Listener discretion is advised. This episode features discussions of violence, abuse and murder involving children that may be upsetting. We advise extreme caution for listeners under 13.

Striving for success is evolutionary, but sometimes reaching for that next level can have dangerous consequences, especially when that reach disregards the lives of others. And when that person reaching is a nurse and their success comes from killing babies, well, then things have gone beyond evolution. This was the case with Amelia Dyer, who killed upwards of 400 babies in Victorian England, all in a reach for financial success. This is Medical Murders, a podcast original. Every year, thousands of medical students take the Hippocratic Oath.

It boils down to do no harm. But a closer look reveals a phrase much more interesting. I must not play at God. However, some doctors break that oath. They choose to play God with their patients, deciding who lives and who dies each week on medical matters. We'll investigate these doctors, nurses and medical professionals. We'll explore the specifics of how medical killers operate not just on their patients but within their own minds, examining the psychology and neurology behind heartless medical killers.

I'm Alistair Madden and I'm joined by Dr. David Kipa, M.D.. Hello, everyone.

I'm Dr. Kipper and so happy to help Alistar with today's story of Amelia Dyer by adding some medical insight into her modus operandi. The sinister nuance to these murders involving infants will certainly be both fascinating and disturbing.

You can find episodes of medical murders and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to stream medical murders for free on Spotify, just open the app and type medical murders in the search bar. This is our first episode on Amelia Diar, a trained nurse who by some accounts killed up to 400 infants. She found her victims through her business, known as a baby farm. This week, we'll explore the twisted history of Amelia Dyer and a shocking law in the United Kingdom that allowed these businesses to get away with murder.

Next week, we'll dive into Amelia's later years and how her baby farm came crashing down.

All this and more coming up. Stay with us. In Victorian England, most folks were only one wrong move or accident away from being on the street, despite the luxuries of the upper classes, the industrial revolution was in full swing and smoke choked the southern landscape, where most did their best just to survive. It was in this backdrop that Amelia Dyer took her victims, but she didn't start life as a baby killer. Born in 1837, as Amelia Hobley, her father made enough as a shoemaker to sustain a healthy income in an era when many children didn't end up going to school working in a factory instead.

Amelia Hobley thrived academically. The Hobley family described Emilia as smart and outgoing. She had a love for books and poetry that was unparalleled by her peers, a quality that wasn't lost on her relatives. But she couldn't have a tragedy forever. When Amelia was 11 years old, her loving mother, Sarah, came down with typhus. Victorian England was known for its filthy conditions and endemic diseases, endemic diseases refers to diseases that are localised to that specific geographic area.

So it's not surprising that Sarah contracted typhus. Typhus is a disease caused from exposure to actual bacteria, which thrives in bad sanitation and is often carried by rodents like rats and mice.

Bacteria carrying fleas from these rodents then bite people, and the resulting infection causes damage to the blood vessels throughout the body. Typhus also has an impact on someone's mental health. Delirium and confusion are notable. Keystone's symptoms. This decay of the mind is a result of edema or swelling in the brain that disrupts neuronal pathways and cerebral functioning. In other words, excess fluid compresses the brain's tissue, depriving it of proper blood circulation and nutrient exchange. This is why typhus decimated Amelia's mother's mind and why her condition continued to get worse.

Amelia felt devastated by her mother's psychological decay as the youngest in the family, the task of looking out for Sarah fell largely on Amelia's shoulders.

Sarah needed constant attention to keep from harming herself. So Amelia learned at a young age what it took to care for someone else. So Sarah's illness and passing in 1848 deeply affected 11 year old Amelia and the rest of the household. Some historians believe Amelia had a falling out with her family after her mother's death. Others suggest her father simply couldn't afford to keep her under his roof. Either way, Amelia soon left her family and moved in with her aunt in Bristol in her aunt's home.

Amelia's education came to a halt and she immediately went to work as an apprentice for a corset maker. Despite their delicate and intimate design, working on corsets was tough. Amelia spends long hours laboring on the garments. Over the next few years, she got more skilled at the task, but the hard work still took its toll physically. The tough experience taught Amelia the importance of money without the generosity of her aunt or her job. Eighteen year old Amelia knew she might be out on the streets.

