The Ogress of Reading was active for over thirty years during the Victorian era killing an estimated 400 children.
Amelia Hobley was born at some point in 1836 to a master shoemaker and his wife. She was the youngest of five having three older brothers and an older sister. They were all born in a village called Pyle Marsh to the east of Bristol.
She had fallen in love with literature and poetry one of few children at the time to learn how to read and write. It would provide a minimal escape from caring for her mother as she battled with Typhus, a battle she would eventually lose in 1848. Typhus fever is a group of diseases caused by bacteria carried and spread by fleas, lice, and harvest mites and in the 1830s was fairly common in close-knit areas such as London.
Not only had Amelia witnessed her mother have violent fits and eventually pass, but she would also watch her older sister Sarah Ann die of unknown reasons in 1841. Sarah was only six years old. In 1845 another of Amelia’s sisters, also called Sarah Ann, died at just a few months old of unknown causes.
After the third woman in her family passed, Amelia moved to Bristol to live with her aunt for a short while. She would start an apprenticeship with a corset maker making the start of her independent life away from her family.
In 1859 Amelia’s father died, passing the family shoe business to her eldest brother.
Amelia continued living in Bristol moving to Trinity Street in 1861 when she was 24. There Amelia would meet and marry her first husband George Thomas who was 59 at the time they married. Both would lie on their marriage certificate to make the age gap less drastic, George deducting 11 years and Amelia adding 6.
After the marriage, Amelia began training as a nurse. As she was working and training, Amelia would meet a midwife that would introduce her to an “easier” way to earn money.
Baby farming. A very common practice at the time. It was where parents would pay for loving couples/families to adopt their infant. Usually, it was illegitimate babies getting hidden to avoid the misplaced judgement of the time. Some baby farmers would also open their homes to pregnant mothers, letting them spend the final weeks of their pregnancy hidden away in a stranger’s home.
Once the baby farmer had the baby in their care a large majority of them would let the baby die through neglect or the baby would die from starvation due to overdosing on opiates. “Noisy” babies would often be sedated with any available alcohols or opiates, the typical was called Godfrey’s Cordial or “mother’s friend” which was a syrup that contained opium.
Some mothers would go to visit their babies and check in on their welfare but were usually met with difficulties. They would become suspicious but mothers rarely went to tell the police. Whether they were too afraid or too ashamed oftentimes babies that fell victim to baby farmers were unreported. The mothers that were brave enough to report didn’t get justice either, the police struggling to trace the babies that were missing.
Amelia would leave nursing with the birth of her daughter. In 1869, Amelia would become a single mother when George passed away. This would lead to Amelia needing that “easy” source of money to keep the family afloat. Amelia put an advert in the local newspaper claiming she would adopt and nurse a baby in return for a substantial one-off payment and adequate clothing for the child. She assured the parent when they met that she was respectable and married and would provide a safe, loving home for the baby.
In 1872, Amelia married William Dyer and became Amelia Dyer. They would have two children of their own throughout their relationship. And throughout the rest of this post, Amelia will now be referred to as simply Dyer.
At some point through her years of adopting and murdering babies, Dyer stopped letting them pass through neglect and began to physically kill them. It allowed her to take all of the money without having to put in any work with the baby. She would elude the police by moving towns whenever suspicions began to rise.
In 1879 a doctor began to question the number of times they were called out to Dyer’s home to certify an infant’s death. This suspicion would lead Dyer to be sentenced to 6 months of hard labour, she wasn’t convicted of manslaughter or murder. This period of time would allegedly destroy Dyer’s mental state.
After her release, Dyer tried to put baby farming behind her and go back to her nursing career. It wouldn’t last too long, with Dyer getting put into multiple mental institutes because of mental instability and suicidal tendencies. Those stays in the hospital would also suspiciously align with whenever she would need to disappear from the police’s radar. As a former asylum nurse, it’s assumed that Dyer knew how to behave to keep her stays as comfortable as possible. It’s possible that her lengthy abuse of alcohol and opium-based products made her mental state worse.
In 1890, Dyer would come close to getting captured for her crimes. A governess had given birth to an illegitimate daughter and sought out Dyer’s “service” to care for and adopt the child. Unwilling to just forget about her baby, the governess would return to Dyer’s home for a visit and welfare check-in. Dyer gave the governess a random baby since she had already killed the governess’s child.
