Overlaying in colonial Tasmania: Revisiting the Templeman hypothesis

The term overlaying refers to the unintentional suffocation of an infant who is sharing a sleeping surface usually with an adult, although other siblings and domestic animals may also be involved. Despite being documented as early as the Judgement of Solomon (1 Kings 3:19) in the Bible: ‘… and this woman’s child died in the night because she overlaid it’, overlaying has had a somewhat controversial history with assertions in more recent decades being made that there are no dangers to an infant in a parental bed as long as the parents have not smoked. This does not, however, recognise high-risk situations where the bedding is soft and indentable, the parents are fatigued or intoxicated, and the infant has intrinsic vulnerabilities.