0 Item

Amelia Dyer Angel Maker

The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money

By: Alison Rattle, Allison Vale

Write A Review

Hardcover | 1 October 2007

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

See this lady? You would NOT want to lock horns with her. You certainly wouldn't give her your baby.

But in the late nineteenth century, that's exactly what a lot of women did. Why? Because in an era when having a child out of wedlock was so severely frowned upon, Amelia Dyer took advantage of this.

She advertised in the press offering to "adopt" unwanted babies, charged the poor grief-stricken mums GBP 10 for the privilege, took the wee babes off their hands - and then drowned them in the River Thames. Pocketing the cash, she strangled her victims with white tape, then wrapped their bodies either in brown parcel paper or in a carpet bag, to be recovered only weeks - or months - later.

As well as relating the story, the authors explore the circumstances that enabled such crimes to be committed. Unregulated "adoption" was a widely acknowledged problem. The Child Protection Act did not yet exist.

In Mrs Dyer's case, though, such shameless profiteering did not, ultimately, go unpunished: the police finally located Mrs Dyer, kept her under surveillance and then mounted a "sting" operation, using a young woman to pose as a potential customer. Amelia Dyer was arrested when she opened her front door to find two policemen on her doorstep.

Finally confessing, she said, "You'll know all mine by the tape around their necks." She was hanged in 1896.

About the Authors

Both married with children, Allison Vale and Allison Rattle are also the co-authors of, among other books, How to Boil a Flamingo, Mothers' Wit and How to Push a Perambulator. They both live in Somerset.

Shipping

	Standard Shipping	Express Shipping
Metro postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Regional postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95
Rural postcodes:	$9.99	$14.95

How to return your order

At Booktopia, we offer hassle-free returns in accordance with our returns policy. If you wish to return an item, please get in touch with Booktopia Customer Care.

Additional postage charges may be applicable.

Defective items

If there is a problem with any of the items received for your order then the Booktopia Customer Care team is ready to assist you.

For more info please visit our Help Centre.

You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Social Services & Welfare Social Welfare & Social Services Crime & Criminology Biographies & True Stories Biographies True Stories True Crime

What the River Revealed	p. 9
Suffer Little Children	p. 12
A Casual Informer	p. 16
Kensington Road	p. 18
The Sting	p. 23
Beginnings	p. 28
From Angel to Angel Maker	p. 32
The Brixton Baby Farmer	p. 36
The Lunatic Pauper Palace	p. 45
Totterdown	p. 51
The Totterdown Baby Farm	p. 57
Polly and the Post-mortem	p. 64
Criminal Intent	p. 69
Silent Servitude	p. 73
Polly and the Ballad-Monger	p. 78
Mother Returns	p. 80
The Fishponds House of Confinement	p. 84
The Governess's Baby	p. 89
Mother and the Boarding House	p. 93
Polly and the Piano	p. 95
Mother and the Sharp-Pointed Knife	p. 98
Lunacy	p. 101
"Once more there were funerals"	p. 104
Arthur	p. 106
Liquor and Laudanum	p. 109
"Frenzied Objects"	p. 112
Melancholy Days	p. 116
"They broke my spirit"	p. 120
Money Troubles	p. 122
The Family Divided	p. 125
Queenie Baker	p. 130
Granny Smith	p. 132
One Step Ahead of the Law	p. 136
A Family Business	p. 139
A Healthy Place in the Country	p. 142
Like Mother Like Daughter	p. 148
A Case at Willesden	p. 153
Granny's Misgivings	p. 157
The Barmaid's Daughter	p. 163
The Undertaker's Wife	p. 175
The Carpet Bag	p. 182
Good Friday	p. 186
Dyer on Remand	p. 190
The Arrest of Arthur Palmer	p. 193
Bodies and Bricks	p. 196
Mrs Dyer Confesses	p. 203
A Murderess Identified	p. 206
An Interview with Palmer	p. 208
Further Developments at Reading	p. 210
Trial by Newspaper	p. 215
A Body in the Reeds	p. 218
Polly and the Actress	p. 220
A Damning Testimony	p. 224
Holloway	p. 231
The Old Bailey	p. 234
Newgate	p. 238
The End	p. 240
The Auction	p. 242
Legal Repercussions	p. 245
A Brown Paper Parcel	p. 247
Acknowledgements	p. 249
Index	p. 251
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Amelia Dyer Angel Maker

The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in True Crime

Behind the Badge

The remarkable & compelling true story of a boy from Egypt who became one of Australia's most senior police, for readers of THE GOOD COP & I CATCH KILLERS

Meadow's Law

The true story of Kathleen Folbigg and the science that set her free by an award winning journalist for readers of THE TEACHER'S PET and MISSING WILLIAM TYRRELL

MrBallen Presents: Strange, Dark & Mysterious

The Graphic Stories

The Good Cop

The True Story of Ron Iddles

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI

Mindhunter

Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (Now A Netflix Series)

Backup is Three Hours Away

A raw account of remote area policing

All the Colours of the Dark

The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller a wonderful book (Richard Osman)

The Widow of Walcha

A true story of love, lies and murder in a small country town

Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II

The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II

Day One

The Last Victim

A serial con man. The ultimate betrayal. An unbreakable woman. The full story behind the relationship made famous by the hit podcast Who the Hell is Hamish?

The House of My Mother

The Sunday Times bestselling memoir about a daughter's quest for freedom

I Catch Killers

The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective

Australian Ghost Stories

New haunting true crime stories of the supernatural and paranormal from the bestselling author of AUSTRALIA'S MOST INFAMOUS JAIL and AUSTRALIAN HEIST

Predators' Paradise

A Journey of Survival and Resilience

Den of Spies

The Untold Story of Reagan, Carter and the Treason that Stole the White House

In Cold Blood

1st Edition : Popular Penguins

Red Notice

How I Became Putin's No. 1 Enemy

Australia's Most Murderous Prison

Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail

A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind

Chaos

Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties

Witness

Shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize

In the Dead of Night

A mysterious disappearance, a brazen murderer and the police who hunted him down

This product is categorised by