Amelia worked late nights making corsets to save up in case of disaster. But she realised that she needed more financial security at the age of 24. Amelia met a 57 year old master, Carver named George Thomas, who was a well respected member of the Bristol community. More importantly, he was a widower with a hole in his heart, and when he met Amelia, she charmed him. Not much is known about the pair's relationship, but they were desperate to get together within half a year of the death of George's wife.

The couple married in a small ceremony to smooth things over in the eyes of the court and their community. Both lied about their age. Amelia said she was 30 and George claimed he was only 48 after marrying in 1861. The couple lived a perfectly comfortable life.

It wasn't amazing by any stretch, but Amelia had a roof over her head. She didn't have to work, and she seemed to love her husband.

However, Amelia had a nagging feeling it couldn't last forever. After all, George was already in his late 50s. Amelia didn't want to lose George and be on her own without a good job. So in 1863, Amelia went to study nursing at the British Royal Infirmary in Bristol there, in addition to general nursing practices, she learned midwifery, a skill always in high demand. Midwives have always had a critical hand in childbirth, but the craft has evolved a lot since Amelia worked at the infirmary.

She entered training at a time when the landscape of nursing was really changing in England before the time of her entry into nursing school, midwifery was largely unregulated, commonly practiced by working class women who lacked formal training in child delivery. This cavalier standard of assisted birth changed largely due to the efforts of people like Florence Nightingale, who wanted to legitimise her profession by incorporating midwife training modules into nursing programs. Today, midwives are considered medical professionals who assist with pregnancy, childbirth and newborn care.

They're trained to handle birth complications that require non-invasive intervention like most breech and twin births. But they defer to medical doctors when instruments or more complex procedures are needed because of the reforms has started to happen around the time of her training. It's likely that Amelia Dyer received a more formalized education than the generation of midwives before her.

Amelia found a comforting sense of independence at the hospital, but the work itself was backbreaking. Amelia worked 16 hour days in dingy conditions. Patients needed 24 hour care and some had diminished mental capacity. Many likely reminded her of her mother. These patients brought back painful memories, but Amelia felt better equipped to care for them than she was for her mother. And despite this challenging work, it had the potential to make Amelia feel financially secure. People crammed into the hospital's lobby at all hours of the day, meaning Amelia always had work.

Yet Amelia found that security ripped away from her hands when she discovered she was pregnant, Amelia's heart sank. She knew if she was pregnant, the hospital wouldn't let her stay employed. Her comfortable sense of independence was taken from her. George still had a steady income, but that didn't bring calm to Amelia. A child meant a lifetime commitment to provide for another mouth. Amelia knew when George eventually died that the weight of the responsibility would land squarely on her shoulders.

In 1864, Amelia gave birth to her daughter, Ellen, Ellen was so full of life that for a while Amelia forgot all about her worries.

But late at night, while nursing Ellen, those dark fears crept back in, Amelia felt tormented, torn between lamenting her lost job and loving her daughter. A few months after baby Ellen was born through happenstance, a midwife named Ellen Deyn entered Amelia's life. Dane told Amelia of an easy way to secure a steady income.

It was called baby farming, and on paper it seemed very similar to an at home orphanage. But there was some sinister differences between the two. Instead of accepting new babies, without question, Dane and the other baby farmers made parents pay to have their child put up for adoption. However, a shocking amount of the time, the baby never found a new home. Instead, they were killed to make room for another child and another payment, Amelia was immediately intrigued.

Coming up, Amelia Dyer begins a career in baby farming. Hi, listeners.

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Now back to the story. In 1864, Amelia Dyer had her first child, Ellan, which forced her to quit working as a nurse at the British Royal Infirmary. The loss of her job crushed Amelia until she met a midwife named Ellen Deyn, who changed everything. Deyn told me about an interesting business opportunity known as baby farming, a service where they take in an unwanted infant for a fee. The practice was increasingly common throughout the United Kingdom 30 years prior.

