Women’s History Month
Victorian “Angel Maker” Amelia Dyer Murdered As Many As 400 Children
Killer women throughout history
Times were hard in 19th century Britain and birth control was sketchy. So, it wasn’t uncommon for desperately poor unmarried mothers to place their children in the care of someone they believed could afford them a better life. There was a fee for this, but many would scrape together the funds or garner them from those who preferred their indiscretions remain secret (like the fathers or wealthy parents).
In some cases, these women were right and gave their babies to homes that could not have children otherwise. They welcomed a child to care for and treated it as their own. In others, they were handing over their children to monsters who would then use them as unpaid servants, laborers, or worse, subject them to gross abuses.
Then, there is the woman named Amelia Dyer. Dyer would take the money and the child off their hands, then simply strangle the infant and dump the body in the River Thames. You’d think that someone would have put a stop to this early on, but no — the woman who would eventually be nicknamed “Angel Maker” and “Ogress of Reading” carried on this practice for thirty years, reportedly making her Britain’s most prolific serial killer.
