Original subtitles

[tense music]

[barge man] look, a package.

[tense music]

Let's get it.

[suspenseful music]

Yeah.

Let's see what's inside.

[suspenseful music swells]

[men groan in disgust]

[dramatic music]

[tense music]

[announcer] step back in time,

[dramatic music]

Discover a place,

Investigate a crime,

And reveal,

A murderous history.

[ominous tone]

[electricity crackles]

[dramatic music]

[siren blaring in distance]

Hello, I'm iszi lawrence.

I'm a history presenter, broadcaster, and author,

And what I want to tell you is a story

Which shocked british society

To its core.

[dramatic music]

But, this isn't about the country today.

This is about the crime of the century

That played out here over a 100 years ago

And forever changed the way britain

Treated its most vulnerable.

-[bell tolls] -in the 1890's,

You could argue that britain was the hub of the planet.

[ambient music]

It was at the center of the british empire,

-[horn blows] -which by now,

Covered almost a quarter of the world's surface.

Queen victoria, who gave her name to the period,

Had been on the throne for over 60 years,

And her long reign saw industrial capitalism

Turn the country into an economic powerhouse.

But, while some prospered,

[ominous music]

Many were left behind

With no safety net.

It's this setting that reveals

Probably the darkest crime that I know,

And the most sinister side of life in victorian britain.

[bell tolls]

[dog barking in distance]

Our story begins on the 21st of January 1896,

A working class barmaid called evelina marmon is pregnant.

[heavy panting]

[dramatic music]

She is about to give birth.

[groans deeply]

But, the father is not in the picture.

The baby she's about to bring into the world

Will be considered a bastard child,

And this comes with a host of problems.

[evelina groans]

[narrator] in the 19th century,

Respectable british society

Had harsh views on unmarried mothers.

The victorians very much idolized femininity,

And the principal role of women

Was to be a mother and to the angel of the house,

So, basically, to care for the domestic setting.

[narrator] women could not vote.

They were traditionally seen

As subordinate to their husbands,

And were meant to follow strict codes of etiquette,

Such as hiding the legs above the ankle

And wearing restrictive crinolines.

Even the most powerful woman in the land,

Queen victoria,

Conformed to these ideals.

She remained faithfully devoted to her husband albert,

Long after his death,

Wearing only black for the next 40 years.

This set an example for women in all levels of society.

[buckley] women whose behavior didn't conform

Would really cause a scandal.

So, for example, women who had sex outside of marriage

If they were working class women,

They were often considered to be fallen women,

And there were pitied.

Other people in society, usually middle class people,

Would try to reform them,

And to help them to lead decent lives.

[narrator] but even many reformers

Would not help a fallen woman who was pregnant.

If you found yourself pregnant outside wedlock

And had no support from the father,

Your options were extremely limited.

Abortion was illegal.

Backstreet abortions were available,

But extremely dangerous.

[dramatic music]

One option might be to go back to your family

And hope that they would take you in,

But, of course, the stigma associated

With an unmarried pregnant woman,

Might be such that, that option would fail.

[dramatic music]

In the 19th century, an awful lot of female suicides

Were the result of finding yourself pregnant

In a world that was very hostile towards you.

[dramatic music]

[baby whimpers]

[lawrence] evelina gives birth to a healthy baby girl

Called doris.

Now while this would be a time of celebration,

For most people, for evelina it is not.

Both of elena's parents have already passed away.

She has no one to rely on.

She has to work to look after her daughter,

But how is she going to do that?

She's a barmaid.

How's she going to feed herself,

Let alone pay rent?

[dramatic music]

[narrator] britain's rapid growth led to as many as

30% of people in some big cities living in deep poverty.

[dog barks in distance]

Earlier in the century,

In efforts to control population

And reduce financial burden,

The government had introduced new poor laws,

Including one on bastardy.

[dramatic music]

This transferred full financial responsibility

For a child onto its mother

And prevented her from claiming money

From the father or from the state.

So not only were single mothers cast out,

They were punished,

While the man bore no responsibility.