In 1834, parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act. A section of the legislation said men weren't financially responsible for children out of wedlock. Authorities thought discouraging young women from premarital sex might reduce poverty and save the sanctity of marriage. Unfortunately, the law might have had the opposite effect as it incentivized men and exclusively punished women. Many of them weren't able to afford a child on their own and ended up living on the street. Young single mothers attempted to have their baby taken to an orphanage, but were turned down, the safe havens only took infants from respectable families, not from women who had premarital sex.

In theory, businesses like Danes provided a solution for unplanned pregnancies in the mothers minds, it was best for everyone involved. Their baby could find a nice home and they wouldn't end up on the streets. However, things weren't so simple. Baby farming was completely unregulated and it was often a scam.

Dean scheme worked in two ways she either promised to look after a child weekly for a fee or she took a large one time payment to help find a new home for a child. She charged anywhere from five pounds to ten pounds, the equivalent of around six hundred and fifty pounds to 1300 pounds today. At the time, the amounts was roughly equal to the yearly wage of a working class woman. If a mother gave Dean money to look after their child weekly, Dean did the bare minimum she needed to turn a profit and spending too much on a child cut into her bottom line.

However, the lump sum babies fared even worse within weeks or even days. Dean killed them, while on occasion Dean might have smothered the children or given them opioids. Most of the time she let them waste away from neglect by physically neglecting these babies. Ellen Deyn was denying them their proper emotional and social development and putting their lives in severe danger. Not only was she creating a major risk of illness and infection by neglecting their hygiene, she was also killing them slowly through undernourishment.

Undernourishment is when you're not getting enough calories and nutrients. Malnourishment is when you're getting bad nutrition. Newborns should normally be fed upon their expressions of hunger, which can include crying side to side head movement and sucking on their hands. They'll let their caretakers know when they're hungry. So a feeding schedule isn't all that important. However, despite this, a newborn shouldn't go four to five hours without eating, as calories are essential during this time for physical and cognitive development.

If completely deprived of food, it takes a little less than a week for a baby's body to shut down and die. Despite the horrors it's entailed, Dane's business intrigued Amelia. While it's unlikely that she ever worked hands on with Dane, Amelia thought it sounded like a simple way to make money. Plus, she had learned how to be a midwife at the hospital. Her skills might come in handy while looking after so many infants. She didn't seem fazed by Dean's wicked actions.

Instead, Amelia saw them as a product of society's failures. Dane provided a necessary service. It was as simple as that. Amelia understood that someone usually had to get their hands dirty to stay off the streets. But over the years, word spread about Dean's business, local authorities were eager to investigate the salacious claims. However, before they intervened, someone tipped off Dean. She shut down her business, said goodbye to Amelia, and she fled to the United States sometime in the late 1960s.

The pair never spoke again.

A few months later, Amelia's husband, George, died on October 18th, 1869, at a reported age of 60 to his death, left Amelia and Ellen all alone to fend for themselves. Amelia's worst fears had come true, while George allegedly left her a healthy sum of money.

Amelia still resorted to drastic action.

She turned her eyes on Ellen Dane's profession, baby farming. Amelia intended to fill the void left.

In a heart wrenching move, Amelia paid for her daughter, five year old Ellen Thomas, to be cared for by another family without Ellen. Amelia was free to thrive financially and with this new freedom. By the end of 1869, Amelia placed several advertisements in local newspapers. The ads were listed under pseudonyms, Mrs Harding and Mrs Smith. Amelia wanted to keep as low of a profile as possible. She saw what happened to Ellen Dean from her advertisements. Amelia took in babies from disparate backgrounds, mothers who had them out of wedlock or whose husbands had abandoned them.

Some of these mothers looked for a better outcome for their children and trusted Amelia to do the right thing. However, Amelia hit the ground running and appears to have had nearly all the babies in her care killed.

She, like Dean, neglected many of these children, the babies who came in on a lump sum basis didn't last long. Over weeks, they lost their energy, their bellies bloated and their skin turned ashy. Eventually, they slipped away quietly. But Amelia didn't care about the health of the children. To Amelia, baby farming was work. Their deaths might have happened without her involvement anyway. She was just making sure that she had enough to stay off the streets herself.

