TL;DR: Our No. 5 female criminal is Amelia Dyer, who made her living by killing upwards of 400 babies.
As March comes to a close, we are finishing up our Women’s History Month series of crazy-ass female killers. Today, we meet a cold woman whose maternal instincts turned murderous.
In case you’ve missed the first four women, here’s a quick recap:
1. Jane Toppan: America’s first female serial killer
2. Martha Place: First woman executed in the electric chair
3. Blanche Taylor Moore: Oldest woman on death row
4. Griselda Blanco: The first billionaire female criminal
Amelia Dyer: The Most Prolific Baby Killer in Victorian England
Dubbed the Angel Maker, Amelia Dyer is believed to have murdered some 400 babies over a span of two-plus decades. There is even unsubstantiated speculation that she was the true identity of Jack the Ripper, whose M.O. was botched abortions.
Her Backstory
By all accounts, Amelia’s childhood was fairly normal, even privileged. The youngest of five, she was born in 1837 into a safe household with two parents and received a good education. However, there was one dark spot: She was a witness to her mother’s violent mental illness, caused by typhus, and at age 11, had to care for her as she died.
At age 24, she married George Thomas, who was 35 years her senior; they both lied about their ages on their marriage license to reduce this wide gap. For a few years after they wed, Amelia trained as a nurse, but quit after the birth of her daughter Ellen. When her husband died a few years later, she needed a way to make mo’ money, mo’ faster.
Why She Did That Crazy Shit: Money
That’s when she learned from a colleague about an easier way to make a living: Baby farming. For a fee, she could shelter women who were pregnant with illegitimate babies until they gave birth. More money could be charged if the parents were well-off and needed to keep the pregnancy hush-hush. Then, she would care for the baby until the mother was prepared to do so herself—or, if the mother had no intention of returning for her child, she would find an adoptive family, at which point she would sell the baby to them. Or, easier yet, just let the child die, and keep the money that would’ve been used for its care.
It sounds awful, but Amelia was not a trailblazer in this respect. Baby farming wasn’t exactly uncommon at the time. What she did to earn her place in women’s crime history was take it up a notch. A whole bunch of notches.
Her Weapons of Choice: Opium & Dressmaker’s Tape
Amelia began to place classifieds offering her services in the local newspaper. In addition to unwed pregnant women, her customers included couples who already had too many mouths to feed, widows, and mistresses of rich married men—all of whom wanted to get rid of their babies, one way or another. Some planned to return eventually and retrieve their children, others left and never looked back, and still others relied on Amelia’s nursing skills to smother the baby and make it look like a stillbirth.
Over the years, she moved around and changed her name frequently, making it more difficult for authorities to catch up with her. Her daughter and son-in-law eventually joined the family business. She also abused alcohol and opiates like Godfrey’s Cordial, which may have contributed to her mental instability. Amelia even attempted suicide by drinking a couple bottles of laudanum, a tincture of opium in ethanol, but she’d built up such a tolerance to opiates that it didn’t have the desired effect.
When she was about 50 years old, she finally got caught when a doctor became suspicious of Amelia for the number of children who died under her care. She was tried and sent to jail, sentenced to six months of hard labor. Once she was released, she had a few mental breakdowns and spent some time in mental institutions—ironically, when someone was starting to catch on to her tricks and it became convenient for her to disappear.
At some point, Amelia changed her M.O. Earlier in her “career,” she simply neglected the children in her care until they starved to death, dosing them with Godfrey’s Cordial to shut them up and hasten the process. Once the babies died, she would have a doctor forge their death certificates. But that took much too long and was too risky.
So, she got a new plan: As soon as she received a baby—and, more importantly, the mother’s payment—she killed the infant by wrapping dressing tape around its neck and then disposed of its body herself. No pesky witnesses to worry about!
“I used to like to watch them with the tape around their neck, but it was soon all over with them.”
—Amelia Dyer
How Karma Got Her
In 1896, a fisherman pulled a small package out of the Thames River near Reading, England. Inside the brown paper package was the flannel-wrapped corpse of a baby girl with bulging eyes, white dressmaker’s tape encircling her neck. Authorities were able to decipher a name and address written on the brown paper she was wrapped in, and they put Amelia’s house under surveillance.
Police believed Amelia would flee if she suspected they were on to her, so they set up a sting operation and sent in a young woman to set up a meeting with her as a potential client. Amelia took the bait and was greeted by police officers instead of a desperate pregnant woman. They raided her house, where they were assaulted by the stench of decaying bodies, though no human remains were found on the premises. What they did find, however, was enough evidence—including plenty of white dressmaker’s tape, receipts for classified ads, letters from mothers checking in on their children, and pawn tickets for baby clothing—to arrest her and charge her with murder.
At trial, Amelia’s defense centered on her insanity, as evidenced by her stints in mental institutions. However, the prosecution refuted her defense, stating that Amelia had enough experience from both her own mother and from working as a nurse in an insane asylum, to successfully fake it. The jury deliberated for less than five minutes, returning with a guilty verdict. A few months later, she went to the gallows.
Although she was convicted for only one murder, historians estimate her total body count could be as high as 400. As a result, adoption laws were tightened, and law enforcement was given more authority to police the process. However, the practice of baby farming didn’t stop, and some speculate that Amelia’s daughter carried on her mother’s legacy after her death.
Sources: ‘Angel maker’ Amelia Dyer snuffed out the lives of an estimated 400 babies in Britain (New York Daily News); Amelia Elizabeth DYER (Murderpedia)
That’s a wrap! Who was missing from this list? Recognize her in the comments below!
Cover photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash
Krysten,
I read this whole series around Mother’s Day, when you released them but I don’t think I ever commented on them. Just FYI: i LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea and ate them all up. They were great!