A notorious Victorian baby farmer
Warning: contains references to child murder
When I moved to Reading in the late 1990s, I was keen to find out about the town’s local history. I soon uncovered a shocking series of events, which had taken place a century before, the impact of which is still felt today. Amelia Dyer was a baby farmer, who fostered young children for a fee, then murdered them. After 30 years of this sinister trade, her heinous crimes finally came to light in Reading, in 1896.
A terrible discovery
On 30 March, bargeman Charles Humphreys was navigating up the River Thames near Reading, towing a boat of ballast. As he approached the wooden footbridge known as the Clappers, he spotted a parcel floating in the water, about seven feet from the bank. Humphreys and his mate slowed down the boat to investigate. Leaning over the side with a hook, the two men strained to grab the package, dragging it through the water towards them. They alighted from the barge and unravelled the damp parcel, which had been tied with macramé twine. The bargenman cut through two layers of flannel and pulled back the sodden fabric to expose a child’s foot and part of a leg.
Leaving the package behind on the towpath, guarded by his companion, Humphreys ran straight to the police station to tell the officer on duty of his terrible discovery. Fifteen minutes later Humphreys returned with Constable Barnett, who carefully placed the small body into a sack. Having removed it to the mortuary, the officer unwrapped the parcel, revealing the body of a baby girl, aged between six months and one year, swaddled in layers of linen, newspaper and brown paper. Around her neck was a piece of tape, knotted under her left ear, and this, along with her protruding eyes, left PC Barnett and his colleagues in no doubt that she had been strangled. Her body had been weighted down with a brick. On part of the wrapping that had remained dry, was faint writing which the constable could not quite decipher.
The parcel in which the child was wrapped was discovered in the attic of one of the police officer’s descendants in 2018, over 120 years later. I had the opportunity to view it at the Thames Valley Police Museum soon after it was found, and it was quite a chilling experience!
A desperate hunt
Detective Constable James Anderson provided the first clue in this complex case. While carefully examining the dried brown paper in which the child had been wrapped, he found that it bore a Midland Railway stamp, with the date ‘24-10-95’ and Bristol Temple Meads. The smudged writing also gave him a name and an address: ‘Mrs Thomas, of 26 Piggott’s Road, Caversham’, which is near the River Thames and close to where I used to live.
When the police inquired at the property, ‘Mrs Thomas' had already moved on. A mail clerk at Reading railway station informed Detective Constable Anderson that Mrs Thomas, whose real name was Amelia Dyer, was now living on the other side of the town. When the police visited Mrs Dyer at her new home, they soon discovered that she was a baby farmer. This was a form of Victorian child care, often used by working parents, especially single mothers who were often shunned by society due to the stigma of having had an illegitimate child. Baby farmers, who were usually women, offered to foster children for a fee. They advertised their services in local newspapers. Although some baby farmers were decent, honest individuals, the reality was that many nurse children were neglected and often left to waste away. Some baby farmers used gin or opiates, such as Godfrey’s Cordial, in order to suppress a child’s appetite and keep them quiet. The deaths of these poor children passed unnoticed due to the high rate of infant mortality at the time.
When the police arrested Amelia Dyer on 3 April 1896, they 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 the child found in the river’s neck. Further searches of the Thames at Caversham yielded six more infant corpses, and one heart-breaking discovery sealed Dyer’s fate.
Doris and Harry
A labourer was dragging the river near the Clappers when he came across yet another package. This one was submerged under the centre of the footbridge, about 12 feet below the water. When he pulled it up, he found a carpet bag tied with string. Sergeant James (I met his descendants and we returned to the crime scene together) cut the string and opened the bag wide, exposing the body of a baby girl. Later at the mortuary, he took out a brick used to weigh it down and found the body of a male child underneath. Both children had been dead for about ten days, and strangulation was definitely the cause of the boy’s death, and likely also of the girl.
Since the discovery of the first baby, Chief Constable Tewsley and his men had been trying to locate the parents of the drowned children and, as the latest victims were being examined, police officers had already located their guardians, who came to Reading to testify at the inquest. The babies were identified as four-month-old Doris Marmon and Harry Simmons, aged 13 months..
Justice is served
Amelia Dyer’s trial took place at the Old Bailey on 18 May. She was tried for the wilful murder of Doris Marmon, the 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. 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 Prison on 10 June 1896. 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, making her one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers.
On a more positive note, the conviction of Amelia Dyer and seven other baby farmers in the UK between 1870 and 1907 for the murder of infants, led to the introduction of legislation to protect fostered and adopted children, which is still in place today.
Over a hundred years later, Amelia Dyer’s story is tightly woven into Reading’s history. Many older inhabitants of the town have memories of their mothers and grandmothers warning them that if they did not behave, ‘Old Mother Dyer’ would deal with them. Ghostly sightings of Dyer, wearing her long, dark cloak, have been reported near the places where she lived and along the paths leading to the Clappers footbridge, which remain more or less as they were in 1896.
You can find out more about this infamous case in my book, Amelia Dyer and the Baby Farm Murders.