The Woman Who Murdered Babies for Money The Story of Amelia Dyer

See this lady? You would not want to lock horns with her. You certainly wouldn't give her your baby. But in the late nineteenth century, that's exactly what a lot of women did. Why? Because in an era when having a child out of wedlock was so severely frowned upon, Amelia Dyer took advantage of this. She advertised in the press offering to 'adopt' unwanted babies, charged the poor grief-stricken mums GBP 10 for the privilege, took the wee babes off their hands - and then drowned them in the River Thames. As well as relating the story, the authors explore the circumstances that enabled such crimes to be committed. Unregulated 'adoption' was a widely acknowledged problem. The Child Protection Act did not yet exist.