A note at the beginning to say that most of the illustrations I have included in this post come from the The Illustrated Police News, a tabloid which ran from the 1860s through to the 1930s and is a goldmine of weird and wonderful cases, complete with equally bizarre illustrations. The British Library have some examples here and you can find even more on Google Images.
While women who killed their own new-born infants increasingly generated sympathy among the public and within the judicial system, there was one class of baby-killers who most certainly did not. As I mentioned last week, the introduction of the 1834 Poor Law left women who were pregnant outside of marriage in an even more dire situation than had been the case previously. If a woman wanted to continue working and stay out of the workhouse, she would need to make alternative arrangements for the care of her child. And this is where the baby farmers come in.
On 16th May 1868, two advertisements appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post. ‘A Respectable Person, residing the country,’ read the first, ‘wishes to take Charge of a Baby to Nurse from a month old’. The second, very similar, reads, ‘WANTED by a respectable Married Woman without children, residing in a healthy locality, a Child to Nurse. First-class references'. These ads were not in the slightest bit unique; up and down the country, almost identically worded notices appeared in newspapers. Systems of foster care in England during the 1860s were chaotic, a confusing jumble of vague terminology and informal arrangements. Sometimes, children were adopted by childless couples, other times they were used to supplement the meagre incomes of elderly widows. Most often, the children were the offspring of unmarried women. There certainly were unmarried women who became pregnant but remained with their families and raised their children. Others eked out an existence in low quality lodging houses, supporting themselves and their offspring on poverty wages. Many more women felt unable or unwilling to raise their children themselves. One option would have been to place the child in a workhouse, but these were not safe places for babies. Mortality was high and standards of care were low; in 1869 it was reported that at the workhouse in St. Luke’s 19 babies were supervised by a pauper, a lunatic, and a twelve-year-old girl. Little wonder that mothers often sought out more stable and loving placements and were willing to pay for them.
Sometimes the adoptions were closed, and provenance of the child was not fully known; the census reveals instances of nurse children whose birthplace, exact age, and even surname were not known. Many mothers visited their children regularly, however, and some may even have been temporary arrangements. Few detailed accounts of these informal arrangements exist, but the mention in advertisements that adoption was a possibility certainly suggests that it was not the assumed norm, and in the 1890s there is one advert in Cardiff whereby a ‘Lady wishes to hear of a very respectable Person who would take temporary care of Baby Boy, nine months old, in her own home’ (South Wales Echo, 6/5/97). The ad states that the person sought must be ‘thoroughly trustworthy and clean’, a sentiment which echoes much of the spirit of the ads that appeared thirty years prior. Cleanliness, the promise to be loving, proximity to fresh air, and above all respectability, are all qualities both offered and sought after in virtually all the advertisements. Two such adverts were printed in the Daily Post in the December of 1868. In one, a potential foster mother promises that the infant ‘would receive every comfort as her own, as there is no other,’ and in the other advertisement it is assured that ‘it will have every kindness shown’.
These were the infants who died through neglect. Some baby farmers, however, found an even more efficient way of dispatching the babies and increasing their profit.
Many baby farmers used a syrup called Godfrey's Cordial. Also known as Mother's Friend, the syrup contained opium, and was a popular choice for quietening infants. Indeed, many babies were accidentally poisoned by their mothers, while others quietly starved to death in the 'care' of baby farmers, unable even to cry.
In 1872, Amelia
married a brewer's labourer in Bristol and became Mrs Dyer, although this
relationship did not last. A few years later, in 1879, a particularly attentive
doctor became suspicious about the number of infant deaths he was called to
certify at Amelia's residence. An extremely high number of children appear to have been drugged with Godfrey's Cordial and had either died by overdose or else had starved. Tried for neglect, Amelia served six months'
hard labour. After her release, Amelia's life was a litany of alcoholism,
laudanum addiction, nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts. Realising that she
had only been caught and jailed because she had involved a doctor, Amelia
decided that there was a far easier and simpler method for disposing of the
infants she had been tasked with caring for. Instead of having the deaths
certified, Amelia began disposing of the bodies herself. This meant
that she could end their lives more abruptly and deliberately, thus saving
herself considerable work.