[child laughs]

They felt that actually

If a young woman didn't have any financial support

And were stigmatized by the community,

Then that would possibly deter them

From ever having the child in the first place.

[tense music]

[narrator] while the unpopular law

Was overturned by the 1890's,

The stigma remained,

And many women were still reluctant to make a claim.

The final result, really, for women like that,

Was at the workhouse.

[people clamoring]

[narrator] state run workhouses

Were victorian britain's answer to poverty,

Where food and shelter were exchanged

For grinding manual labor.

[metal thuds]

Being poor and destitute

Was commonly viewed as a moral failing,

And a drain on public funds.

Life in workhouses was intentionally grim,

So that people would be desperate to stay out of them

And find other work.

Generally speaking,

A workhouse was as good or bad as the people running it.

Some of the big urban workhouses

Were absolutely brutal,

Cold rooms, neglect, physical and verbal abuse.

[people shouting]

[narrator] these prison-like conditions

Made them the last resort for everyone,

Including single mothers,

Who often had to leave their children there

In order to work.

[baby cries]

-[dramatic music] -[children laughing]

Many women were desperate

For better options for their babies.

-[children shouting] -[children laughing]

[dramatic music]

[horses trotting]

[doris cries]

[lawrence] evelina marmon is in trouble.

[doris cries]

Doris is now a couple of months old,

But evelina cannot pay rent.

She's running out of money,

And she can't bare to send doris to the workhouse.

What is she going to do?

Many women in evelina's situation may have been pushed

To take drastic measures such as abandoning their child.

[ominous music]

Mothers will choose a quiet place

Where there weren't very many people.

[suspenseful music]

Babies were found, for example, under bridges,

Or on pieces of open ground, in church yards.

[jackson] at the end of the day if you abandoned a child,

You can tell yourself that that child will be found.

That child will be picked up by somebody

And will have a better life.

[narrator] sadly many children who were abandoned,

Ended up dying of exposure.

[tense music]

In 1896, the metropolitan police carried out a survey,

And they discovered that in total

There were 208 abandoned babies

Found deceased in the metropolis,

So that was just one year and in one city.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] at this time there were

Few laws to protect children.

Those that did exist

Were often poorly enforced,

Despite the work of newly founded

Child protection organizations.

[lawrence] with such little intervention,

Some mothers, like evelina,

Might be left to resort to the darkest

And most horrifying option of all.

But, is she really desperate enough to kill her own child?

[doris cries]

-[ominous music] -[thunder rumbles]

It's now the 30th of March, 1896.

Two weeks later

And 40 miles up the river thames from london,

What's about to be discovered

Will send ripples across victorian britain.

[water sloshes]

-[dramatic music] -[bird squawks]

[lawrence] on this cold spring day,

A bargeman and his cargo boat

Are making their way along the river thames

Towards a town called reading.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] in the 1890's,

The river thames at reading was a very busy waterway.

Due to its proximity to the capital,

Reading became a vital trading port

Between london and other cities to the west.

[dramatic music]

And just like today,

All passing water traffic had to slow down

To go through the loc beside caversham weir.

[birds squawking]

[insects chitterling]

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] as the bargeman approaches the weir,

He notices a small package bobbing in the water,

And he fishes it out.

What could it be?

Well, it could be anything.

There could be money in it,

And lost treasure, perhaps.

But as the bargeman looks inside, he is appalled.

-[suspenseful music] -for what he discovers,

Is the body of a small infant.

He's obviously incredibly shocked

And incredibly shaken by it,

And he immediately goes to the police.

[dramatic music]

-[horse whinnies] -[horse trotting]

[narrator] by the 1890's,

The british police had been around for over 60 years.

The first professional force in britain,

London's metropolitan, was set up in 1829,

To respond to escalating crime rates

With a long and visible arm of the law.

[people shouting]

They were a new concept, a new idea,

Which was designed to sweep away the old systems of policing.

It was hierarchical.

It was uniformed.