The governess was suspicious of the baby she was given, to soothe her mind, she checked its hip for a birthmark. She didn’t find it and confirmed something was off.
The governess went to the police.
The prolonged suspicions from police led to Dyer having or feigning a breakdown. During this, she would drink two bottles of laudanum in an attempt to take her own life. She would survive the attempt because of her long-time abuse of opium-based products building a tolerance to the drug.
Right after her breakdown, Dyer went right back to baby farming. This time she skipped certifying the deaths of babies in her care through doctors and just started disposing of the bodies herself. She would soon return to police suspicion as more and more parents wanted to reclaim their babies.
With this suspicion, Dyer moved her family to escape, restarting her “business” in the new location.
In 1893, Dyer would be discharged from her final committal at an asylum. Possibly she had a common experience inside an asylum for the time, stopping her from ever wanting to return even if it meant she was under police scrutiny.
Two years later Dyer would move to Caversham in Berkshire, accompanied by an associate called Jane Smith or Granny. Dyer and Smith would split the money from baby farming along with splitting with Dyer’s daughter Mary Ann and son-in-law Arthur Palmer. The four would move to Reading in the same year, putting on a family image in front of the women looking for their “service”.
The next recorded event was in January 1896 when Evelina Marmon, a 25-year-old barmaid, gave birth to her daughter, Dorris. She put an advert in newspapers looking for a “respectable woman to take a young child”. Coincidentally, next to her advert, there was a response from Mrs Harding.
“Married couple with no family would adopt a healthy child, nice country home. Terms, £10.”.
Evelina would meet Mrs Harding, one of Dyer’s aliases, eventually handing over £10, a box of children’s clothing and baby Dorris. Evelina struggled with the handover and travelled partway to where Dyer claimed to live before truly saying ‘see you later’ to her daughter. Her plan was to get back to work before reclaiming her child with a stable home.
A few days later Evelina received a letter to say Dorris was doing well and that was the last she would hear from Mrs Harding or her baby girl.
Dyer had taken Dorris to Willesden, London where Mary Ann was living at the time. In her home, Dyer used white edging tape used in dressmaking to strangle Dorris, a relatively slow death for the young baby. Dyer later told police that she liked to “watch them with the tape around their neck.”.
Once Dorris was dead, Mary Ann and Dyer wrapped her in a napkin. They set aside some clothes, the rest were given to a pawnbroker and a pair of boots were gifted to the landlady’s little girl.
The following day, April 1st 1896, a boy called Harry Simmons was taken to the home on Mayo Road. He and his family would be another victim of baby farming, his mother paying for Dyer to adopt the 13-month-old to give him a better life.
Dyer had run out of edging tape that day so she unwound the length she had used to kill Dorris and used it to murder Harry.
On the 2nd, both of the babies were put inside a carpet bag along with loose rocks and bricks and then tossed into the River Thames.
What Dyer didn’t know was that one of her previous victims dumped in the water had been discovered on March 30th.
Helena Fry was inside a package found by a bargeman, wrapped in paper that had a faintly legible name and an address printed on it. Mrs Thomas. This led to the home being put under police surveillance, Dyer was on the verge of getting caught.
On the 3rd, Dyer opened the door to what she expected to be another unsuspecting mother but instead, it was a well-planned police raid. Inside the home, police were hit by the stench of decomposition but were unable to find any remains inside. They found further evidence that linked Dyer to the murder of Helena and showed police the devasting success that Dyer had through baby farming.
From letters from concerned mothers looking for an update on their children to all the articles of clothing from different children around the home, police were able to work out that at least 20 children had gone through the care of “Mrs Thomas” in the past few months. From this, it is estimated that in the decades of her “career”, Dyer had over 400 victims.
On April 4th Amelia Dyer was arrested and charged with murder.
Six more of her victims were found while she was in custody as police dragged the Thames. Each baby had white edging tape tied around their necks and Dyer told police in an almost brag that it “was how you could tell it was one of mine.”.
A jury only spent four and a half minutes to find Dyer guilty. She was hung on six days after her arrest.
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