The Infanticide of Amelia Dyer

The Infanticide of Amelia Dyer

 

"You’ll know all mine by the tape around their necks.". - Amelia Dyer

Amelia Dyer is a women who manages to embody quite a few truths all at once, given the gravity of her crimes and the manner in which history has ultimately treated those crimes. 'Amelia Dyer' is not a name that rolls off the tongues of many people today, even though these same people would be able to name serial killers like Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos.

There is a common perception today that the media has a tendency to sensationalize the trials of serial killers and other monsters more than the media of the past ever did. However, history shows us that if anything, people in the past turned murder into even more of a spectacle than the people of today. They had dramatic public executions for their murderers. The trial of Amelia Dyer was one of the most sensationalized trials in all of history, rivaling the trials of modern murderers like O.J. Simpson. However, she was hanged in a manner that was as dispassionate as the manner in which she murdered at least three hundred babies.

Amelia Dyer managed to be emblematic of a greater social evil in Victorian society: infanticide. Dead infants filled the streets in Victorian Britain to the point where the police did not even investigate what happened to them. Women who had illegitimate children during this time period were not allowed to work in any field other than the illegal and stigmatized field of prostitution, and the fathers were not legally obligated to care for the children.

 

People may remember the character of Fantine from Les Miserables as an emblematic example of a fictional woman caught up in this situation. Fantine took the route of prostitution and poverty. Other women put their babies in the baby farms in order to get rid of them and avoid the life of horror they would have to endure instead. Lots of the women who did this did not want to think about what went on in these baby farms. They hoped that their babies would be adopted in these baby farms, but these institutions certainly could not be regulated under the circumstances.

A baby farm murderer like Amelia Dyer was essentially taking advantage of these poor women who were in a desperate situation and exploiting a greater social evil for her own sadistic desires. Amelia Dyer managed to carry on as a serial killer of infants for an astonishing thirty years, taking advantage of a society that dehumanized illegitimate children. She may have taken in six babies a day according to some reports, killing ten infants a year. She killed the children who could not be adopted. Since baby farms were not legal and the situation was a dire one, even many of the people who might have wanted to stop her felt powerless to do so.

Amelia Dyer was executed in 1896, and the photographic evidence of her shows a woman who seems completely ordinary. It is hard to imagine this simple elderly midwife committing hundreds or even thousands of murders. Her story demonstrates the fact that evil people hide in the shadows that society creates for them.

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