They were able to arrest and detain people.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] by the 1890's, most towns and cities,

Including reading, had a police force

And even their own specialized detective branches

Dedicated to investigating crime.

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] detective constable james anderson

Is brought in to investigate,

And he works with a police surgeon

To conduct a post-mortem on the infant.

This case hits at the core of anderson

Because he is a father himself.

He has five children,

And his youngest is only two-years-old,

And so he wants to do everything he can

To find out who abandoned the baby and why they did it.

[ominous music]

[watson] it would have been really very difficult

To identify an unknown child or its mother,

Because the forensic techniques that we now take for granted,

Were in their infancy,

For example, the use of fingerprints or blood testing.

But that doesn't mean that the police were without options.

They were actually very skilled investigators,

And officers were trained to examine

All aspects of a crime scene, the body certainly,

But also items found on or near the body.

[dramatic music]

They firstly find that she was a baby girl

Of a healthy weight.

But what was interesting

Was that she was inside a lot of wrapping.

Someone had gone to great lengths

To disguise her body as much as possible.

So to somebody walking past,

She just looked like any old bundle, really,

Nothing important.

[dramatic music]

But just because somebody wanted to disguise

That this infant had died,

Doesn't necessarily mean that there was foul play.

[watson] in fact, there are many possible reasons

For why someone might've done this.

A mother or indeed a father

Might have had a child die of natural causes,

But wanting to avoid the cost of a funeral,

Or the cost of a doctor,

They might decide to quietly dispose of it in such a manner.

[dramatic music]

[buckley] the infant mortality rate

Was high throughout the victorian period,

Largely due to poverty, disease, and malnutrition,

And, in fact, in some parts of the country,

Particularly the urban areas,

It could rise to 25% of children dying

Before they reach their first birthday.

[jackson] unfortunately, to see dead babies

On the streets of victorian britain,

The literature would suggest that it was as common

As seeing road kill is today.

[people chattering in distance]

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] but then they discover a damning clue.

It's clear that this child did not die of natural causes,

Because around her little throat is a piece of cord,

A bit of white tape that's been wrapped around

And tied in a knot by her ear.

[suspenseful music]

And it's clear that she's been strangled to death.

[suspenseful music]

But what they don't know is who did it and why.

[doris cries]

Just two weeks earlier

Evelina marmon, a 25-year-old barmaid,

Had been struggling with her infant daughter doris,

And she was about to take a drastic step.

[suspenseful music]

[doris cries]

[pensive music]

But instead of committing a crime she'd live to regret,

She writes a notice in a newspaper that says,

"wanted: Respectable woman to take a young child at home."

[narrator] a century before the internet,

Newspapers were one of the only ways

To advertise products on a national scale.

With literacy rates at an all-time high,

Ads could reach a wider readership than ever before,

And in a society where the state offered

Such meager support for single mothers,

This free market gave them one viable option.

So there were no formal adoption agencies

Operating throughout the victorian period,

And there were few regulations.

It was perfectly legal to pass your child onto someone else.

If you wished to keep

An illegitimate child secret,

Then the only thing you could really do

Was advertise in the newspaper.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] mothers would list their offspring

In the miscellaneous section of the newspaper,

Either as a nurse child,

A term for a foster child,

Or for permanent adoption.

At the same time, childless couples would place ads

Looking for children to take in

And usually adopters charged a fee

For this type of transaction.

It was almost as if children were objects for sale.

[carriage rattles on street]

[bell tolls in distance]

[solemn music]

On the 18th of March, 1896,

Evelina is checking the newspaper

To see if she can find her advert,

And as she's searching,

She gets distracted by another advert just below hers.

It says, "couple with no child want care of,

Or would adopt one, ten pounds."

[gentle music]

Now, ten pounds is a huge amount of money

To somebody like evelina.

Around $1,500. U.S. Dollars today.

I mean, that would take several months wages

For her to earn that source of money,

But here is a lovely young couple

Willing to give her daughter a home.

