Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions
on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this
podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb.
And I'm Beth.
And we want to welcome you to episode number 37 of Dying to be Found.
We're so glad you're here today.
We appreciate our listeners.
And if you want a sticker, be sure to DM us on Instagram.
And please be sure to leave a five star review.
Let's see what Beth is up to today.
Hi Bethy Boo, what are you doing?
Well, I'm off today and I worked on more Christmas cards.
I know I said I was done with my 45, but I'm working on nine more for four dear friends.
Oh, now I will tell you this because it is so cool to go back and listen to everything
that we've recorded.
And I will tell you that when I was editing for some reason, when you said 45 cards, it
didn't come through.
The number 45 did not come through in the recording.
So now we're letting our listeners know that you are working on 45 Christmas cards.
And I'm saying that's a little too early for me.
I know you're always just sliding in, but the problem is I have Christmas presents I'm
making.
I wish I had that talent.
I just don't have the patience to do all that home crafting, which we all really need to
get back to.
If everything closed on Sundays, maybe we would have time.
Yeah, but you're the mastermind behind this podcast.
You know all the ins and outs can download this.
I don't know any of that.
So I'll stay in my stamp room.
I love it.
That's what makes us so diverse.
What makes you someone who looks forward to podcasting every week?
I look forward to seeing you because you're my sister.
But technically, I love the research because my mindset, that's what I do.
I'm glad you asked that because what keeps me going is that I feel like we're giving
the victims in our stories a voice because a lot of them happened a long time ago and
some of them that we've talked about are unsolved.
And so sometimes if you just resurface stories that kind of go on the wayside or you know,
forgotten unfortunately, bring it up.
Maybe somebody knows something.
That'll be cool if we can get some of these cases solved.
That would be awesome.
But I do have a question for you.
What?
If you were to live in an era besides the one we're in now, what would it be?
I love the Victorian era.
Why?
Because I'm a fashionista and I love all those clothes.
Of course I would have to be somebody that is well to do so that I could dress up and
change twice a day.
Oh, so do you think that you would fit right in with Downton Abbey?
Yes, I would.
Did you watch that series?
I did in the movie on the big screen.
Awesome.
Okay, I also love the English Victorian vibes.
I think that's cool.
I really do say I have an old soul.
So if I were to pick an era, I would also say the Victorian age because again, like
you, I love how people dressed.
There's a really cool show on PBS called Mr. Selfridge.
Have you seen that one?
No, I'll have to look for that.
It's kind of the same concept.
It's at the beginning of the turn of the 1900s.
Mr. Selfridge is a real man who started a retail line kind of like Sears Roebuck.
So he was an American salesman or an American businessman who opened retail stores over
in England.
And guess what?
What?
He's the one that coined the term, the customer is always right.
You're kidding.
I learned that.
Okay, you know me.
I'm going to look at something historical.
I'm going to watch it.
I'm going to read it, but I'm also going to be researching it at the same time.
And that's how I learned that he was the one that coined that phrase.
I like that.
And wasn't it nice the manners that the ladies and gentlemen had back then and no hooligans?
What is it you, the word you use?
Whackadoodles?
Yes, no Whackadoodles.
You're so right.
I did want to let you know I'm turning the script here because we are going to go back
to the Victorian era.
Cool.
Yeah.
And we're going to talk about Amelia Dyer.
And I do want to give a trigger warning to our listeners before we get started because
this can be a tough topic for a lot of people.
And I am going to be as respectful as possible, but we are talking about baby victims today.
Yes, I think that is a great warning.
I know my daughter has a hard time when it comes time for the children on our podcast.
Understandable.
Well, we're going to be talking about Amelia Dyer, who is also known as one of the most
prolific Victorian serial killers in British history.
She was born Amelia Elizabeth Hobbly in 1836 to Samuel and Sarah Hobbly in a small village
named Pile Marsh just east of Bristol, England.
Samuel was a master shoemaker and provided for his family the best he could.
Amelia's family was not rich by any means, but Samuel did have a good reputation around
town so that allowed him to bring in a steady income, which is good for those times, right?
Yes.
Amelia was the youngest of five siblings.
She loved to read and write and was especially fond of poetry.
Do you like poetry, Beth?
No.
Why not?
Because I don't understand a lot of it.
That's true.
During her humble upbringings, Amelia was very well educated and was considered to be a natural
caretaker.
