WANTED, respectable Person to take a Baby. Must charge moderate. – Address E.R. Letter Exchange, Bristol.
Western Daily Press, Wednesday 2 January 1884
In 1884, when Polly was ten years old, the family moved into Fishponds, to the north-east of Bristol, and Mother began the baby business again. The next few years were an unsettled time – no one place was to be home for longer than a year. Polly grew increasingly disorientated by the relocations: she recalled that sometimes they moved into a house on a Saturday and were clean out of it again by the following Tuesday.
Father wasn’t at all happy for Mother to be taking in babies again. Why would she risk trouble a second time? He became increasingly withdrawn and taciturn: Polly remembered him as “a most sulky man” and said that “scarcely a week went by when he and Mother did not have words”. For Polly and Willie, it was anything but a happy home.
Mother paid her husband little heed. Soon, there were lots of babies in the house, just as before. But this time there was a significant difference in Mother’s method of operation: this time, she made sure the infants didn’t stay for long. Polly reflected upon how the babies would come and go “in the strangest fashion … here today; gone tomorrow”.
Sometimes, the women who came to the house were very grand, arriving in fine carriages and dressed in the most exquisite fabrics and the very latest designs. They seemed to have hundreds of pounds at their disposal and sent Mother or Polly out for whatever they desired. Polly would marvel at the quantity of gold coins Mother would be left with.
Mother was impressed by the women of wealth and high birth who were increasingly calling upon her services. One day in 1884 a grand carriage pulled up at the house, an incongruous sight in such a modest row of terraces. A fine-looking woman stepped out, clutching a baby girl named Annie. She brought a breathtaking pile of gold sovereigns, which she left on the parlour table: £80 in all. It was more money than Polly had ever seen; more than Father earned in two or three years. Mother was seduced by the baby’s breeding as much as the handsome fee, and so Annie stayed.
Always there were ladies. They would come to stay and in due course would deliver their babies; sometimes the baby remained in the house after the mother had gone, but, Polly recalled, frequently there were funerals.
One lady paid handsomely for the funeral of her baby. She told the family she was a relation of a general in the army (but they could never rely upon much of what the ladies said as being the truth). When her baby died in the house, she paid the undertaker £5.5s. for the funeral: the equivalent of half a year’s salary for many of the unskilled women who came to Mother for help. The funeral was a most elaborate affair for an infant so unwanted as to be delivered in such disreputable circumstances.
£10 offered to any Respectable Person who will ADOPT a fine healthy boy. – Immediate, Letter Exchange, High Street.
Western Daily Press, Friday 23 may 1884
RESPECTABLE Person offers comfortable HOME for Child. Terms moderate. – Mother, Intelligence Office, 33 lower Ashley Road.
Western Daily Press, Thursday 12 June 1884
Whenever a young woman came to the house, Polly would hear Mother promise time and time again that she would treat the baby as if it were her own. But as soon as the money exchanged hands, the door would close on a mother’s love for ever: Mother never did as she promised by these children.
In 1885 the Dyer family took up lodgings in a house in the Causeway, a main Fishponds thoroughfare. Father managed to get a position as a labourer in a nearby factory, and the family settled for another year or so.
In 1886, when Polly was twelve, the family had moved again, this time to Pound Lane in Fishponds, a short walk from the Bristol Lunatic Asylum. Toward the end of the year, a beautiful woman came for the confinement with Mother. She was very young, the daughter of a well-to-do gentleman farmer. Mother was scathing about the baby’s father, saying that he was more than likely the household’s coachman. Certainly the lady demanded the same anonymity as most of the others, keeping all her details private. In early 1887, she gave birth to a little boy named Alfred, whom she left with Mother to raise as her own. Some two or three days later, the lady’s father came to the house, accompanied by two solicitors. They sat in the parlour and spoke to Mother in grave tones, and when they left Polly watched her count out another mountain of gold coins – another £80 – that had been left for her on the table. Alfred, with his privileged background, also stayed.