Amelia had ambitions and she wanted to thrive. It's unclear just how many babies pass through the doors of her small Bristol house, but we know business boomed with each new child. Amelia brought in around five pounds, or about 650 pounds today. And with these large profits, Amelia didn't seem fazed by the work.

In fact, she expanded her business, according to Alison Rattle and Alison Vale, authors of Amelia Dyer Angel Maker Amelia reached out to a few other baby farmers in other parts of Britain.

One in particular, Margaret Waters, worked in Brixton, a suburb of London. In 1869, Waters and Amelia sent letters back and forth, waters and quiet about unwanted children in Amelia's area. And it seems that Amelia set up waters with a few unlucky mothers. Amelia felt camaraderie and support from the other baby farmers she spoke with, she felt they were in it together. Unfortunately, that also meant that when one of them felt pressure from authorities, all of them did.

In June of 1870, a detective in London saw one of Walter's ads in the paper for baby farming, it read Adoption a good home with a mother's love and care premium. Five pound, which sum includes everything. Mrs. Oliver Ghar place, Brixton. Curious about the sum of money attached to the ad, the detective investigated it soon he arrived at Waters' address at four Frederick Terrace and went inside.

They're the detective found at least 10 babies all living in squalor, malnourished and close to death. The authorities immediately took the children out of the house, but five of them still died. Waters, as well as her sister, Sarah Ellis, were arrested and the case generated an incredible media interest. Sensational headlines drew attention to a part of society that many acknowledged but pushed away to the fringes. On October 11th, 1870, authorities huhn Margaret Waters, she was the first baby farmer executed as a criminal.

They hoped the message rang out loud and clear.

While prosecutors never found the letters connecting Amelia Dyer and Margaret Waters, the trial scared Amelia. She decided it was best to get out of the business. At the time, she felt no shame for baby farming, but she was haunted by the thought that her past actions might eventually catch up with her. Coming up, Amelia tries to live a normal life, but old habits die hard. Now back to the story. Starting in 1871, 34 year old Amelia Dyer decided to get out of baby farming, she'd stop killing infants by neglect and work at an asylum instead.

Amelia didn't want to be caught and executed. Like Margaret Waters, Amelia found herself reluctant to work at the Bristol Lunatic Asylum. The work was brutal and it didn't pay as well as baby farming, where before Amelia made five pounds on one child, her employer only paid her one pound per month. On top of that, Amelia's hours were horrendous. She felt that she spent more time inside the asylum than outside, but she had a background in nursing and they needed help.

Amelia only found some relief when she was allowed to restrain her patients. However, this strict practice didn't serve Amelia well. By the start of 1872, the asylum let her go. According to authors and researchers Alison Rattlin Alison Vale supervisors fired Amelia because of her aggressive demeanour with patients without a steady job.

The fears of ending up destitute came rushing back in. Luckily for Amelia, though, shortly after leaving the asylum, she met and fell in love with 27 year old William DIH. DIH worked in a local sugar factory and made a steady income within the year. The pair were married and Amelia reached out to the family who cared for her daughter, Ellen. The eight year old moved back in with her mother and quickly grew attached to William. Eventually, everything settled in place for the new family.

In 1873, Amelia gave birth to her second child, Marianne, and three years later, baby William arrived the extra mouths to feed concerned Amelia to help ease her fears. The family rented out a room to a young woman for extra income, and everything sailed smoothly. Over the next few years, William excelled at work and the family lived in relative comfort.

That was until the sugar factory hit financial troubles in 1877 to stay afloat.

The company laid off a substantial amount of its workforce, including William Panic set upon the family quickly with five mouths to feed and only a meager income from their tenant. The Diyas were on course for financial ruin. Amelia's worst nightmare. Too many people were out of work at once, and William found it nearly impossible to secure a new job. But Amelia always had a reliable backup plan. Baby farming. Margaret Waters died seven years before, and Amelia assumed any vague association with the dead woman was long gone.