When she was very young, Amelia's mother suffered from typhoid fever, which is a bacterial
infection that causes mental disease and it's usually transmitted by mosquitoes or lice.
When symptoms of typhoid fever or typhus include a rash and sensitivity to light, the infection
eventually attacks the brain and is known to cause delirium, which is what happened
to Amelia's mother.
That's sad.
Yeah.
That would be really hard to see your own mother like that.
Well, Sarah's mental health took a turn for the worse and the family could do very little,
to watch their mother's mental health deteriorate, just like you said.
So they were just bystanders watching it happen, unfortunately.
Yeah, that's very sad.
I had an older friend that had a very successful career as a missionary.
She went overseas.
Unfortunately, she was bit by a mosquito and developed typhoid fever.
Oh my.
She had hallucinations.
She didn't know where she was or anything.
And she was very ill, both physically and mentally and had to be sent home to Ontario
where she lived out the rest of her life with mental illness.
Now she started with her illness in her early thirties, late twenties.
What?
Yes.
So much life ahead of her and she still had her hallucinations throughout her life.
Wow.
I don't know too much about the fever, but of course that would be something I'd have
to research a little bit.
And that is so sad.
I mean, yeah, like you said, to be so young and have her life ahead of her, especially
if you knew her personality before she became ill.
And then of course watching somebody like that, I suppose it would be very similar to
Alzheimer's and I've witnessed people with Alzheimer's and it's difficult to watch.
Yes.
Sarah often became violent, which resulted in regular beatings for Amelia and her siblings.
Amelia looked after Sarah until her death in 1848, which would have been when Amelia
was somewhere around the age of 12 years old.
So she's caring for her mother at the age of 12 and then she loses her mother at that
age.
That is so hard.
There's a lot of hardship on Amelia having to play the mother role.
Yeah.
I wonder why though, because if she was the youngest of five siblings, why was she given
that responsibility?
I don't know.
Nothing I read alluded to anything.
What do you think?
Well, maybe she was the most responsible, even if she was the youngest.
I think there were other girls in the mix and of course back in the day, girls over
boys, boys would be helping around the house or on the farm or whatever they were doing,
but girls would probably be given that responsibility and maybe she just had a maturity about her
at that age and she was a natural caregiver.
True.
And maybe her mother trusted her more.
Agreed.
There's so many maybes.
There is.
Well, soon after her mother's death, Amelia went to go live with her aunt in Bristol and
it's speculated that the combination of Amelia's experiences might be one of the things that
Amelia held onto during her adult life causing deep resentments plus mental health issues.
As Amelia reached adulthood, her aunt sent her to intern with a corset maker, which will
come into play in just a little bit, Beth.
That will be interesting.
I'm anxious to hear about that.
Somewhere around the age of 24 or 25, Amelia married a man named George Thomas, who was
presumed to be in his late fifties.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, quite the age gap.
Both ended up lying about their ages because it looked odd to others and they added six
years to Amelia's age and deducted 11 years off of George.
Well, wasn't that clever of them.
But why?
Why would they?
Why would they, you ask?
Why would they, Deb?
Well, it just goes to show you that social pressure goes way back to the 1800s.
What a shame.
Yeah.
People are judging couples based on how much older he is.
It's not common, but to each his own.
Right.
Of course, those were different ages or different times.
During their marriage, George encouraged Amelia to go to nursing school where she became a
nurse and a midwife.
The couple had one child together, but because of their age difference, Amelia eventually
became a widow with a newborn.
And like many widows during that era, Amelia had to quickly find income and had heard about
this thing called baby farming.
Have you heard of that, Beth?
No, but I'm going to assume it's not good since we're talking about crimes here.
Is it similar to what H.H. Holmes did when he collected corpses for the medical schools?
Hmm.
Good question.
Sort of, but not exactly.
Because if you go back to our episode on H.H. Holmes, we talked about during that era, which
was probably a little bit later in time, but he was collecting skeletons because the medical
field was short on corpses during that era.
So he was collecting skeletons to make money.
In this case, Amelia had heard about that baby farming because it was also a moneymaker.
Because of the era, pregnancy out of wedlock was considered extremely taboo.
So in 1834, a Poor Law Amendment Act was drafted, which allowed men to take absolutely no responsibility
in fathering children, but it gave women a chance to foster out or adopt out their illegitimate
child.
What is this about the father not having to take any responsibility?
That is just plain ridiculous.
Yeah.