[pensive music]

So she quickly writes back to the advert to this couple,

In the hope that they'll be able to give doris

A happy and healthy upbringing.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] but often ads weren't placed

By real adoptive parents at all.

They were actually placed by people known as baby farmers.

Baby farming was a common and legal victorian practice,

Whereby, children would be farmed out to a stranger

In exchange for regular cash

Or a one-off fee from the mother,

Almost like a for-profit orphanage.

[buckley] baby farmers were generally

Former nurses or midwives,

And they offered a range of services.

So it might be that working parents

Place their child with a baby farmer on a daily basis,

So it was like victorian daycare,

Or, alternatively, a baby farmer

Could arrange a formal adoption.

[narrator] there was a mutual understanding

That baby farmers often used false identities

In order to keep such exchanges private.

In cases of adoption,

This ensured a clean transaction,

So mothers would not be tempted

To take back their children later.

For many mothers,

Especially those with illegitimate children,

Baby farming was a lifeline,

Providing a secret forum,

In which, to manage their shameful crisis.

[horses trotting on street]

[people chattering in distance]

[gentle piano music]

[lawrence] a couple of days later,

Evelina receives a letter.

[gentle music]

"dear madam, in reference

To your letter of adoption of a child, I beg to say,

I shall be glad to have a little baby girl,

One that I can bring up and call my own.

First, I must tell you we are plain homely people,

Fairly good circumstances.

We live in our own house

And have a good and comfortable home.

We're out in the country,

And sometimes I'm alone a great deal.

A child with me will have a good home

And a mother's love and care.

Yours, mary harding."

This woman seems to have fallen

Out of heaven into evelina's lap.

She sounded a perfect mother for her baby doris.

I mean, most people can't even

Afford a room in the 19th century!

This lady had an entire house!

How could evelina say no?

[whistle blows]

[dramatic music]

It's now 11 days later,

And evelina has agreed to meet

Mrs. Harding to exchange the baby.

Now you have to imagine the scene.

This is the first time these two women meet,

[dramatic music]

And evelina has to hand her baby

Over to a complete stranger.

She may have had doubts,

But she's in a desperate situation.

[solemn music]

[doris whimpers]

Somehow she's managed to raise

This enormous sum of ten pounds.

Maybe she borrowed the money,

Or maybe she even stole for it.

[doris whimpers]

[doris cries]

And before she can change her mind,

She leaves.

A couple of days after the exchange,

Evelina receives a letter from mrs. Harding

Telling her how well doris is doing,

And evelina is reassured and writes back

And asks after doris again.

[ominous music]

But she receives no reply,

And so she waits a few days,

And then sends another letter.

[suspenseful music]

And, again, receives no reply.

I mean, maybe she's getting paranoid,

But she starts to deeply worry about her daughter.

[sobbing gently]

"why isn't ms. Harding writing back?

Is doris still okay?"

[sobbing gently]

[dramatic music]

[birds chirping]

The police are investigating the death of an infant,

Who's been found in the thames.

They know that this child was murdered,

But they still don't know who it belonged to

And why they wanted to kill it.

So they first go to all of the local homes

And asks if anybody's missing a baby

Or if anybody knows any children who are missing.

[dramatic music]

[wise] the workhouse would have been

One of the obvious first places to look

Because if a young woman had

Given birth in secret and alone,

She would probably be in need of medical attention.

[narrator] there was very little public health care

In victorian britain.

While the rich could afford private doctors,

Most people went to charitable hospitals

Where they paid a fee according to their income,

And for the very poorest,

The infirmary wing of the workhouse was the only option.

But there are no missing infants that they can find,

So anderson goes back to the packaging.

Now it was dried.

He was able to peel it apart very carefully,

And he has a look through the different layers of paper.

And he discovered that one of them

Has a faded address on it.

And he's just able to make out the address of mrs. Thomas,

Pickets road, reading.

[watson] finding a name and address on the packaging

Gives the police a really good place to start.

If the name isn't that of the actual mother,

It might be that of someone who's related to her,

And the address might be that of a landlady.

