Amelia had needed to work hard to persuade the Guardians to grant her permission to leave the workhouse to wave off her daughter on 24 April. Once out, she had used her time profitably, planning her re-entry into ordinary society with methodical detail. There were advertisements to place; there was accommodation to seek. She had also to ponder the difficult question of how she would manage the day-to-day running of a house of confinement without Polly. She would need assistance; but such help was expensive.
Dyer had sensed a naiveté about Jane Smith. The old woman had made honesty a byword and found good in everyone. Dyer won her over with the promise that they would live as sisters for the rest of their days, thus avoiding the loneliness of old age. Together they would nurse infants, caring for those otherwise unloved and unwanted. She would be comfortable: well fed, well cared for, and paid a shilling a week to help out. It was a picture-perfect vision and one which Jane Smith had not dared wish could ever be hers again.
TO CLERGYMEN & OTHERS – Wanted, someone to wholly adopt Twin Boys, aged three, who are well provided for – Apply, giving full particulars, to 838, Daily Press Office.
Western Daily Press, 18 June 1895
Amelia had convinced the workhouse guardians that she was ready and able to quit the institution and face life on the outside once more. She had an address lined up in Channings Hill in Fishponds, where she proposed to sustain a living as a midwife. The day in mid-June when she finally walked out of the workhouse she was handed back her clothes which were by now fusty, moth-eaten and crumpled. Back in February, they had been ‘stoved’ (baked in a stove in order to kill off any infestations), parcelled up and shelved in a store room, where they had remained for four months. Their pitiful condition marked her out as a former workhouse inmate.
Jane Smith also walked out of the Barton Regis Workhouse that day, having sought permission for a few days’ urgent absence. It would be a long and traumatic year before she would return.
Operating under the pseudonym of Annie Smith, Dyer immediately began adopting infants and toddlers as if she had never left off. Jane Smith, fifteen years her senior, was kept busy tending the infants who passed through the house. Dyer soon nicknamed her “Granny Smith”.
INQUEST IN BEDMINSTER – The City Coroner held an inquest yesterday, at the Bedminster police-station on the body of a newly-born male child, which was found on the 18th inst. In Bridge-Valley Road. P.C. W Harper, 57 C, state that whilst on duty on the 18th inst., in Bridge-Valley Road, he saw a parcel in the bush at the side of the road. On examination it proved to be the body of a child, wrapped in a newspaper.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 21 June 1895
INFANT FOUND DEAD IN A POOL AT WESTBURY – On Wednesday evening in a pool in a field near Westbury on Trym, by a labourer named Robert Anstey, who at once gave information to the police. The body was in a very decomposed state.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 28 June 1895
Dyer took in babies faster than she had done at almost any other period; granny, struggling to reacclimatize herself to life on the outside, was overwhelmed. Dyer told granny to refer to her as mother (“surely as grim a use of the word as history affords” – Daily Courier, 28 April 1896). She would set off many times a day to collect a baby; and many times a day would also leave the house with an infant in her arms. Of those who left, none was seen by granny again. They went out as fast as they arrived and she hadn’t even the time to learn their names. It seemed there was a lot more to Dyer’s method of nursing children than she had imagined.
WANTED someone to take entire Charge of a healthy baby – Apply by post stating terms, to EJ, letter exchange, Christmas Steps.
Western Daily Press, 5 July 1895
WOULD lady like to Adopt young Baby girl, dark? – Apply by letter, B, Times & mirror Office.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 15 July 1895
Granny was anxious about the strange routine in her new home. She could only trust that mother was doing the right thing by these poor children. For it was an uneasy time in the city: stories were appearing in the Bristol press about the fate of the unfortunate unwanted. Bodies of abandoned infants were being found all over the city. It moved granny to tears, that there could be such cruelty so close to home.
THE MYSTERIOUS CASE AT KINGSDOWN – The City Coroner held an inquest yesterday in the Bedminster Police Station, on the body that was found in Somerset Street. The body, which was that of a child … Mrs Quick, residing at 46, Dove Street, said she observed the parcel against the side and on investigating it she found it to contain the body of a young child. Medical evidence having been given, the jury returned a verdict that the body was found on a step in Dove Street, but whether the child was stillborn or not, owing to the decomposition of the body, it was not possible to say.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 10 July 1895
WANTED HOME with Respectable Person, no children, for child 2 years; country preferred; HOME Times & mirror Office.
Bristol Times & Mirror, 1 July 1895
One day in early July, mother brought a two-year-old boy to the house and named him Bertie Palmer. By now, however, three weeks of the constant traffic of infants had raised the suspicions of the neighbours, and soon after Bertie’s arrival granny opened the door one morning to a young man in his late twenties. He greeted her in a lilting Scottish accent and introduced himself as John Ottley, inspector for the Bristol branch of the national Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Jane Smith listened uneasily to Mr Ottley’s explanation of what was permissible by law under the terms of the infant life Protection Act. Mr Ottley was satisfied at least that the old woman was genuine in her affection for the children in her care, but made an arrangement to return to visit Dyer a few days later.
Dyer’s immediate response to granny’s account of Ottley’s visit was startling: they were moving, and soon. She would secure new lodgings for them first thing in the morning, and granny was to pack what few possessions they had. Two days later they left for Eastville, taking only Bertie with them.