I think it just goes back to, it's just a time of where people were struggling financially.
It was hard to find jobs.
And of course, even if you were farming, then maybe you could only go so far as far as the
crops that you could sell out.
It was just hard times financially.
It was, but I just still think that it's really a hard thing to-
Encourage men to be absentee fathers?
Yes.
Bingo.
Yeah, well, here's my deal on that.
How is it okay to have an absentee father, but you're going to judge a single mother?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, I don't think it's too much different in today's age, but-
It's not.
The baby farming era was not anything like today's fostering or adoption process.
But I will say, Beth, that this case did change how babies were processed through the system
in the future after I finished telling you what Amelia had done.
I'm very interested in hearing about that.
I can't imagine.
Well, in Victorian times, mothers would be charged a fee to have their children fostered
or adopted out.
Many times, they never went back to check on their babies because of that social stigma
and shame that went along with it.
All single mothers could do was assume that their child was being well taken care of.
Well, you would think they would be if they're paying good money.
Sure, and they're getting assurances from the people that they're sending their babies
to.
Mothers would often answer ads in the newspaper.
In 1869, one of these ads read, quote, highly respectable married couple wish to adopt child,
good home, premium required, unquote.
Of course, since Amelia was a midwife, it was easy for her to win over these mothers.
She was quite convincing and assured the mothers that their child would be well taken care
of.
Naturally, baby farming became quite the lucrative business for Amelia, as she always demanded
upfront payments.
And if you go back to the ad that she had, the premium required pretty much tells you
that you were going to have to pay to place the baby with her.
Oh, and she charged depending on the health of each child, but she could easily collect
anywhere upwards of 80 pounds, which is 90 in US dollars or 123 Canadian dollars.
Just trying to put that into perspective for you.
That's a lot back then.
Oh gosh, yes, absolutely.
Now remember, this was the 1800s, so today that 8,000 pounds would equate to almost 9,000
US dollars or 12,405 Canadian dollars today.
Holy cow.
I mean, I think that's average if you think about it.
It's expensive to adopt babies.
It is, but it would seem to me that with the fees like those days, mothers could keep their
children and raise them themselves.
What do you think of that?
Oh my gosh, you are so right.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think that was just the thing though.
They were probably worried that they couldn't make ends meet.
And if they just made a weekly salary and they were able to give that over to whoever,
but Amelia demanded fees upfront.
So imagine paying that kind of money in one lump sum.
That would be tough.
And remember though, that being an unwed mother during that era was frowned upon.
True enough.
By 1872, Amelia eventually remarried for a second time to a man named William Dyer.
The couple had two more children together, but eventually separated just a few years
later.
And of course, Amelia went back to baby farming and made an honest go of it for a couple of
years.
However, it is believed that a combination of the death of her first husband, plus the
trauma that she may have experienced watching her own mother's mental health deteriorate,
that this began to have an effect on Amelia's own mental capacities.
And that makes sense.
If she's watching her own mother, she wouldn't know any better how to behave or act because
it was normal.
Exactly.
So true, and she was 12 years old and that's still an impressionable age.
It is, sadly.
Yeah.
Amelia did all but take good care of the children that she later took in.
In fact, Beth, she took several avenues to get rid of these children.
Oh, do tell.
She often neglected and even starved them to death.
And I heard that's a horrible way to die.
Oh, that's horrible.
Even worse, the children's deaths didn't happen soon enough for Amelia, so she took measures
to speed up the process.
I hate to hear what comes next.
Amelia would overdose the babies with an opioid syrup meant to calm crying babies.
And depending on the health of the children Amelia took in, their deaths could take anywhere
between several days and even the same day before they died.
That's brutal.
Yeah.
It was one of the signs of the times.
Infant mortality rates were considerably high and Amelia felt that it was rather safe to
call the doctor to report these sudden deaths.
In order to obtain a death certificate, doctors eventually became suspicious of Amelia when
they noticed a large number of children were dying under her care.
Well, I'm glad it was being noticed.
These doctors did report her, Beth, to the authorities, but Amelia only received charges
of neglect and was given six months of hard labor.
Couldn't be enough.
I've never heard of a woman getting hard labor.
Neither have I.
I wonder what they did.
Did they break up rocks at the side of the railroad track?
I don't know.
After she served her time, Amelia took this as a lesson learned.
She began to move around often and continued to farm more babies.
By this time, she stopped taking the children that she was caring for to the doctor, either
for treatment or for a death certificate.
