When the police arrived at 45 Kensington Road on the evening of Friday 3 April, only four days had passed since the discovery of the baby’s body in the Thames. The address on the sodden parcel paper and its subsequent connection to Mrs Thomas of Kensington Road, and the results of the “sting” operation, had both served to confirm the suspicions of the police regarding the identity of the child murderer.
But they had little idea that the woman they had come to question had enacted the most abominable of atrocities over and over again. They had little idea that the woman whose overlarge hands gently caressed her precious cats and sewed neat stitches into the worn fabric of her family’s clothes had the previous evening consigned to a watery grave the bodies of two infants who had been in her care only a matter of hours.
It was only when they began to search the few small rooms of the comfortless house that they realized the sheer scale of the case they had uncovered, the grisly details of which would horrify a nation for months to come. From the backs of shelves and from fusty cupboards and dented tins they ferreted out bundles of telegrams arranging adoptions, quantities of child vaccination certificates, pawn tickets relating to children’s clothing, newspaper office receipts for advertisements, and ink-stained letters from anxious mothers enquiring after their little ones.
From the dates and contents of the letters, and the sums of money mentioned, it seemed that the suspect had enjoyed a long and profitable career as a baby farmer of the worst kind, and had undergone several aliases, among them Thomas, Weymouth, Harding, Smith, Stansfield, Thornley and Wathen. In the last few months at least twenty children had been entrusted into the care of the woman now revealed as Mrs Amelia Elizabeth Dyer.
Since leaving the Barton Regis Workhouse, mother had never stayed anywhere longer than three months and she had already made arrangements for herself and the Palmers to move to the Somerset town of Bridgwater. Granny was aware of these plans but it seemed that Amelia’s true intentions were to abandon her and the children in reading, leaving them to call upon the mercies of the workhouse. The police had caught up with mother just in time.
It was five o’clock in the evening when Amelia Dyer was escorted into the shadowy interior of a police cab. The neighbours, drawn outside by the rumble of carriage wheels and the sound of horses (incongruous in the narrow terraced street), would have stood gossiping in knots. They may well have wondered what crime the quiet and respectable woman at number 45 could possibly have committed, but their imaginations could never have conjured up the horrors they would hear about in the weeks to come.
The very serious part of the business is the fact that certain letters, found in the woman’s rooms, clearly show that many of the parents who have entrusted their children to the woman, knew the fate in store for them.
Gloucester Journal, 18 April 1896
You’ll remember I gave you £5 in order to get rid of my child, and although it is now five years ago, I will see you in hell before I own the child or pay anymore. You can do what you like with it for all I care. I washed my hands of it the day I left it with you, and you can do exactly as you please. You can’t find me out, and I never intend to let you know where I am. I have got clear of all now, and I shall not get myself into another muddle. Do as you like, and whether little Georgie goes into the workhouse or not I don’t mean to worry. I have suffered enough.
You can do your best and do your worst. I don’t care what you do with Jessie. She is yours now, not mine. It is quite true I have not the feelings of a mother, but when I read your advertisement I was only too glad to see a chance of getting rid of what would prove a drag on me all my lifetime.
Letters found at 45 Kensington Road, and published
in the Weekly Dispatch, 21 June 1896
From other letters found at Kensington Road, the police obtained their first clues as to the identity of the female infant found strangled in the Thames. They believed that she might have been a baby from Bristol named Helena Fry, but as the body was so badly decomposed they could not be certain and therefore the child’s name was kept out of the newspapers. The police also found information that would lead them to pay a visit to the Palmers in Willesden.
It took just half an hour for the police van to convey its passenger to the police station in London Street. The original charge sheet written out that evening is held at the Thames Valley Police Museum, Sulhamstead, and reads:
Annie Dyer, alias Thomas and Harding,
45, Kensington Road, Oxford Road
Occupation: Nurse
Did, on 30th March 1896, feloniously, wilfully and of her malice aforethought kill and murder a certain female infant, Helena Fry daughter of one Mary Fry.
The Reading police notes from the case of Amelia Dyer have been lost to time. But the ghastly events which unfolded throughout the late spring of 1896 were reported at great length and in grim detail in the provincial and London newspapers, each new development seized upon and retold with salacious relish.
The man in charge of investigations was Chief Superintendent George Tewsley; a portly gentleman with a commanding presence, the obligatory handlebar moustache and neatly trimmed fair hair tucked under a well-brushed bowler. From the speed with which the case was unravelled, it is clear that he was a man of formidable talent and indefatigable energy.
Several papers of the day reported the sensational details of Amelia Dyer’s attempted suicide while being held in the charge room at reading police station. The bootlace around her neck was found knotted below her left ear, in the same position as the tape that was found tied around the neck of the baby in the parcel. But it was a pathetic endeavour – just like many of her previous attempts at suicide – and she was soon divested of any article likely to pose a danger to herself.
NURSE CHARGED WITH HOMICIDE
At Reading yesterday Amelia Dyer, alias Thomas, an elderly woman, described as a nurse, was charged with having murdered a child, name unknown. Superintendent Tewsley stated that on Monday last a parcel was found in the River Thames at Reading and when opened was found to contain the body of a female child. They had evidence to prove that the accused left home on that day with a parcel similar to the one found, and that the string securing it was identical with some she had borrowed, whilst the tape by which it was suggested the child had been strangled corresponded with that found at her house. Accused, who in answer to the Bench said: “I do not know anything about it; it’s a mystery to me”, was remanded for a week and taken to HM Prison Reading.
Weekly Dispatch, Sunday 5 April 1896