[knocking on door]

[lawrence] anderson immediately goes to pickets road

To see if he can track down mrs. Thomas,

But when he knocks on the door,

He finds that she's not inside.

She's moved on.

Anderson is undeterred.

He'd noticed that the packaging

Also had a postage stamp on it.

This means it's been through the postal system,

Which must mean it's been through reading station.

[dramatic music]

So anderson goes to reading station,

And the clerk there wonderfully,

Not only recognizes the name,

He also has a forwarding address for mrs. Thomas.

She doesn't live at pickets road anymore.

She's moved to the other side of town

To a street called kensington road.

[dramatic music]

[buckley] kensington road is quite close

To the center of the town of reading,

And in the 1890's,

It was a densely populated area

With tightly packed tenement housing,

Often rented by workers from the factories.

[tense music]

[narrator] many british towns and cities

Had crowded working-class neighborhoods like this one,

Which sprang up to serve growing industries.

[dramatic music]

Properties were usually rented,

And these areas often had transient populations,

Making it more difficult to track people's movements.

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] the police go to kensington road.

But before they act,

They set up surveillance on the house.

They want to establish

If mrs. Thomas is the child's mother

And how she is connected to the murder.

[narrator] long before security cameras,

Investigations in these neighborhoods

Relied on intelligence from witnesses.

But by the late 19th century,

Undercover surveillance was also being developed

As a way of gathering stronger evidence.

[insects chirping]

[lawrence] from their investigations,

It soon becomes apparent,

That a lot of shady activity has been going on.

There have been reports of women arriving and leaving the house,

Sometimes with infants sometimes without,

And anderson starts to suspect

That mrs. Thomas may be a baby farmer.

[narrator] while baby farming itself was not illegal,

There were regulations that baby farmers had to follow.

Baby farms were required

To be registered with the local authorities,

And there were limits on numbers

Of how many children they could care for.

However, these rules were not strictly enforced

And very rarely complied with.

[narrator] in order to maximize profit,

Many baby farmers took in more children

Than they were meant to,

Or sold them on quickly to other baby farmers

For a higher price.

[lawrence] the police believe mrs. Thomas

May have been operating just such a business,

And, more importantly,

They suspect the deceased infant

Might have passed through here before she was killed.

Anderson knows he has to act fast.

He needs access to the house,

But he can't spook her.

She is a major flight risk at this point,

So he comes up with a cunning scheme.

[tense music]

[narrator] in the 19th century,

It wasn't only fictional detectives

Like sherlock holmes

Who practiced crafty methods of investigation.

Real life police detectives

Also pioneered new and highly experimental techniques.

-[horses trotting] -[dramatic music]

Detectives at this time really had to be quite innovative.

It was a constant cat and mouse game between them

And the criminals they were pursuing.

So they had to adopt techniques

And methods that the criminals might not expect.

One of these was to don a disguise

To attempt to find out what was going on

To try to trick criminals into giving themselves away.

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] in order to catch mrs. Thomas in the act,

Anderson sends a decoy,

A woman pretending that she needs a baby farmed out.

[jackson] women in policing is still in its infancy.

So it's very likely to have been family or friends

Or potentially even the wives of the officers

That were involved.

[gentle music]

[lawrence] when mrs. Thomas opens the door,

She's a bit wary,

But eventually invites her inside.

The two women negotiate,

And in the end, the decoy agrees to bring the baby

To mrs. Thomas's house that evening.

And now the final stage is set.

Mrs. Thomas has given herself away.

At the appointed hour,

It's not the woman who knocks at the door.

[suspenseful music]

[knocking on door]

It's the police,

And they go about searching mrs. Thomas' house.

What they discover will blow the investigation wide open

And horrify victorian society.

-[dramatic music] -[bell tolls]

[people chatting]

As the police search mrs. Thomas' house,

They find strong evidence

That she is indeed a baby farmer

And a prolific one at that.

Not only are there the receipts of all the adverts

That she's been placing in the newspapers,

There's also the coupons from the pawnbrokers

From where she's been pawning children's clothing.

