Murder, Mystery & Makeup
Caregiver to Killer: Amelia Dyer & The Dark World of Baby Farming
Tue, 11 Feb 2025
Hi friends, happy Tuesday! In the late 1800s, Amelia Dyer ran a group home for infants called a "baby farm"... But instead of helping these babies, what she did was unthinkable... Also, let me know who you want me to talk about next time. Hope you have a great rest of your week, make good choices and I'll be seeing you very soon. xo Bailey Sarian I sometimes talk about my Good Reads in the show. So here's the link if you want to check it out. IDK. lol: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/139701263-bailey ________ FOLLOW ME AROUND Tik Tok: https://bit.ly/3e3jL9v Instagram: http://bit.ly/2nbO4PR Facebook: http://bit.ly/2mdZtK6 Twitter: http://bit.ly/2yT4BLV Pinterest: http://bit.ly/2mVpXnY Youtube: http://bit.ly/1HGw3Og Snapchat: https://bit.ly/3cC0V9d Discord: https://discord.gg/BaileySarian RECOMMEND A STORY HERE: [email protected] Business Related Emails: [email protected] Business Related Mail: Bailey Sarian 4400 W. Riverside Dr., Ste 110-300 Burbank, CA 91505 _________ Get your first visit for only five dollars at https://www.Apostrophe.com/MAKEUP when you use our code: MAKEUP. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at https://www.SELECTQUOTE.com/MAKEUP. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://www.RocketMoney.com/MAKEUP today!
Chapter 1: Who was Amelia Dyer and why is she infamous?
Hi friends, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian, and today is Monday, which means it's Murder, Mystery, and Makeup Monday. Today, I'm excited because we have an audio exclusive. Oh yes, this is just for the podcast. This is just for you. I just want to give a disclaimer that today's episode does involve children and infants and death and murder. Hi. I'm sorry.
So listener discretion is advised. Today we're going to be talking about Amelia Dyer. Have you heard about her? Because I didn't. So let me tell you about her, okay? So she lived in the late 1800s, and if the estimates are accurate, she killed as many as 400 infants and children over the course of her life. Yes, you heard that number correctly, 400.
Again, these are estimates, but she was convicted of killing six. So it's between six to 400, the number's in there somewhere. And honestly, I think we can all agree that killing six alone is horrific in itself, right? Okay, thank you. I'm glad we agree. A lot of witnesses and neighbors at the time think that police only scratched the surface of what this woman did.
So take a journey back with me to Victorian era England, a time when young women were vilified and the government did nothing to help them. Amelia Dyer, she was born in 1838 in the southwest of England in an area called Pye Marsh. I believe it's Pye Marsh, okay? But this was like, I don't know, a little small town, a mining district, one would say, but it was near Bristol.
So she was the youngest of five children, and she was born into like a pretty respectable working class family. She was the daughter of a master shoemaker. Hello. So, you know, she had things to live up to. When Amelia was around five years old, her mom contracted typhus fever, okay?
So she gets this and she starts to experience hallucinations and other like mental health problems because of the typhus fever. She was going crazy, okay? And she ended up being admitted to a private asylum for treatment. And then eventually her mom, Amelia's mom, would return home. So just because her mom was home didn't mean things were better.
There was permanent brain damage to Sarah's mind, you know? And so the hallucinations, they would continue and they caused periods of mania. Her speech was also altered and dysfunctional. And then in 1848, Amelia's mother passed away. You know the saying, when it rains, it pours.
And that seemed to be the case for Amelia because after her mom passed away, then her two younger sisters, they both passed away from an illness called I'm making an assumption here, but Amelia ended up leaving school at the age of 14, I'm assuming because she probably needed to help take care of the house and work, but I don't know for sure.
But she left school at the age of 14 and she started an apprenticeship as a corset maker. And then sadly, her father ends up passing away of bronchitis. So now she, well, her parents are dead. Some of her sisters are dead. I mean, what the hell is she supposed to do? So she ends up living at a lodging house.
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Chapter 2: What was life like for Amelia Dyer in Victorian England?
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While her mom was gone, Polly didn't just lay around. She had a family business to run. She and her husband took out ads themselves, farming babies without Amelia. Of all the children they took in, only one child would survive and continue moving with them from house to house. Soon, Amelia returned and was ready to get back to her dark work.
But just as she did, newspapers in Bristol began to write stories about the many bodies of infants that were cropping up all over town. Police were once again circling her, and now her many neighbors began to take notice of Amelia's activities. They walked. They talked to police about their suspicions, noting the sheer numbers of babies and unwed mothers that came and went from her house.
But Amelia, Polly, and Arthur kept moving, leaving police constantly one step behind. By 1896, Amelia had stopped letting babies waste away and just began strangling them instead. That year, a barmaid named Evelina Marmon... placed an ad in a local Bristol newspaper, hoping to find a family to adopt her illegitimate daughter, Doris.
Coincidentally, Evelina saw an advertisement next to hers for a married couple looking to adopt a child. The name on the ad was listed as Miss Harding. Unbeknownst to Evelina, this was one of the many pseudonyms used by Amelia Dyer. Evelina reached out to Ms. Harding and arranged care for her daughter.
She hoped to arrange a schedule of week-to-week payments, as it was her intention to go back to work. and earn enough money to then reclaim her child. Amelia didn't agree to these terms and convinced Evelina to pay her a lump sum for the care of her daughter. Miss Harding, aka Amelia, claimed to be a married woman with no children of her own.
She convinced Evelina that she was not interested in taking a child just for payment, but because she and her husband were fond of children and having one would improve their home. Evelina was heartbroken to be unable to care for her own daughter, but sent her daughter with a box of her clothes to live with Miss Harding.
Evelina received one letter stating that everything was going according to plan with her daughter and sent a response. She would never receive a reply. Amelia ends up taking the girl to the London home her daughter was staying in. There, she used white edging tape to strangle the baby. The tape was normally utilized in dressmaking, which was just one of the many legit careers Amelia had attempted.
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