The abominable murderer of children killed under the protection of an incredible law of Victorian England

The notice appeared one day in January 1896 in the "Miscellaneous" section of the newspaper. Bristol Times & Mirror.

Few words: "I am looking for a respectable woman to take care of a small child"
The call came from Evelyn Marmon, a 25-year-old waitress who had given birth to Doris, an illegitimate girl, in an almost miserable pension in Cheltenham.
Destiny trap Very close to this command, the perfect offer: "A married couple without family would adopt a healthy child to live in a nice country house. Price: 10 pounds a week. Ms. Harding"

In fact, "Ms. Harding" was Amelia Elizabeth Hobley, then "Dyer". after his marriage to brewer George Thomas Dyer.
For the slightest doubt, Amelia wrote a sweet letter to Evelyn: "I should be happy to meet you, we are simple, welcoming and good people, my husband and I love children, I do not have child and with me your child will have the love of the mother ".

Escollo. Evelyn did not have 10 pounds …

He asked Amelia for a discount, but the woman was relentless: "a single payment, and in advance".

Finally, with the money raised and sacrificed, Evelyn met Amelia's husband. She was surprised by the rough appearance and advanced age of the man, but without doubting it, He handed her a cardboard box with Doris' clothes … and money.
Curtain Never again a news.

But Amelia Dyer He did not like or care about Doris. He took her to Polly, his 23-year-old daughter, and hanged her with a white ribbon.
A week after He killed Harry Simmons (13 months) in the same way.

Who was Amalia Dyer?

The youngest of five brothers. He was born in the small town of Pile Mars, east of Bristol. His father, Samuel Hobley, master cobbler. His mother, Sarah, no job.

Amalia learned to read, write and fell in love with literature, poetry and music early on.

A happy childhood, eclipsed in 1848 by the madness of her mother because of typhus, as well as by the untimely death of two sisters of the same name: Sarah Ann. The first, at 6 years old; the other at 10 months.
Amelia, an orphan, stopped at an aunt's house, still in Bristol, and was employed as an apprentice at a corset manufacturer.

At 24, she married George Thomas …, 59, and began studying nursing. But He met with midwife Ellen Dane, and this relationship paved the way for the tragedy …

Ellen was a murderer. She sheltered young women who had had illegitimate children, adopted them and sacrificed them.

Detected by the police, she escaped to the United States. But his bloody seed sprouted at Amalia, favored by a perverse decision of Victorian England: the law on the amendment of the law on the poor, freed from any obligation to pay and support parents of illegitimate children. Thus, single mothers suffered from double asphyxiation: social stigma and brutal work in factories – up to 14 hours a day – to barely keep their children. A vast and fertile ground for the opportunists, who began to offer themselves as "adoption or parenting agents"In exchange for payment in installments or total and advance with a single rate, the highest, 80 pounds, the average, 50. And for women desperate and in misery, 5 …

It atrocious system generated atrocious methods. The babies were hungry and the wateriest were calmed with a mixture of alcohol and opiates called "Godfrey Cordial". Many have died of narcotics or severe malnutrition. And in this phantasmagorical picture, Amelia Dyer – by then the mother of Mary and William – separated from her husband and He chose mbad crime as a way of life and fortune.

For the first crimes, she was sentenced to six months of forced labor, "for negligence". A legal waiver that, after being released, allowed him to crown his plan. According to the diagnoses, she tried to finish her nursing career, but interrupted her from the first outbreaks of "mental instability and suicidal tendencies".

However, without much conviction, thanks to laudanum, which he abused without measure, he returned to adoption and raised babies … with murder included.
At first, he asked the doctors for death certificates. But after the police investigated her as suspicious because of the unusual number of certificates, He began to dispose of corpses with his own hand.
Of course, the complaint of the parents who asked for the return of their children and the constant police surveillance forced him to leave his houses, his cities and his cities and, for years, to use a pseudonym .. .

But the time of the fall has arrived, inexorable.

It was March 30, 1896, when a boatman found a strange floating parcel in the Thames, at the height of Reading (note: where is the prison in which Oscar Wilde was confined for homobaduality and who determined his destruction and his untimely death in a hotelucho de paris).

The package contained the body of a girl: Helen Fry.

Detective Constable Anderson discovered a label on the package that, under the microscope, revealed a name: "Mrs Thomas"and an address.

Everything said Amelia Dyer. But they did not stop it: They handed him a trap. A supposed mother – a lure – called to deliver her son … but three detectives arrived and attacked the house. They found no mortal remains, but the stench of death, the white ribbons hanging, the telegrams on adoption agreements, the pawnshop loan notes for children's clothes, the receipt of newspaper advertisements, etc. name of "Mrs. Thomas", they were decisive.

Dredge the Thames, Six other bodies appeared. Among them, those of Doris Marmon and Harry Simons.

The rest was a procedure.

Amelia, as a defense, claimed insanity.

In four and a half minutes, the jury found her guilty.

Hosted in the terrible prison of Newgate – a branch of hell -, dead hanged on June 10, 1896 at nine o'clock in the morning, a minute after his last words:
-I have nothing to say.

Age at death: 59 or 60 years old. He was born in 1836, but no record of the full date was found.

Twelve confirmed murders were enough to sentence him.

But the reconstruction of places, dates, years of ghostly stains, stacks of death certificates, reports of missing children, suggested that the murder could reach between 200 and 300 victims.

An impossible mbadacre for a woman, but for a monster.