That year, Amelia's four year old daughter, Maryanne, noticed a rotating roster of women coming and going from their home. Marianne saw young women come into the house pregnant, only to leave a few days or even months later without a baby. But she rarely saw babies. Amelia didn't keep these children many times. She smothered the baby immediately after it was born and set, it came into the world stillborn. The mothers, however, still paid Amelia for her services.

In fact, many of them came to Amelia knowing full well what her business entailed. After the babies were dead, Amelia had doctors come over to complete death certificates, but all they had to work on was Amelia's word.

Back in Amelia's day, it was common for doctors to make house calls to help sort out a cause of death. She claimed these deceased babies were stillborn and it would have been difficult for a Victorian era doctor to confirm or deny this. Identifying the cause of the stillbirth is something that can be difficult even today, and external indicators on the corpse are uncommon.

One such indicator would be a life ending physical abnormality or birth defect, which a doctor would likely notice. One could also potentially see marks around a newborn's neck if the umbilical cord strangled the baby inside the womb on top of stillbirth being difficult to diagnose without irregular circumstances. Infant mortality was common at the time as medical care wasn't what it is today.

Given their limited resources, it may have been nearly impossible for these doctors to find a definitive cause of death.

This lack of distinction allowed Amelia to get away with murder, and Amelia didn't stop there with her wicked deeds, she was still adopting babies for a fee. She placed new advertisements in local newspapers and waited. She normally had nearly 10 children in her care at the time, but she had to be careful with how often a baby was killed. She knew that if too many died at once, it might raise suspicion. So Amelia made sure they declined at a steady rate.

She fed the children just enough to keep them quiet for the day, but not enough to nourish them if the infants acted up. Amelia gave them an over-the-counter drug called Godfreys Caudill. Godfreys Caudill was a hugely popular, patented medication in the US and England at the time. It was used for a wide range of symptoms like diarrhea, colic and anxiety. In actuality, it was used to quiet, suffering children. The drug was even referred to as mother's friend because of its sedating and subduing effect.

This reaction to the drug was due to the high opium content of this syrupy medicine. Just a few drops sent the babies into a semi-conscious days. If Amelia ever wanted to get rid of a baby quickly, she just slipped a few more, drops the normal and they never woke up. These deaths were classic opiate overdoses where the brain's cardiorespiratory system shuts down, causing the lungs and heart to stop functioning. Unfortunately for these children, Godfreys Cordiale came cheap and was readily available.

There was no real method to Amelia's business. Sometimes a baby stuck around for months. Other times they were gone. Within the week, there were moments where she needed to free up some space for a new baby and killed the one that had been with her the longest. At that point in her life, Amelia had killed dozens of children and seemingly felt no remorse. She believed her actions were necessary to keep her family safe around this time. Amelia started taking daily doses of laudanum, a tincture of opium.

She told her family it was for a toothache, but they had their suspicions. By August 1879, Amelia developed an opioid addiction as a result. Amelia became careless in her work. Amelia killed four babies within two weeks, and an apprehensive city registrar refused to register the death. From there, the local coroner got involved.

Within a few days, the police came knocking. They wanted to take a look inside. Amelia's home to check up on the living conditions. Amelia balked at the door. Her heart raced and she quickly tried to come up with a way to get out of the situation. But with the men standing right in front of her, she had nowhere to hide.

She welcomed them in, knowing full well what they would find.

The authorities noticed the dinge condition of the House. Things were barely kept clean and piles of clothes sat in the corner of the sitting area. The police saw a half empty bottle of laudanum sitting on the kitchen counter. The stench of feces pervaded the house. And for a house full of babies, there weren't any of the normal sounds.

No crying babble, nothing. Silence hung in the air.

The further in the men walked, the more the residents smelled unmistakably like death. When they entered one of the bedrooms, they found the source of the smell and emaciated infant lay motionless on the ground. One of the officers gagged, while another instinctively rushed forward to check for a pulse. The child felt light in their arms. They placed their fingers on the child's neck, but didn't find a heartbeat. The officers turned around and headed back to the kitchen.

