Amelia Elizabeth Dyer was born in 1837 in Pyle Marsh, near Bristol, England, the youngest of five children to shoemaker Samuel Hobley and his wife Sarah. As a child, she showed academic promise and developed a deep love for literature and poetry. Her early life was overshadowed by her mother’s mental illness, caused by typhus. Amelia cared for her mother during violent outbursts until her death in 1848—an experience that researchers believe left a lasting impact on her understanding of mental health.

Following her mother’s death, Amelia lived with an aunt and later trained as a corset maker. Her father died in 1859, and family relations deteriorated. In 1861, she moved into lodgings in Bristol, and soon married George Thomas, a man 35 years her senior. The two lied about their ages on the marriage certificate to minimize the age gap. After the birth of their daughter Ellen, Amelia left nursing—a field she had entered following marriage—and turned to a more profitable, and ultimately darker, line of work.

She became involved in baby farming, a grim practice of caring for or adopting illegitimate infants for payment. Learning from a midwife named Ellen Dane, Dyer saw the lucrative potential in offering to adopt unwanted children. When George died in 1869, she became financially desperate and began to care for babies in exchange for money, a practice that evolved into her horrific string of murders. Over time, she would present herself as a loving mother figure to desperate young women, hiding the true horror of what she intended for their children.

Initially, Amelia Dyer operated under the guise of a legitimate baby farmer, providing shelter and care for infants. However, after several children died under her supervision and she served a short prison sentence for neglect in 1879, she abandoned even the appearance of proper care. Dyer began murdering the children shortly after taking custody—usually by strangling them with white tape—and disposing of their bodies, pocketing the adoption fees without having to provide long-term care.

Her method was cruelly efficient: take in a child, reassure the mother with a letter, kill the child using a length of dressmaking tape, and dump the body. Often, she drugged infants with opium-based syrups like Godfrey’s Cordial to sedate them. Her mobility and use of aliases helped her evade detection, and she would frequently relocate to stay ahead of suspicion.

In the final months of her killing spree, Dyer was living in Reading, Berkshire, with her daughter Polly and son-in-law Arthur Palmer. She adopted the alias "Mrs. Harding" and lured Evelina Marmon into giving up her baby, Doris. Promising to raise the child in a good home, Dyer strangled Doris almost immediately. When another child, Harry Simmons, arrived, she used the same white tape—recycled from Doris—to kill him as well.

On 30 March 1896, a bargeman found the body of Helena Fry in the Thames, triggering an investigation. Clues on the packaging led police to Amelia Dyer. Authorities raided her home on 3 April 1896 and discovered overwhelming evidence: baby clothes, adoption letters, white tape, and advertisements. Though the smell of decomposition was present, no bodies were found at her house. Dyer was arrested the next day, and six more infants’ bodies were recovered from the Thames.

Her trial, held at the Old Bailey, centered on the murder of Doris Marmon. Despite pleading insanity, the jury took less than five minutes to convict her. During her three weeks in the condemned cell, she wrote hundreds of pages of confessions. On 10 June 1896, Amelia Dyer was hanged at Newgate Prison. She gave no final statement.

Though convicted of just one murder, it is widely believed Dyer killed over 200 children—possibly as many as 400—making her one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. Her case shocked Victorian England and led to reforms in adoption laws and greater protection for children.