[2] Danford received his general education at Bath and afterwards entered as a student at St Mary's Hospital, and became member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1871.
His work as a coroner thus extended over a period of upwards of thirty years, and was spent in what, in respect of urban coronerships' districts, must be one of the largest in point of both area and population.
[3] The British Medical Journal said that his "success as a coroner was greatly aided by his medical training, his legal knowledge, his wide acquaintance with mankind, his clear, logically working brain, and a fund of sympathy for suffering of all kinds ... on two occasions he went so far as to take into his house professional acquaintances suffering from mental illness, and thus temporarily stranded in London, and treated them as his guests until their recovery.
The council had first attempted to persuade him to resign and then, finding they had no legal power to force the matter, had appealed unsuccessfully to the Lord Chancellor to ask Thomas to give up his position.
He had already held since the beginning of the year upwards of 600 inquests, and this great labour, coupled with the extra strain thrown upon him by the peculiar circumstances of the Crippen inquiry, was no doubt the immediate cause of the attack of diabetic coma from which he died.
He frequently dissuaded those who appeared before him in court from indulging in expensive funerals, and had given instructions that when the time came for his own interment his remains should be either cremated or otherwise disposed of in the simplest fashion available.