Amelia Dyer
Number of victims: 400
Nicknamed the Angel Maker, Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, also known as ‘Annie’ and often using a string of different aliases, had arrived in Caversham in the summer of 1895 with her daughter, Mary Ann, and son-in-law, Arthur Ernest Palmer. Dyer had been plying her trade as a baby farmer for some 30 years: she advertised in the local newspapers for foster children, offering to look after them for a fee. This was a common practice in Victorian England, and most baby farmers honoured their commitment to parents but some neglected their young charges, drugging them and leaving them to waste away, whilst pocketing the proceeds. Dyer took this one step further, and strangled them.
The police arrested Amelia Dyer on 3 April 1896, at her home in Kensington Road. Dyer identified the parcel, but claimed to be unaware of its contents: ‘I do not know anything about it, it’s all a mystery to me.’ The officers found pawn tickets for children’s clothing, letters from parents and vaccination certificates in the house. In her sewing basket they discovered white tape, such as had been tied around her victims’ tiny necks. Further searches of the River Thames at Caversham yielded six more infant corpses.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey on 18 May, where Dyer was charged with the wilful murder of Doris Marmon, the five-month-old daughter of barmaid, Evelina Marmon. A single mother, Evelina had advertised in the Bristol Times for a nurse to care for her child, whilst she continued working. In the same publication a Mrs Harding had placed an advertisement for fostering. After a short correspondence, Mrs Harding, aka Amelia Dyer, arranged to meet Evelina Marmon, who agreed to her daughter’s adoption. Wrapped in a warm blanket and with her nappies and clothes packed, little Doris was handed over to the matronly Mrs Harding: ‘She appeared to be an affectionate woman…I was satisfied with her looks.’ The next time Evelina heard of her child was when she identified her body at Reading police station 11 days later.
Amelia Dyer, 57, was convicted, and hanged at Newgate on 10 June 1896. As the newspapers reported, ‘Death was apparently instantaneous and infinitely more merciful than the slow strangulation which she practised.’ It is not known how many babies Dyer murdered but, as she had been taking in children for at least three decades, the final toll could have been in the hundreds.
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