BY SOPHIE JESSETT
The practice of ‘baby farming’ became a popular profession in Victorian society. In its most innocent state, it simply meant to foster or adopt a child in return for a payment. However, those with the power to do so, took advantage of the struggling poor and manipulated unmarried mothers into unwittingly sending their children to an early death.
Perhaps the most notorious of these ‘baby farmers’ was Amelia Dyer (1837-1896), becoming so infamous and exposed that she even earnt herself a place in Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors. At her trial in 1896 the judge, Henry Hawkins, concluded that she was “evil”, and the press were inclined to agree saying she possessed “a depth of wickedness scarcely conceivable before”.
Throughout childhood, Dyer took to looking after her mother who suffered from mental illness to such an extent that she was transferred to an asylum where she remained until her death. In her early nursing career, Dyer set up a ‘house of confinement’ for pregnant, unmarried women. These houses had become increasingly popular and necessary due to the introduction of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834; the law declared that workhouses would be set up to house, clothe and feed the poor. However, a less pronounced condition of the law forced unmarried women into isolation as they were no longer able to appeal to the fathers of their children for financial support. Not only were they now unsupported, but there was also the terrifying possibility of being removed from the workhouse for committing such acts of ‘immorality’ as sex before marriage. While workhouses were described as ‘prisons for the poor’ by Richard Oastler, having the physical shelter the establishments provided was preferable to being socially scorned and cast out to the streets. Thus, more mothers sought homes for their children and people like Amelia Dyer saw this as an opportunity for fortune.
In 1869 Dyer’s husband died and, without a solid source of income, she turned to fostering and adopting unwanted children in return for a fee. This was often £10 but could reach a staggering £80 which today would be over £12,000. She advertised herself as “highly respectable” and claimed she belonged to the Church of England via her notices in papers across Reading and London.
Dyer began with letting her charges wither away and die. She was assisted by laudanum (“Mother’s friend”), a painkiller and relaxant which kept them subdued and quiet while they slowly passed. However, this wasn’t enough, Dyer decided to speed up the process by suffocating them with a handkerchief or strangling them with white tape, the latter becoming her signature. It was the first baby dragged from the Thames who became a prime example of the marking of Dyer’s murders. Helena Fry was pulled from the river in Reading on the 30th of March 1896. She was swaddled in packaging paper and linen within a small parcel. She had white tape wrapped around her neck and tied below her left ear. The packaging paper was addressed to a ‘Mrs Thomas’ and led the police to Dyer’s lodgings due to the name being taken from her first husband, George Thomas. A further six babies were found in the river including Doris Marmon, whose mother had entrusted her to Dyer only eleven days earlier. It is impossible to know how many children Dyer murdered in her career of nearly thirty years, however, witnesses at her trial claimed that she collected as many as six babies a day. In the two months prior to her arrest, she had been given twenty children and experts claim that a number around four hundred would be most likely.
On the 3rd of April 1896, Dyer was arrested and sent to Reading prison, yet it was not for the first time. In 1879, Doctor’s became suspicious of the number of babies dying under her care and she was sentenced to six months hard labour in prison for neglect under the Infant Life Protection Act 1872. Theoretically this Act was meant to include regular inspections, however, few baby farming houses were registered under the law and enforcement was near non-existent, so inspections were incredibly rare. Therefore, it is not shocking to hear that almost twenty years passed before Dyer was caught again and her case shows the failing of government, policing and enforcement regarding children’s well-being in the 19th century.
In the trial, after her second and final arrest, there was no question of Dyer being the murderer, she herself had confessed her crimes, however, there was debate concerning her motive. Lyttelton Stewart Forbes Winslow- a psychiatrist previously involved in the 1888 Ripper case- concluded that she was indeed deeply disturbed, suffering from hearing the voices of her dead mother and son, and seeing repulsive visions. Forbes Winslow’s opinion was futile, and he claimed that the jury had already made up their minds prior to the trial- Dyer would be executed.
To push this conviction through was the prosecution’s lawyer, Horace Avory, who insisted that her only motive was money and that she had feigned her insanity. In addition to Avory’s accusations, the psychiatric expert who the government assigned to the case deigned that while Dyer may have been tainted by hereditary insanity (regarding her mother), she had no memory loss sufficient enough to escape responsibility. The specifications for this are drawn from the McNaughton Rules which state that the degree of insanity needed to lessen the accused’s responsibility required that the person had to be ‘labouring under such a defect of reason of such a condition of the mind’ that they ‘did not know the nature and quality of the act’ or ‘did not know it was wrong’.
This all contributed to the jury and the judge, Henry Hawkins, ruling the verdict of guilty. She was hanged on the 10th of June 1896 at Newgate Gaol. Crowds gathered outside the prison to watch the black flag rise, marking her death.
Her case exposed the horrifying extent that baby farming had reached by the late 19th century. In 1896, over 60% of murder cases that came before courts were those in which infants under 1 were the victims and the death rate of illegitimate children was three times higher than that of legitimate ones. However, because of the exposure of Dyer’s prolific career, attention was brought to the baby farming industry.
Arguably the most important aspect of the case was the realisation that she was not alone in her actions. The publicity surrounding Dyer prompted the government to act and the poor child-protection legislation was reformed. One of these changes was the reformed version of the Infant Life Protection Act which was refined in 1897. Under the new Act, fostered children were registered, as well as the name and address of both the person who was receiving the infant and the person who was letting go of them- which were to be updated if any details changed. Additionally, the 1908 Children’s Act was introduced, fundamentally to protect the poorest children of society. In relation to baby farming, it focused on the protection of infant life as inspectors could visit foster houses and remove children suffering from lack of care. Furthermore, minders could not take out insurance on the children and upon their deaths the coroner had to be informed. Therefore, the law became significant in monitoring the lives of children in the newly developing social system. There was also a child cruelty phrase which developed the 1889 Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, defining the idea of neglect being something that caused suffering.