There are letters inquiring after children.

There are also letters asking

If she's still offering places for adoption,

And these are all dated within the last few months.

This is an entire administrative work

Left here open presented to the police on a platter.

[buckley] from the evidence found in kensington road,

It would seem that she may have had up to

Around 20 children pass through her home.

[dramatic music]

[lawrence] but where, the police wonder,

Are the missing children?

Perhaps they'd been adopted out already?

I mean, that's perfectly possible

Within this transient world of baby farming,

But they suspect that something much darker

Might be going on.

Not only is it her name on these documents, mrs. Thomas,

There are also other names like mrs. Harding,

But these aren't her real names at all,

And under questioning,

The woman reveals that her real name

Is amelia dyer.

[ominous music]

[buckley] amelia dyer was 57 years old,

And she was a former nurse from bristol.

She used a variety of false names,

Including her mother's maiden name

And her first husband's surname.

In 1896, amelia dyer had been in reading

For approximately six months.

She'd arrived in the summer of 1895,

And she stayed until the spring of the following year.

[narrator] although some baby farmers

Used false names for legitimate reasons,

Ones that used many aliases

And moved around frequently were often hiding

Even worse illicit practices.

The sad reality for children

Who were placed in the baby farmer's care

Is they were often starved to death.

Worse still,

The baby farmers drugged these poor children

To keep them quiet while they were suffering.

There were a range of products that you could buy

At your local chemist to pacify infants.

There were laudanum based products, opiates.

One such was called godfrey's cordial,

Which was also known as mother's quietness.

[narrator] poverty stricken mothers

Often gave such remedies to their children

To soothe them to sleep while they went out to work.

[dramatic music]

But unscrupulous baby farmers

Used constant doses of such narcotics

To keep children in their care sedated

So they could feed them less.

[ominous music]

Their sole focus was to skim off the profits,

Get rid of the children,

And make as much money out of this business as possible.

[lawrence] deliberate neglect was difficult to prove,

But what the police find next would change everything.

A small ring of white sewing tape,

The same type of tape

That was wrapped around the neck

Of the baby that they found in the thames.

This suggests dyer didn't just neglect a child.

She deliberately strangled it.

Detective constable anderson

Now has enough evidence to arrest amelia dyer.

[dramatic music]

[people chattering in distance]

[bell tolls]

[suspenseful music]

The police, while amelia dyer

Is safely locked in reading jail,

Writes to all of the people that

She's had correspondence with.

Maybe they've taken back their children,

Or maybe they know that they've been adopted elsewhere.

[dramatic music]

And they also go to the spot

Where they found the infant in the thames

And they begin to dredge the river

To see if they can find more evidence.

[tense music]

Soon into searching,

The police uncover something truly shocking.

[suspenseful music]

Another brown paper package,

Only this one, more effectively, weighed down,

Again, they search,

And, again, they find another package.

And then again, they find, yet, another package,

And this one's much larger.

It is in fact a carpet bag.

-[suspenseful music] -[flies buzzing]

Detective constable anderson now has to wonder,

"is amelia dyer a multiple murderer?"

[suspenseful music]

The police have been investigating amelia dyer

For 11 days,

And their darkest fears have been realized.

The packages found in the river at reading

Contained four more infants

All strangled in the same manner as the first.

The similar methods used would suggest

That amelia dyer had killed them all,

But they need witness testimony

In order to secure that conviction.

[suspenseful music]

And now the police start to hear back

From some of the mothers that amelia dyer

Had correspondence with,

And one of those mothers was evelina marmon,

Who'd been writing to amelia about her daughter doris.

Now it's only been a few days

Since doris was given to mrs. Harding on that platform,

And evelina thinks that something must have gone wrong.

This is why the police were in touch with her,

But something has gone far more wrong

Than evelina could possibly imagine.

[train whistle bows]

[dramatic music]

For when evelina arrives at reading police station,

She's taken straight to the mortuary.

