Ep. 48 - The Serial Killer Amelia Dyer

The Victorian Era in Britain was a tough time for women, particularly if they were single mothers. Desperate women would find themselves pregnant after giving themselves to a man hoping he would take care of them. Or many times they would fall into sex work and end up pregnant. The fix of an opium laden tincture to cause a miscarriage was incredibly dangerous, so there were not many options and most didn't have the means to care for a child. But they also didn't have time to care for their child because they needed to work. Thus, they would need to find someone to care for their child. And along came this angel named Amelia Dyer. She was willing to take on any child and care for them. But Dyer was anything but an angel. Her nickname became the "Baby Butcher" for good reason as it is possible that she murdered 400 babies. Eventually she was tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed. Her end came at Newgate Prison and now her spirit seems to be haunting a couple of locations.

Amelia Elizabeth Hobley was born in Bristol, England in 1837 to a master shoemaker. He was very busy and often left Amelia alone to care for her ill mother. The Typhus that she suffered from left her mentally ill and Amelia was often dealing with her mother's violent fits. This not only deeply affected Amelia, but it gave her a window into lunatic behavior, which would come in handy for her in the future. Amelia was an avid reader and she used prose and poetry as an escape. Her mother eventually died in 1848 when Amelia was eleven and her father sent her to live with an aunt. As the years passed, she would become increasingly estranged from the rest of her family, which included three living brothers and her father, who would pass away himself in 1859.

In 1861, Amelia was twenty-four and she met a man thirty-five years her senior named George Thomas. Whether there was love involved isn't known, but it offered Amelia a way to move forward in life if she married him. Even though this was in the 1800s when large age gaps seemed to be common, the couple lied about their ages to make the gap sound smaller. Amelia decided to get into nursing and she met a mid-wife through whom she hoped to learn the trade. That woman was Ellen Dane and she certainly taught Amelia a few things. There was money to be made in the area of illegitimate pregnancy. She introduced Amelia to the idea of baby farming, which offered the options of either selling babies or leaving less desirable babies to die. And perhaps that death could even be moved along with murder and not just neglect. The authorities soon became wise to Ellen Dane's work and they ran her out of the country. 

The business of baby farming was easy in an era where men were not required to care for their children and women found it difficult to raise children alone in a society where they were stigmatized. Fostering and adoption services had no regulations at the time either. This was a world perfect for a budding psychopath. But for the time being, Amelia was living the life of a married woman and soon was a mother. She gave birth to a daughter named Ellen Thomas. Unfortunately, George died shortly after that in 1869 and he left Amelia with nothing. The need for an income inspired Amelia to start baby farming. She would run ads claiming that she was a respectable woman and that she would either find a good home for a baby or nurse the baby herself until the mother could return to care for the child. A couple of those ads included "Married couple with no family adopt healthy child, nice country home. Terms 10 pounds - Harding, care of Ship's Letter Exchange, Stokes Croft, Bristol" and "Highly respectable married couple wish to adopt child; good country home; premium required, very small. Home, Times and Mirror Office."

William Dyer was an illiterate man who worked at a vinegar factory. He married Amelia on December 21, 1872 and they had two children together, Mary Ann whom they called Polly and William Samuel. Apparently, Amelia was fine raising her own children and William seemed to be okay with Amelia bringing in these babies. Didn't he wonder where they would disappear to? Eventually, Amelia and William separated, but Amelia continued to present herself as a married woman. Clients would describe her as persuasive and believable and women just kept bringing their children to Amelia unwittingly. 

In 1879, a doctor became suspicious about the number of baby deaths coming out of Dyer's home. He felt that neglect was leading to the deaths and he reported her to the authorities. And indeed, Amelia's first way of ridding herself of babies was to starve and neglect them. She also began using an opioid solution dubbed "Mother's Friend" to overdose the babies. The authorities only charged Dyer with neglect and she was given a sentence of six months in a labor camp. It did nothing to curb her baby-killing ways. She simply stopped seeking death certificates. Amelia's daughter Polly got roped into the baby farming as well and the psychopath explained to her  daughter that she was an "angel maker" because she sent babies off to Jesus who wanted them more than their mothers did. Apparently Polly bought into this and she was okay with it because she helped her mother with this, even as an adult woman herself. She would watch as her mother adopted a new technique to kill babies,  strangling them with something like white edging tape. Then Polly would help in disposing of the bodies. This usually meant weighing the body down in the River Thames. Clothes would be traded at a pawnbroker and the money the mothers would pay, usually £10, to Amelia would be pocketed or used to pay rent. No one knows for sure how many babies Amelia killed, but some estimate that it could be 400.