Instead, she continued to collect the baby farming fees from desperate mothers, starve
their children to death, and dispose of the bodies around town or in the Thames River.
That's pretty horrifying.
Yeah.
The babies would often be wrapped in packing paper before she disposed of them.
Anytime that Amelia felt that police might be getting close to her, to identifying her
as a suspect, she would check herself into a mental asylum.
What do you think of that?
Well, that's pretty clever of her.
Yeah.
Very manipulative, I think.
Yes, very.
She also kept on the move and had several aliases to keep up her image to unwed mothers
and to keep the police off her trail.
I think she would have a lot of aliases too going into the mental asylum because she would
know how to act when she needed to act.
You're right.
Well, during one of her, and I'll call it a foster, the mother returned to check up
on her child, which was very unusual, of course, because I had mentioned that it's shameful
for the mothers to give up their babies or to even be a single mother.
Right.
Because most mothers who farm out their babies never come back into contact with the child
that they gave up because it was very humiliating.
However, this one mother named Evelina Marmon showed up to check on her baby, Dolores.
And while she was holding Dolores, Evelina went to look for a birthmark that she knew
that her child had, but there was none, Beth.
What?
Yeah.
Amelia had given her a different baby.
Get out of here.
I mean, wouldn't you know, I don't care what the separation time would be.
Wouldn't you know your own baby?
Yes, most definitely.
Yeah.
Before Evelina could take her suspicions to the police, Amelia disappeared, likely back
into the insane asylum.
Yes, that sounds very plausible.
Well, because of her nursing training, Amelia knew how to manipulate that situation.
Like we had mentioned, she would check herself in and put on a very good show for the hospital
staff for a few months before she was released.
This seemed to help keep visits away from the law enforcement, which gave Amelia time
to move towns and to change her identity.
I'm starting to see familiarity among these criminals.
Do you say?
Well, it's like H.H.
Holmes.
He would go to different towns and woo a woman and then he would bring her back and then
he'd use different names.
He would have different signatures for different companies he worked with.
It just seems like they all have that same mentality.
You are so right.
There's definitely no handbook for this, but it's got to be in the genetic makeup of these
criminals.
Yes, I believe that's right, Deb.
I mean, in childhood development, you've got so many different personalities and you know
within the first five years how essential those years are in your development.
Very.
But if you are missing something because of how you were raised or what you were exposed
to, you're right.
It's very interesting that they would have those same traits.
But me, I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so it's just an opinion, folks.
So did they ever catch Amelia?
Well, they did.
For almost 30 years, Amelia successfully farmed babies without ever getting caught.
Six babies in total were eventually discovered, but the one found in the Thames River led
police back to Amelia's house.
And you're not going to believe this.
What?
I'm very interested.
A bargeman who was traveling up the Thames River through reading noticed a parcel floating
by the riverbank and used his boat hook to reel it in.
A baby girl was later identified as Helena Frye, and she was wrapped in the packing paper
like the others and had dressmaking tape around her neck.
I just want to mention, what did I say Amelia was doing when she went to go live with her
aunt?
She was she interned as a dressmaker or corset maker.
When police were called in, they noticed a name and address of a woman named Mrs. Thomas
in the corner of the package.
This was one of Amelia's aliases.
Wow.
Can you believe that she was stupid enough to package a child with her address inside
of the box?
Pretty cocky of her thinking she'd never get caught.
So true.
Mrs. Thomas was one of the names that Amelia went by to elude police or to draw single
mothers in.
Upon further investigation, neighbors had told police that Mrs. Thomas had moved.
So she must have known they were on to her.
When they searched the apartment, police could clearly smell human decomposition, but found
no bodies on the property.
That's awful.
Yeah.
They did discover, however, receipts for baby farming advertisements, some telegrams showing
adoption arrangements, letters from mothers who were requesting to see their baby, and
a sewing basket with dressmaker's tape, similar to what was found around several of the baby's
necks who were discovered around town.
And this was enough to send police back to the Thames River to dredge it up in the area
where baby Helena had been found.
And this is when they recovered another six bodies, Beth.
Wow.
I'm sure she did a lot more than that.
Oh, yes.
Each of these babies that they had found had dressmaker tape wrapped around their necks,
which at this point had become Amelia's signature.
One of the babies that they had recovered was Doris Marmon.
And this is Evelina's baby who had that birthmark that her mother was looking for on the day
that she came to check on Doris.