Amelia only kept her head down as they left. As the day turned to night, Amelia wept. She didn't want to end up like Margaret Waters. She caught her breath and went for the open bottle of laudanum.

She slowly examined the contents and put it to her lips. She made sure she swallowed every last drop. She placed the bottle on the counter, sat down and waited for death. Like other opiates, laudanum stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, causing a slowed heart rate and respiratory response. The difference between Godfreys Caudill and laudanum is that Godfreys Cordiale contains only one type of opiate, whereas latinum contains several opium alkaloids and is much stronger. As a lodin addict, Amelia had a tolerance to this opiate.

By using the drug so frequently, the opiate receptors in her brain became almost immune to its effect. This tolerance then signals her brain to create more opiate receptors in order to respond to the drug in the same way, meaning Amelia would need more and more laudanum to feel its effect.

Someone with the normal amount of opiate receptors would likely have died from drinking so much laudanum because of her addiction and her tolerance.

Amelia didn't get the grace of escaping the authorities. On August 26, 1879. The police arrested her for the deaths of at least one child, though she was suspected in the deaths of multiple others. The media sensation around Amelia's case rivaled that of waters, locals in Bristol who had shunned that part of society were shocked at the salacious nature of the crimes. They rightly didn't understand how someone could be so callous to innocent children. Everyone made Amelia out to be a woman with no morals, a selfish mother who only cared about money, and Amelia didn't gain any sympathy on the stand.

When she refused to admit guilt, she left it to the prosecution.

But as it turned out, they had a difficult time finding proof the children clearly died in Amelia's care. But prosecutors couldn't prove if Amelia had malicious intent. However, they weren't going to let Amelia get away with her crimes, so they convinced the jury that at the very least, Amelia was guilty of neglect. The judge handed 42 year old Amelia a six month sentence of hard labor and Shepton Malate prison, Amelia walked out of the courtroom and into the armored carriage waiting for her.

The conditions in prison were brutal, Amelia had worked several hard, grueling jobs in the past, but nothing like this.

Her hands formed calluses, her back throbbed, and she barely slept. Amelia counted down the days till release. She missed her family and hopes they were getting on OK without her. But in reality, her children were better off without Amelia there.

Everyone heard about the baby killer in Bristol and where she lived. Passers by chastised 15 year old Ellen over Amelia's actions and her perceived complicity.

It's unclear if Ellen had any hand in Amelia's baby farm, but it's doubtful she was clueless to the operation.

By the time authorities released Amelia in February of 1880, the media circus had died down. But she wasn't immune from wandering stairs. Amelia didn't mind.

She felt grateful for a second chance at life, something the babies that she had cared for never got. That was lost on Amelia. She learned a lesson from her encounter with authorities, just not the one they hoped instead of amending her ways and giving up baby farming. Amelia had other ideas. This time she would just be more careful not to get caught.

Next time on medical murders, Amelia Dyer reverts to her old ways and her baby farming business booms, and this time she stays two steps ahead of authorities.

Thanks for listening to medical murders and thanks again to Dr. Kipa for joining me today.

Thank you. I look forward to the next installment of Amelia Dyer for more information on Amelia Dyer.

Among the many sources we used, we found the book Amelia Dyer, Angel Maika, The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money by Allison Rattle and Allison Vale. Extremely helpful to our research. You can find all episodes of medical murders and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify, not only just Spotify already have all of your favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy all of your favorite podcast originals like medical matters for free from your phone desktop or smart speaker to stream medical murders on Spotify.

Just open the app and type medical murders in the search bar. We'll see you next time.

Medical murders was created by Max Cutler and is a PARCA Studio's original. It is executive produced by Max Cutler, Sound Design by Trent Williamson with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, Kristen Acevedo, Jonathan Cohen, Jonathan Rateliff and Erin Lawson. This episode of Medical Murders was written by Robert Tyler Walker with writing assistants by Maggie Admire and stars David Kepa and Alistair Murden. Listeners, don't forget to check out our love story, the newest Spotify original from podcast every Tuesday, discover the many pathways to love as told by the actual couples who found them.

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