[gasping]

[sobs]

She cries out that she can't believe this.

Her daughter had been in perfect health

Only a few days ago.

How could she have died?

-[dramatic music] -[evelina sobs]

But on the same day that evelina had received

That last letter from mrs. Harding

Saying how well doris was,

At that very moment,

Doris was already dead.

She was one of two children

Found in the carpet bag.

There is now more than enough evidence

To bring amelia dyer to trial.

[dramatic music]

[narrator] amelia dyer's trial

Took place at london's old bailey,

The capital's main criminal court.

Dyer's case caused a national media frenzy.

Women had been tried for infanticide before,

Often if they were poor mothers,

Receiving some level of public sympathy

For their desperate situation.

But the nature of dyer's crimes was different.

She had killed other people's children in cold blood.

By now the infant count was up to seven.

Amelia dyer's only defense was insanity,

But this did not ring true.

It doesn't ring true today.

After all, she had tried to hide her crimes.

She knew what she was doing was wrong.

This wasn't the act of an insane woman.

This was the act of someone incredibly meticulous.

It only took the jury

Four and a half minutes to find her guilty.

-[tense music] -[gavel bangs]

[watson] victorian trials were very fast,

And jury decision making was really very swift.

But four and a half minutes,

That really is exceptionally fast,

Even for the victorians.

[lawrence] on the 10th of June, just before 9:00 a.M.,

At newgate prison in london,

-[tense music] -[amelia gasps]

[rope creaks]

Amelia dyer was hanged.

But there is one more twist to the story.

[gentle music]

During the investigation,

The police had gone back to amelia's past in bristol,

And what their colleagues told them from that city

Shocked them to the core.

They discovered that amelia dyer

Had almost a 30-year career

As a baby farmer.

[suspenseful music]

[buckley] she'd largely escaped the notice of the police

In bristol except for an occasion in 1879,

Which is almost two decades before she's finally arrested,

When she was investigated for the sudden death

Of four children in her care.

[insects chirping in distance]

Now, in fact, they couldn't find any evidence

That amelia dyer had deliberately killed them,

And after that, she just carried on

With her baby farming business, and managed to do that

Without attracting the attention of police

Until she arrived in reading in the 1890's.

[insects chirping in distance]

[lawrence] the most shocking detail of this whole case

Is, think about it, in reading,

They found seven babies.

Now it was only over the period of a few months

But she had nearly a 30-year career.

Even if she only killed one child a month,

That could be as many as 400 children in her lifetime,

A truly terrifying, sickening statistic.

[ominous music]

[insects chirping in distance]

[narrator] the sad reality is that

Dyer was not alone in these murderous exploits.

Cases of multiple murder at baby farms

Had been reported since the 1860's.

[dramatic music]

And some mothers were even complicit,

Driven by desperation to give away their newborns

On the understanding that they would be killed.

Victorian society had created a dark world,

In which child murder could go unchallenged.

But the sheer scale of amelia dyer's crimes

Was the wake-up call the authorities needed.

I think what amelia dyer does is she holds a mirror

Up to victorian society

That the poor, in general,

And poor children, in particular,

Can be treated as commodities

To be shipped around and murdered,

And that this is not the actions of a civilized society.

[narrator] as the victorian period came to a close

And a new century dawned,

Better regulations redefine

The care of children in britain,

And baby farming gradually became a curiosity of the past.

It's interesting that this case is so unknown.

Nobody talks about it.

I mean, this is only a few years after jack the ripper,

Who only killed five women.

I mean, perhaps it's because the victims are children

That we just find it so unpalatable.

We don't want to think about it.

[dramatic music]

But I think it's incredibly important

That we remember this case

Because what amelia dyer shows is a societal problem.

It's what happens when we don't have a safety net.

When you don't have anybody looking after the poor,

When you don't have a societal contract

That stops people from slipping through the cracks,

Then terrible crimes like this are allowed to happen.

[dramatic music]

Amelia dyer should never be forgotten

As possibly britain's most prolific serial killer.

[suspenseful music]