Richard Whittington was coroner for Birmingham and Solihull from 1970 to 1996, where he spent 26 years investigating high profile deaths. His cases included the 1995 suicide in custody of serial killer Fred West and the unsolved murders of half-sisters Alice and Edna Rowley in their Birmingham shop in 1987. The investigation into the last recorded death from smallpox was linked to Professor Henry Bedson, whose suicide in 1978 contributed to the media coverage of his conclusion. After the man's death from infected blood products in 1989, he wrote a letter of condolence to the family because of the unwanted media attention. In 1998, he called for midwives' working hours to be reformed after a baby died at Heartlands Hospital, where an exhausted midwife worked a total of 16 hours after an 11-hour shift. Whittington wrote personal letters of condolence to the families of victims with media attention and emphasized their feelings during the investigation.