6. Amelia Dyer
Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley
BBC
4.7 • 908 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lucy Worsley investigates the ordinary lives and extraordinary crimes of Victorian women accompanied by a team of female detectives. This time, Lucy is on the case of a baby farmer who’s thought to have killed between 200 and 400 children, by strangling them and throwing the bodies in the River Thames.
Baby farming was almost an acceptable practice in the 19th century, seen as a necessary solution to deal with the 50,000 babies that were born illegitimately each year. The shame and economic burden of caring for a child forced many unmarried mothers to enlist the services, for a fee, of a baby farmer, who promised a safe and loving home for infants. Tragically, some of them were unscrupulous, taking the money and getting rid of the children.
Lucy is joined by former detective Jackie Malton, who was the inspiration for the TV series Prime Suspect, and in-house historian Rosalind Crone as they follow in the footsteps of the Victorian detectives who painstakingly tracked our baby killer.
The case began with the discovery of a body in the river and Jackie and Ros revisit the scene of the crime. They also examine original evidence at the Thames Valley Police Museum, in Reading.
Lucy asks what kind of society turned a blind eye to these baby farmers. And crucially, did women really have a choice, when their childcare options were so limited? This was a high profile case but did anything change as a result? And what happened to our baby killer?
Producer: Julia Hayball Readers: Clare Corbett and Jonathan Keeble Sound design: Chris Maclean A StoryHunter production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We're living under more tyranny today than our founding fathers did in 1775. |
| 0:05.6 | A US presidential election is looming, but underneath... |
| 0:09.6 | conspiracy culture rears its head once again and nothing is as it seems. |
| 0:16.0 | All those things that we had feared was coming true. |
| 0:18.0 | Burn the house down and start over. |
| 0:20.0 | It's America through the looking class. |
| 0:23.0 | Join me, Gabriel Gatehouse, as the coming storm continues. |
| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.0 | BBC Sounds Music music radio podcasts. |
| 0:35.0 | This is Lady Killers, where history meets true crime from BBC Radio 4 with me Lucy Worsley. |
| 0:49.0 | Being a mother in Victorian Britain wasn't easy, especially if your child was born outside marriage. |
| 0:56.4 | There was the shame of that, the economic burden of it. |
| 1:00.0 | Sometimes the only option was to make the heartbreaking decision to let someone else look after your baby. |
| 1:08.0 | Married couple with no family would adopt a healthy child, nice country home. Terms 10 pounds. Harding. |
| 1:17.0 | Stokescroft, Bristol. Married couple having no child would adopt one. Good home, small premium. Mrs. Thornley. Stokescroft, highly respectable married couple |
| 1:26.1 | wish to adopt child. Good country home. Premium required. Very small. Many thanks for your letter this morning. I assure you I will do my duty to the dear child. |
| 1:37.2 | I will be a mother as far as possible in my power. If you would like to come and stay a few days or a week later on I shall be pleased to make you welcome |
| 1:46.1 | It's just lovely here in the summer. There was an orchard opposite our front door. I think Doris is a very pretty name. She left Cheltenham with the baby by the |
| 1:56.2 | 520 train. I went with her as far as Gloucester. I took with me a cardboard box containing baby clothes. The baby was dressed in a |
| 2:05.9 | phone-colored police and a white bonnet. These are the actual things that went away |
| 2:10.8 | in. The child was quite well when it left me. She appeared to be an |
| 2:15.8 | affectionate woman. She told me that the carpet bag contained eggs and clothing. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.