In September 1888 the country became gripped by reports of a brutal murderer who was mutilating the bodies of his female victims in the East End of London, and taunting the press with letters, which he signed “Jack the Ripper”. Polly and Mother could not have avoided the press frenzy: on every street corner in every city, newspaper vendors sang out the latest headlines:
SAVAGE BUTCHERY MUTILATION PUBLIC TERROR TWO MORE WOMEN MURDERED IN WHITECHAPEL AND ALDGATE.
Daily Telegraph, Monday 1 October 1888
Sensationalist journalism described “the butchered women … found weltering in their blood”, and observed that the murders “cast a shadow of gloom and horror”.
Later that autumn, the Dyer family moved again; this time to Ridgeway Road, just a few streets away from the Causeway, where mother continued to farm babies.
Mother became increasingly furtive. Polly noticed that she was once again resorting to the little bottle of laudanum she kept in her apron pocket. At the same time she became increasingly brutal in her treatment of the children, and Polly felt the worst of this, growing wary of her mother. What Polly hated the most was being asked to lie to Father. It was a frequent request: he was increasingly intolerant of Mother’s adoptions.
One morning Mother left the house early to catch a train in order to collect a baby. She would not return until after Father was home from work that evening but asked that Polly tell Father she had not long left the house and would soon be back. Polly hesitated: she knew she could not lie convincingly.
“I can’t do that, Mother,” she had answered, daring to say no.
Mother raged against the rebuttal; how dare Polly refuse to do her bidding? “What? you won’t?” Mother reached for the nearest object she could find and raised it high above her head. She sent a glass beaker hurling through the air, hitting Polly on the side of the head and drawing blood. It left a scar she would carry to her grave.
If Mother was weighed down by the constant need for secrecy, Father was far more so. Their arguments worsened, Mother later claiming he had been brutal to her. But, in truth, it can hardly have been a happy environment for a man and his children. There was a constant stream of ladies in various stages of pregnancy and labour in the house. Newborns were “delivered dead” as often as they survived; the undertaker was a regular visitor. Babies appeared and disappeared. Polly commented on the frequency of fatalities; her father cannot have failed to. And constant house moves were unavoidable if his wife was to keep out of trouble.
Mrs Dyer is a skilled midwife and whilst she was at Fishponds, Bristol, she had many lady patients. There is little doubt from the information in the hands of the police that Mrs Dyer was in the habit of advertising for “ladies in trouble” who could “get over it” and “no one would know it”. In one case the police are certain that a lady placed herself in communication with Mrs Dyer who promised her that for £50 “the baby could come into the world and go out of it, so that no one would know”. This letter and many others are in the possession of [the police].
Weekly Dispatch, 1896
Meanwhile, business was booming and the family was living in increasing comfort. Shared lodgings became individual rented homes. Polly admitted that the “baby business” kept the family in decent accommodation and paid off their credit accounts with local butchers and grocers.
If Dyer didn’t approve of his wife’s occupation, he appeared either unable or unwilling entirely to eradicate it.
In march 1889, Bristol was devastated by one of its worst floods on record. Early in the month, a heavy snowfall was followed by forty-eight hours of rain. Nearly three inches of rain was recorded to have fallen over Fishponds, most of it over an eight-hour period. The river Frome burst its banks and an area of Bristol covering 150 acres was submerged. Police delivered bread and other provisions to stranded households from small rowing boats. A relief fund was set up, and in a matter of a few weeks it had raised a staggering £11,700. In all, it took 15 tons of disinfectant to purge the 2,700 homes across the city, which had been left with sewage deposits once the water subsided.
If Amelia Dyer was a superstitious woman, she might have taken warning from these apocalyptic conditions: trouble was just around the corner. Not every young mother wanted to sever all ties with her baby after handing it over to Dyer. Not every woman understood that the one-off premium would effectively end all contact she was ever to have with her child. Some cherished a naive belief that Dyer would deliver her promise of providing their baby with a “mother’s care”.
In truth, with the exception of Annie and Alfred, none of the babies had remained longer than a few days in the Dyer household throughout the 1880s, their fates a mystery which would never be entirely solved. It was only a matter of time before one of these mothers demanded her baby back.