The governess was never to see her baby again, nor even to have the small comfort of laying flowers at its grave. She sank into quiet oblivion, just as her child had done. But in her relentless pursuit of the nurse who had almost certainly made an untimely angel of her child, she had instigated months of unremitting torture. As a result of her struggle, Dyer was to feel hunted for the rest of her life. Moreover, the governess’s intervention sparked a chain of events that was to continue to force Dyer into the darkest recesses of Victorian society.
Dyer’s story was marked now by an inexplicable poverty. She had taken in at least four infants for adoption over a short period of time, three of whom had brought with them £150 in premiums, enough to keep a modest household comfortable for several years. And that was in addition to the weekly fees paid by the ladies staying for the accouchement, and the additional high fees paid by those who wished their babies “born dead”.
On paper, it seems it was a lucrative time and yet Dyer was apparently in dire financial straits. Mother had been so desperate for cash that she had induced Arthur to sell “every stick” of furniture. When Dr Eden committed Dyer to the Wotton Asylum for the second time, her particulars cited “money” as one of the factors contributing to her mental malaise (along with personal circumstances and domestic trouble). Evidently the Palmers, too, were suffering from financial hardship. In December 1894, they abandoned Grove House immediately upon Mother’s removal. Polly (“Mary-Ann Palmer”) is given as her next of kin; her address listed is Sambourne, Warminster, the home of Clara Palmer, Arthur’s mother. Before they left, Arthur took Alfred, Annie and Lily, the children raised as Polly’s “siblings” for ten years, as well as the four infants who had been adopted by Mother, and dumped them at the door of the Barton Regis Workhouse in Bristol. One of the infants was to die soon after admission, weakened by Dyer’s characteristic neglect; two others were successfully reunited with their mothers, both living locally and “in a good position in life”.
The family trade in infants didn’t end now that Mother was incarcerated. Arthur and Polly needed cash and they raised it the only way Polly knew. Returning to Bristol for three months early in 1895, the Palmers set themselves up in the baby business independently from Mother for the first time, affecting the air of a young couple desperate for children.
It was a role Arthur appeared positively to relish. After a few months, his advertisements had become grandly verbose:
A gentleman with a comfortable home wishes to ADOPT two CHILDREN without parents (boy and girl preferred). They must be healthy and of undeniably respectable parentage. Highest references given and required. Address. – Comfort, c/o Messers Atchleys, Solicitors, Bristol
Western Daily Press, 5–10; 19–23 April 1895
The wording was a master stroke, designed to elicit only the most refined, and therefore moneyed, responses. Casting himself in the role of a “Gentleman”, and insisting arrangements be made via a solicitor (just as Polly had recalled the well-connected relations of Alfred had managed his adoption), Arthur had played to his target audience. These subtleties lent absolute credibility to his presentation. Having solicitors validate the adoption was an arrogant device the couple were to resort to again. Finally, his insistence upon “undeniable” respectability – only the strictly legitimate infant – was the final deterrent to the poor, working-class single mother, with her meagre premiums.
Arthur signed his name to one receipt after another, each one acknowledging the high premiums settled upon the dozens of luckless children to whom he had promised a loving home. Countless babies condemned: police later collated handfuls of these receipts, all signed by Arthur. And, with just one exception, none of the children he adopted in the spring of 1895 was ever heard of again.
Queenie Baker was a four-year-old girl adopted by Polly and Arthur at the end of April. With a significant sum of money now at their disposal, the Palmers packed up their belongings and left Bristol in early May, heading deeper into the West Country on a steam train from Temple Meads, taking Queenie with them.