Overlaying
Overlaying or overlying is the act of accidentally smothering a child (less than 5 months of age but may occur in children up to the age of 2 years) to death by rolling over them during sleep. Athelstan Braxton Hicks, the Deputy Coroner for London and Surrey, noted in 1889 that "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.