In 1893, Dyer was released from an asylum for the final time and moved to Reading in Berkshire. Three years later, it all came crashing down. When the body of an infant named Helena Fry was discovered in the Thames, the packaging the body was wrapped in bore the name of Mrs Thomas (as Mrs Dyer had been before her second marriage), as well as her old address in Caversham.
Mrs Thomas, now Mrs Dyer, was not difficult to track down. Tape that she was found to have in her possession matched that which had been used to murder the infant Helena and on 3rd April 1896, Amelia Dyer was charged with murder. Six more bodies would be found submerged in the water before her trial began on 22nd May at the Old Bailey.
The full trial transcript can be found here, on the amazing Old Bailey online site, which contains trial proceedings heard at the court from 1674 to 1913. The first witness to testify was Evalina Marmon, mother of Doris Marmon, one of the murdered babies. Recalling a correspondence she had had with Dyer (at that point going by the name Mary Harding), Miss Marmon related the contents of one particular letter, written by Dyer as she sought to convince Marmon to hand over her child.
“I assure you I will do my duty to the dear child, I will be a mother as far as possible in my power. If you like to come and stay a few days, or a week, later on I shall be pleased to make you welcome – it is just lovely here in the summer. There is an orchard opposite our front door […] I think Doris a very pretty name; I am sure she ought to be a pretty child”
Evalina Marmon was questioned aggressively on her apparent lack of diligence when it came to conducting any sort of background check on Dyer before handing over her child.
Meanwhile, the testimony of Amelia’s own daughter, Mary Ann, was damning. She described the day after her mother took one particular infant into her care.
“As I was sweeping […] I noticed a parcel under the head of the couch; I could only see one end of the parcel; it looked like the shape of a child’s head; it was tied up with what looked like a napkin – the rest of the parcel was like a child’s body, so that the whole thing looked like a child – I asked her again what she had done with the baby – she said the baby was all right, I was not to worry about it.”
Amelia attempted to put forward an insanity plea in her defence, but this failed, at least in part thanks to the testimony of her brother. Speaking only briefly, he said “I wish my name not to be mentioned in public […] there was never a case of insanity in our family, so far as I have heard our family history […] I have not seen the prisoner for thirty-five or thirty-six years – she is a total stranger to me.”
At the conclusion of the trial the jury found Mrs Dyer guilty of murder, and the judge, Justice Hawkins, sentenced her to death. Shortly before her execution at Newgate Prison on 10th June 1896, Amelia Dyer made a full confession. She is believed to be one of Britain's most prolific serial murderers, with estimates of the true number of deaths for which she was responsible reaching the hundreds.
Some have argued, both at the time and since, that Dyer's cruelty was in fact lesser than that of some other baby farmers who did not directly murder the children in their charge. At least, so the line of thinking goes, she did it quickly, strangling them in a few minutes. It was quite different to the weeks and weeks of suffering that starving and drugged babies were forced to endure. Perhaps there’s something in that. It was scarce comfort for Evalina Marmon and the countless other mother who believed that they were giving their children a better life than they could offer themselves.
A ballad was written about the case of Amelia Dyer and it is soaked in Victorian sensationalism.
The old baby farmer has been executed,
It’s quite time that she was put out of the way,
She was a bad woman, it is not disputed,
Not a word in her favour can anyone say.
CHORUS
That old baby farmer the wretch Mrs Dyer,
At the Old Bailey her wages is paid,
In times long ago we’d have made a big fire,
And roasted so nicely that wicked old jade.
It seems rather hard to run down a woman,
But this one was hardly a woman at all,
To make a fine living in ways so inhuman,
Carousing in comfort on poor girls’ downfall.
Poor girls who fell down from the straight path of virtue,
What could they do with a child in their arms?
The faul they committed they could not undo,
So that baby was sent to the cruel baby farm.
To all these sad crimes there must be an ending,
Secrets like these forever can’t last,
Say as you like, there is no defending,
The horrible tales we have heard in the past.
What did she think as she stood on the gallows?
Poor little victims in front of her eyes,
Her heart, if she had one, must have been callous,
The rope round her neck – how quickly time flies.
Down through the trapdoor quick disappearing,
The old baby farmer has come to her harm,
The sound of her own death bell’s toll she was hearing
Maybe she went to the cruel baby farm!
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