Amelia Dyer 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 16 th May 1...