the medical man states whether such a cause is brought about from constitutional weakness or from want of proper care.

It is this practice which allows an opportunity to parents to hide their neglect, and therefore any statistics based upon coroners' returns would be wholly fallacious.

He then listed eleven proposals for amending the Act:- He gave evidence in 1890 to the Committee of the House of Lords investigating Child Life Insurance.

The reckless indifference to child life which leaves stillborn children to be buried in the back garden or cast out upon the dust heap, and their births left unregistered is purely English, and would not be tolerated in any other civilised country.

[57] Braxton Hicks held inquests for two babies that were delivered by Amelia Hollis, a midwife, that were shown to have been suffocated after birth.

Many newly-born infants are allowed to die, or are even murdered by the midwife who attends these houses, and it is positively this very interested individual who gives the certificate of still-birth.

[64][65] Obtaining manslaughter convictions for suffocating babies, which were then passed off as stillborn, was very difficult, as in the case of the death of Ernest Davy where Hollis was only found to have infringed the Registration Act by recording a stillbirth.

"[44] In 1895 The Sun published an article "Massacre of the Innocents" highlighting the dangers of baby-farming, in the recording of stillbirths and quoting Braxton-Hicks on lying-in houses.

My opinion is that a great deal of that crime is due to what are called lying-in houses, which are not registered, or under the supervision of that sort, where the people who act as midwives constantly, as soon as the child is born, either drop it into a pail of water or smother it with a damp cloth.

and it is now apparent that "adoption," "baby farming," starvation, and child murder, are but the smoke showing the existence of another crime smouldering still deeper in modern society, and are but the efforts to get rid of what one may call the failures of the abortion monger--children born alive and viable, sometimes from delay on the mother's part, sometimes from the fear of the consequences, or perhaps from some trace of humanity holding the employer back from giving the fatal order, often, it is to be feared, because "adoption" is cheaper in ready cash than murder during birth, which, as we are informed by the Sun, runs to £40 or £50.

Her activities came to light in an inquest in 1888 on the death of Isaac Arnold (alias John Bailey), aged 6 months, who died in Tooting.

Arnold had placed the boy with Mrs Jessie Chapman of Tooting, who was licensed under the Infant Life Protection Act, and had already received another child, Edward Alexander Lovell, from her.

The jury returned a verdict of death from natural causes, but the activities of Mrs Arnold had been reported and were influential in leading to a change in the law.

[70] Braxton Hicks noted that she had had at least 25 infants and in his summing up he said:In 1889 Mrs Arnold was again involved in the inquest of Edward Alexander Lovell, aged 2½, who died in an emaciated state at Newport Pagnell.

In 1897 he was the principal witness before the Select Committee on Petroleum describing how the Coroners' Society wanted restrictions on the sale of cheap and dangerous paraffin lamps.

[80] We regret to announce the death of Mr Athelstan Braxton Hicks, coroner for the South-Western district of London and the Kingston Division of Surrey, who passed away on Saturday afternoon at his residence, 20 Lupus-street, S.W., from pneumonia, after an illness of less than a week's duration.

Mr Hicks held his last inquest at Lambeth on Saturday week, when he complained of the chilliness of the court, and two days previous to that he had a long sitting at Battersea to conclude the case in which a Lincolnshire farmer was alleged to have ill-treated his wife.

Recently he was instrumental in inducing the Home Secretary to issue a public warning to parents on the subject of fireguards, and in not a few instances he has supplied them to poor people at his own expense.

To some extent the marked diminution in cases of baby-farming is due to Mr Hicks's searching inquiries, while he was also in a great measure responsible for the licensing of small boats and the alteration in the law restricting the sale of carbolic acid.