The Baby Farm Murderer

A forensic study of the trial of Amelia Dyer, one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers, thought to have murdered up to 400 babies. This book explores how life in Victorian England created the ideal conditions for Amelia to establish herself as a baby farmer, taking infants from desperate women in exchange for payment.

It examines what motivated her to kill and go on killing: her need for money versus her role as custodian in a cult that worshipped Lucifer and delves into her personal life, taking evidence from hundreds of contemporary trial and government records, memoirs and newspaper articles, and investigating what it was about society and policing in the late nineteenth-century that allowed her to get away with it for so long.

The nineteenth century was a horrible time to be a woman in England. The lack of legal and effective birth control affected even the highest in the land. Queen Victoria, after having given birth to nine children, was advised by physicians for the sake of her health to have no more. Her diaries complain of ‘no more fun in bed’ as the only legal and safe way to avoid pregnancy was abstinence from sexual intercourse.

It was against this backdrop that Amelia Dyer carried out her monstrous campaign. In 1856, she began advertising in local papers under assumed names and reassuring backgrounds, offering to adopt newborn babies in exchange for fees that varied according to the means of the mother. Her 40-year-long killing spree only ended with a local police force sting operation.