To hide her activities, Amelia would relocate to new cities often. This also prevented her from being found when parents returned to retrieve their children. Amelia realized that she was probably dealing with mental illness like her mother and she would occasionally check herself into an asylum, but the stays never lasted long. And some people believe that she was feigning the mental illness because her trail was getting hot and she needed to avoid the police. As the guilt piled on, Amelia would consider suicide and attempted it a few times, but using opium wasn't of much use because she had been dosing herself with it for years and had built up a tolerance. In the end, Amelia always came back to the baby farming. 

One of the women whom would be victimized by Amelia Dyer was Evelina Marmon, a twenty-five-year old woman who had given birth to her daughter Doris in a boarding house. She had worked as a barmaid and soon found herself pregnant and alone. She ran an ad in the paper that she was looking for a respectable woman to take a young child. She noticed when the ad ran that there was another ad next to her's that featured a married couple looking for a child to adopt. Probably one of the ones I shared, and Evelina contacted her. Amelia wrote back to Evelina, "I should be glad to have a dear little baby girl, one I could bring up and call my own...We are plain, homely people, in fairly good circumstances. I don't want a child for money's sake, but for company and home comfort. Myself and my husband are dearly fond of children. I have no child of my own. A child with me will have a good home and a mother's love." Sounded too good to be true and obviously it was, since Amelia had children. Evelina wouldn't find out about that, but she was quite shocked when she met Dyer in person and she was much older than she expected. After handing her child over, Evelina returned to her room broken. She wrote to Amelia to check on Doris and never got a response. Doris was already dead as were countless other children. 

Baby Doris would be the one to help bring Amelia down for good. She had been loaded into a carpet bag with another dead baby and Amelia had pushed the bag off a bridge into the river below. A man had witnessed the act and even bade her a goodnight. In April of 1896, a fisherman found a brown parcel in the water. When he opened it, he found a dead baby girl named Helena Fry. The information on the parcel led the police to the location where Amelia was living. They used a woman as a decoy mother looking for care for her infant to get Amelia out in the open where the police ambushed her. They searched her home after that. The stench of decomposition was overwhelming, although no bodies were left at the home. There was evidence including telegrams, advertisements, pawn tickets and letters. Based on what was found at this time, the police estimated that twenty children had been left in her care. The Thames was dredged and six more bodies were found, including Doris'. Amelia was hauled off to jail. She claimed she was guilty in the death of Doris and the rest of the babies and she said she knew this because of the white tape around all their necks. 

She wrote the following letter to make sure that her daughter Mary and Mary's husband Arthur were not accused of anything. 

 

Her defense was insanity when she stood trial at the Old Bailey. Her daughter's testimony was graphic and it took the jury only 4.5 minutes to find her guilty. She was sentenced to hang and she did on June 10, 1896 at Newgate Prison. With the estimates about total babies that could have died in Amelia's possession, there is no doubt that she is one of the worst serial killers in history. Some good did come of this as child protection legislation was passed in Parliament with the Infant Life Protection Act of 1897 and the Children’s Act of 1908 to end baby farming and strengthen regulations around adoption and fostering.

While it would be nice to have this world free of Amelia Dyer, there are rumors that her spirit continues to walk this side of the veil and who could blame her. She most definitely would not want to meet her Maker. Amelia Dyer was first seen as a full-bodied apparition shortly after her execution by the prison warden, Mr. Scott. He saw her walking in the prison yard near the hanging shed. She even looked at him and locked eyes. He remembered that she had told him as she walked to the gallows that she would see him again. He ran down the stairs, but when he got to the yard, she was gone. What he found instead was a handkerchief embroidered with the initials A and D. Before Newgate Prison was demolished in 1910, the Warden had his picture taken in front of the hanging shed. Much to everyone's surprise, when it was developed, a white oval was right behind him and to the side. In that white oval was Amelia's face.

The path to the gallows was referred to as Dead Man's Walk. Amelia took this walk. Despite the prison no longer being here, that walk still is present. And so is Amelia's spirit there. Many eyewitnesses to this day, claim to see the ghost of Amelia walking that path. She seems to be in a residual state, unable to acknowledge those that see her. Is it possible that Amelia Dyer's spirit still haunts the area where Newgate Prison once stood? That is for you to decide!