PROBABLE PLEA OF INSANITY
Mr Ford, managing clerk of Messrs. Lindus and Bicknell, solicitors, had an interview on Wednesday in Holloway Gaol with Mrs Dyer and found the prisoner quite broken down in health and spirits. The interview was a prolonged one and Mrs Dyer wept the whole of the time. It is understood that it has been finally decided to raise the plea of insanity on behalf of Mrs Dyer.
Reading Standard, Friday 8 May 1896
As her mother languished in a cell in Holloway, singing her hymns and growing increasingly morose, Polly, back in Reading Gaol, had at last realized the seriousness of her own predicament and wrote a long letter to Mother begging, “get me out of it”.
In response to this appeal Mother wrote a detailed confession exonerating her daughter from all involvement in the murder of the Goulding child. She sent a copy to Polly and another to the Special Crime Investigator of the Weekly Dispatch. Both letters went first to the governor of Holloway, who, seeing the nature of their contents, handed them to Scotland Yard. The letters were leaked to the press and the Weekly Dispatch of Sunday 10 May printed the details of Dyer’s admissions in all their “sickening minuteness”. Mother wrote to her “Darling Polly” that she would “tell them all about the dear little children that I have put away”. She told of how grieved she was when she heard that Polly was in custody and how she could not get “a wink of sleep during the whole of last Friday night”. She described the murder of one of the babies and how she forced a handkerchief into the child’s mouth to stifle the death cries. She could not remember how many she had put in the weir, but said, “you will know all mine by the tape around their necks.”
Polly did not receive Amelia’s letter and was not to know until much later how hard Mother had tried to save her.
Dr Forbes Winslow, doctor for the defence and physician to the British Hospital for Mental Disorders and Lecturer on Mental Diseases at Charing Cross Hospital, visited Amelia on two occasions while she was in Holloway and both times found her to be suffering from delusions and hallucinations. She claimed to have no memory of her crimes and complained of pains in the head, giddiness and weakness; voices were speaking to her telling her to take her own life; she was sleeping badly and dreaming of terrible things.
My poor boy! My poor mother! I had fearful scenes last night. I fancied I handled my mother’s bones, picking them out of the coffin. When my poor boy went away and enlisted I never slept for three weeks. I beat the rats off. Everything seemed to fly to my head, and I feel I want to fly to my boy.
The sudden cessation of a considerable laudanum habit would induce the same physical and psychological symptoms exhibited by Dyer at Holloway. Although opium withdrawal was not considered by Dr Forbes Winslow, he was adamant that Amelia Dyer was a person of unsound mind and not responsible for her actions.
Dr James Scott was a Bachelor of Medicine and the medical officer at Holloway. He was acting on behalf of the prosecution and, since Mrs Dyer’s admittance to Holloway, had observed her on a daily basis. Beyond her desire to commit suicide and her loss of recent memory he could find nothing in her behaviour that was consistent with insanity. His report stated:
Mrs. Dyer has been quiet and orderly and free from excitement. She has not been melancholic although occasionally depressed. Her memory has been good. She has eaten and slept well. She understands what is said to her and converses coherently and rationally. Insane delusions have not been detected, but she has stated that occasionally she felt as if she could destroy her own life. She has not however attempted to do so, and the opinion is expressed that Mrs. Dyer is not insane, and has not been since her transference to London.
Dr George Savage, also acting on behalf of the prosecution, was a man of impeccable credentials. He had been a physician at St Bartholomew’s Hospital for seventeen years, a Lecturer on Mental Diseases at Guy’s Hospital for twenty and had published many books on the subject of insanity. After spending an hour with Amelia Dyer, he, too, came to the conclusion that although she suffered “symptoms of a transient nature” she did not suffer from homicidal mania and was “not mentally unsound”.