Get out.
Yep.
Once police located the baby, police called Evelina in to identify her, then began to
make a pretty great effort in tracking Amelia down at this point.
Oh, how devastating to poor mom.
Oh, I know.
Once they located Amelia, they did not immediately arrest her.
Instead, they placed her under surveillance, and with the help of Evelina, they used her
as a decoy by placing an ad in the paper asking for someone to adopt her baby.
How brave of Evelina to do something like that, knowing what Amelia had done to her
own child.
Yes, for sure.
Amelia was the one to respond to her ad.
And when Amelia set up a time to meet with Evelina, the police rushed in and arrested
her.
They found that Amelia took full blame and admitted to the baby murders to a jailhouse
chaplain saying that she knew the babies that had been recovered were hers based on the
tape found around their neck.
That's interesting.
I wonder why she had tape around their necks.
She choked them to death.
She strangled them.
Some, if it didn't happen quick enough, she strangled them.
But they were starved.
Did I not tell you that?
Sorry, folks.
Okay.
In March 1896, Amelia was tried for the murder of the first baby that police had discovered.
She pled insanity for the other six murders based on being admitted to insane asylums.
So she was using that as a ploy.
Yeah.
She knew what she was doing.
Oh, sure.
She did.
However, the jury saw right through her and found her guilty in just four and a half minutes.
That's a record.
Yeah.
I like that.
Mm-hmm.
Amelia was sentenced to death and died by hanging on June 10th, 1896 at the age of 57.
Her last words, what do you think she might have said before she died, Beth?
Maybe an apology?
No.
She literally said, quote, I have nothing to say, unquote.
What do you think?
That's horrible.
She has grandiose ideas of herself.
Has no conscience.
Exactly.
No conscience at all.
Was poor parents.
Police believe that although Amelia was charged with only one death, she could have killed
as many as 400.
Oh my gosh.
They also believe that had they not been led to little Helena Fry, Amelia likely would never
have been caught.
And after Amelia's death, adoption laws became much, much stricter in the UK.
Fantastic.
Mm-hmm.
Some experts compared Amelia's actions with Jack the Ripper due to their similarities.
I thought that was pretty interesting.
And I did see that in several articles.
So I fact checked that one, but I found it quite interesting that they would compare
her to Jack the Ripper.
Yeah.
Amelia and Jack the Ripper occurred during the same era.
And many believe that with Amelia's background as a midwife, she may have performed botched
abortions on area prostitutes who later fell into Jack the Ripper's hands.
Wow.
That's something.
And it's very interesting to see how these two cases are connected.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I know one day you're going to do Jack the Ripper for us, Beth.
So remember this case.
See if we can find that comparison.
I will.
Okay.
Well, there you have it.
That is the story of Amelia Dyer, which, wow, I've never heard of her before.
So I thought this was a very interesting case to go back that far.
Yes, for sure.
Because I never heard of her neither.
Okay.
Well, there you have it.
That's Amelia Dyer.
So Deb, what's our teachable moment for today?
Well, I know that background checks were definitely not possible in that day and time period,
but today you can't be too careful.
Newspaper ads have turned into dating websites and social media connections.
And Beth, you know that John and I met the old fashioned way, right?
Is it old fashioned?
No, folks.
John and I met online.
Yeah, we did.
And I'm proud of it.
You two are just a perfect pair together.
We are.
We have a lot of fun together.
John, if you're listening to this, I love you.
Hey, all kidding aside, spend some time getting to know that person that you meet online and
agree to go out with.
You better believe that I found out as much as I could.
Yeah, John, if you're listening, I found out as much as I could about you before I met
you.
What?
Yep, I sure did.
The internet is my friend.
But don't worry what other people are going to think of you.
Do your homework.
Your life could depend on it.
But like today's case with Amelia Dyer, you can be anybody that you want to be in an ad.
And in today's terms, Beth, do you know what that's called?
No, but you're going to tell me.
I sure am.
It's called catfishing.
Have you heard of that?
Yes, Dr. Phil has catfishing on his show all the time.
There we go.
So Amelia Dyer was a catfish.
Okay.
Obviously, it's human nature to behave that way and find out as much as you can about
who you're going to meet up with.
Then make sure that they can validate who they are, who they make themselves out to
be.
And that's it, Beth.
That's my teachable moment.
And that's a great one again.
And that's a wrap.
That is a wrap.
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