November 27, 1837 - Amelia Dyer
Operating within a largely unregulated Victorian market for unwanted infants, Dyer exploited the practice of baby farming over nearly three decades, turning what began as neglect into systematic killing on a scale that remains among the most significant in British criminal history. The infant mortality she caused was obscured by the normalcy of high child death rates in the era, allowing her to continue long after early convictions. Her eventual capture came not through sustained official scrutiny but through a chance discovery in the Thames, underscoring how structural blind spots — legal, medical, and social — enabled her.
From Wikipedia
Amelia Elizabeth Dyer (née Hobley; ,27 November 1837 – 10 June 1896), popularly dubbed the Ogress of Reading, was a British serial killer who murdered infants in her care from 1869 to 1896.
Trained as a nurse and widowed in 1869, Dyer turned to baby farming—the practice of adopting unwanted infants in exchange for money to support herself. She initially cared for the children legitimately, in addition to having two of her own. Still, whether intentionally or not, about 400 died in her care, leading to a conviction for neglect and six months' hard labour. She then began directly murdering children she "adopted", strangling at least some of them, and disposing of the bodies to avoid attention. Mentally unstable, she was committed to several mental asylums throughout her life, despite suspicions of feigning, and survived at least one serious suicide attempt.
Dyer's downfall came when the bagged corpse of an infant was discovered in the River Thames, with evidence linking back to her. She was arrested on 4 April 1896.
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