Arthur Palmer, Famous Crimes, 1905
The lifestyle Mother had chosen to pursue may have been a lucrative one, but it brought with it the strain of living with permanent deceit. For now, at least, the governess’s trail had gone cold, but with every adoption came the possibility of another mother chasing her child.
The raging anxiety that had first sent Amelia into the asylum had not entirely abated: Polly said of Mother’s mental health during these years in Totterdown that she “seemed very down-hearted and very peculiar in her manner at times”. In times of stress, the chemically dependent inevitably turn to their drug of choice for relief. The highs and lows of Mother’s long-term laudanum addiction had now begun to produce unpredictable mood swings that were to be increasingly commented upon by those who saw Dyer frequently. These were made all the worse by a second addiction: Polly admitted that Mother now “drank brandy to excess”, a bottle of which she had taken to carrying around in her apron pocket, along with the laudanum.
Father had generally been a quiet, reserved, brooding man, or so Polly recalls him. Increasingly, however, her parents’ marriage had become troubled. Their arguments, along with Mother’s periodic “peculiar” episodes, made 144 Wells Road an unsettling place to live. Polly decided it was time she found herself a husband.
There was one individual whom she had the occasion to encounter frequently. He was a foppish young man, with a well-trimmed, sandy moustache and fashionably long hair, who was habitually seen in a slouch hat and an immaculate frock coat. This was not a look favoured by landed or titled young men, but nor was it that of young working-class tradesmen; Polly’s brother, for instance, would certainly not have dressed in this manner. This young man cut quite a dash.
He kept what was known as a “fancy” store on the Wells Road, filled with covetable decorations to finish a lady’s outfit: lace trims, fabric flowers, birds, feathers, ribbons and bows and buttons and pins of every description. It was just the occupation for a flirtatious young man.
Arthur Palmer, Famous Crimes, 1905
The man’s name was Arthur Palmer and he was twenty-three years old. He had been born in Parkstone, Dorset, to a printer from Warminster named Robert, and his wife, Clara, and had an older brother, Alfred ray. When Arthur was born, the family had lived in modest comfort in Dorset, employing one domestic servant. But soon after Arthur’s birth, Robert died, leaving Clara to raise her sons alone. She never remarried, and soon lost her domestic help, taking up dress-making in order to be able to raise her sons.
When Arthur and Polly began walking out, he had easily won mother’s affections. After all, he had an asset upon which mother placed great emphasis: capital.
When Arthur was barely sixteen, he had been seduced by the prospect of crossing the Atlantic to earn his fortune in new York. With or without the consent of his mother, Arthur travelled to Liverpool, where he boarded the City of Rome on 1 may 1885, announcing himself a labourer and travelling steerage.
Such a journey was quite an undertaking for one so young, but Arthur’s early drive and ambition did well for him. He worked hard in a fast-expanding new York City labour market and returned home with an accumulated wealth which gave him an air of superiority and funded his ostentatious dress sense. Polly claimed he had “put by” a staggering £800. Such a sum, even if exaggerated by half, would have been what an unskilled working man, such as Polly’s father, could expect to earn in twenty years.
After a nine-month courtship, Polly told mother that Arthur had proposed, and that he was planning on seeking an opportunity of speaking to Father. Mother’s expression was far from the teary-eyed delight every young girl imagines her mother will assume on hearing such news. Polly recalled how Mother’s face darkened. She answered: “Very well, let him speak to me first.”
Arthur’s meeting with Mother was memorable: he later recounted the conversation verbatim. He began by asking her why he should not follow tradition and seek the permission of Polly’s father.
“It’s nothing to do with him,” she had replied curtly. “I can do just as well as him, and if you take my advice you will say nothing at all to him. Even if you did, he would have nothing to say about it.”
Polly and Arthur were engaged in the spring of 1893. Father was not consulted, just as Mother had insisted. The engagement was simply presented as a fait accompli, further removing Dyer’s active participation in the life of his family. Relations between William and Amelia were already strained and they were about to be put to the test once more.