There were two of them. One up north (Mary Ann Cotton) the other a southerner (Amelia Dyer) operating at much the same time, active for over a generation. But although the motive for both serial killers was money, there was one important difference. Mary Ann only murdered her kin. Amelia was a matriarch. She killed other people’s babies but having been arrested with two of her own adult children, she insisted she took the blame for all the deaths to the exclusion of them. Both murderesses had their effigies retained in the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussauds until the late 1960s, but Amelia is credited with up to 400 murdered babies. this number is far too high, but she would still feature as one of the most prolific serial killers of modern times. Her efforts to exculpate her daughter Polly and her husband are extraordinary.

Nothing could stop her. A narrow escape on a lesser charge that earned her a mere six months imprisonment due to weak evidence would have turned a purely rational motivated criminal to lucrative fraud and the depositing of babies on church doorsteps hospitals and easily accessible free dumping grounds.

She was educated, literate and clever. Her fiendish ingenuity and almost photographic memory for her many aliases led her into the first-class railway carriage caper. She would buy a first-class ticket to the next station on the line and it would be unusual for her not to be able to find an empty compartment. At the trains final destination, the carriage would be cleaned the parcel containing the baby removed and a coroner would bring in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.

When killing, Dyer found some white edging tape used in dressmaking, wound it twice around the baby’s neck and tied a knot. Death would not have been immediate. Dyer later said: “I used to like to watch them with the tape around their neck, but it was soon all over with them.”

Dyer’s downfall

On 30 March 1896,. In the small detective force available to Reading Borough Police, Detective Constable Anderson made a crucial breakthrough. As well as finding a label from Temple Meads station, Bristol, he used microscopic analysis of the wrapping paper and deciphered a faintly legible name—Mrs. Thomas—and an address. The officers decided to use a young woman as a decoy, hoping she would be able to secure a meeting with Dyer to discuss her services. On 3 April (Good Friday), the police raided her home. They were struck by the stench of human decomposition, although no human remains were found. There was, however, plenty of other related evidence, including white edging tape, telegrams regarding adoption arrangements, pawn tickets for children’s clothing, receipts for advertisements and letters from mothers inquiring about the well-being of their children.

Dyer was arrested on 4 April and charged with murder. Her son-in-law Arthur Palmer was charged as an accessory. During April, the Thames was dredged, and six more bodies were discovered, including Doris Marmon and Harry Simmons—Dyer’s last victims. Each baby had been strangled with white tape, which as she later told the police “was how you could tell it was one of mine”.

Inquest and trial

At the inquest into the deaths in early May, no evidence was found that Mary Ann or Arthur Palmer had acted as Dyer’s accomplices. Arthur Palmer was discharged as the result of a confession written by Amelia Dyer.

On 22 May 1896, Dyer appeared at the Old Bailey and pleaded guilty to one murder, that of Doris Marmon.The only defence Dyer offered was insanity:

Dyer was hanged by James Billington at Newgate Prison on Wednesday, 10 June 1896.[13] Asked on the scaffold if she had anything to say, she said “I have nothing to say”

Cornish Post and Mining News – Thursday 27 October 1898

THE NEWTON SENSATION. ABANDONMENT OF A DEVONPORT CHILD. At the Devon Quarter Session at Exeter Arthur Eruest Palmer, Twenty-eight, miller, and Mary Ann Palmer, Twenty-four, daughter of the late Amelia Dyer, executed for the Beading child murder, were indicted for unlawfully abandoning a three week old male child in a railway carriage at Newton Abbot, on September 12th . Both prisoners were found guilty, and there was a previous conviction of the male prisoner for child abandonment at Devonport. the Chairman (Lord Clinton) said he could hardly find words on behalf of the Court of the sense they had of the gravity of the offence. They had hardly taken the child into their possession before they disserted it, apparently indifferent as to whether the child lived or died. The Court would pass a heavy sentence upon them for this inhuman action. Probably they had been engaged in the abominable trade on a larger scale than known. They would be prevented for the present from carrying it on and each would be sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

This copycat crime complete with a railway carriage scenario was unique. Research established that no similar crime has since been attempted in the United Kingdom. It was established that “Mrs. Stewart” was Polly, the daughter of Amelia Dyer’ Any hypothesis of the Amelia Dyer story must include this item of factual record.

So what really motivated her, the horror fiction story of Philip Fracassi’s Baby farmer which was written about her is the only plausible explanation. He considered that she was one of the custodians of an Order that worshipped Lucifer of which her daughter was the next generation. That the babies she killed and the cruelty employed including the tell-tale pleasure and satisfaction she obtain through the exercise of the murder was part of the cult.

When the Jews entered Palestine under Joshua some 3000 years ago the Old Testament tells us that one of the Peoples they defeated were the Canaanites who worshipped Molech by sacrificing babies to him. She may have been the leader of a cult stretching back beyond recorded time.

The horrific but quite rational conclusion is that the cult continues to exist. There are so many places in the world where dead babies are commonplace as part of collateral damage in multigenerational total wars. the Sunni Arab and Shiite Persian wars have been going on in the Middle East for 1500 years. Female serial killers of babies though not in such quantities have always been with us.

Sleep tight on Halloween.

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