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Annie
WALTERS
A.K.A.: "The
Finchley baby farmers"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Baby killer
Number of victims: Several
(possibly
dozens)
Date of murders:
1900 - 1902
Date of arrest:
November 18, 1902
Date of birth: 1869
Victims profile:
Infants
of unwed mothers
Method of murder:
Poisoning (chlorodyne,
a medicine containing morphine)
Location: London,
England, United Kingdom
Status:
Executed by
hanging at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903
Amelia Sach (1873 - 3 February 1903) and
Annie Walters (1869 - 3 February 1903) were two British
serial killers better known as the Finchley baby farmers.
Crimes
Amelia Sach operated a "lying-in" home in
Stanley Road, and later at Claymore House in Hertford Road (both
in East Finchley), London. Around 1900, she began to advertise
that babies "could be left", and took money for adoptions. The
clients, judging from the witness accounts, were mostly servants
from local houses who had become pregnant, and who had employers
who were keen for the matter to be resolved discreetly. There was
a charge for lying-in, and another for adoption, a "present" to
future parents of between £25 and £30.
Annie Walters would collect the baby after it
was born, and then dispose of it with poison — chlorodyne (a
medicine containing morphine). They were caught after Walters
raised the suspicions of her landlord in Islington who was a
police officer. An unknown number of babies were murdered this
way, possibly dozens.
During their trial at the Old Bailey, the
quantity of baby clothes found at Claymore House was used as
evidence of the scale of their crimes. A local campaign to have
their sentences commuted to life failed, and they became the first
women to be hanged at Holloway on 3 February 1903, by Henry
Pierrepoint, the future father of Albert Pierrepoint, the only
double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times.
Background
Little is known about Annie Walters, but Sach's
background is well-documented: Amelia Sach was baptised Frances
Amelia Thorne in Hampreston, Dorset, on May 5, 1867. She was the
fourth child of ten and had three sisters. She married a builder
called Jeffrey Sach in 1896. Sach was active long before she
engaged Walters. By 1902 she was working from 'Claymore House', a
semi-detached, red-brick villa in East Finchley, North London.
Sach was herself a mother; the England and
Wales census of 1901 shows that a child was born to her in
Clapham. She lied about her age — she was 32, not 29. Walters'
background is unknown, but she had been married. She seems to have
had a drinking problem and she would periodically advertise
herself as a sick nurse. On her arrest she was determined to be
"feeble", that is to say, feeble-minded.
There is a small possibility that the pair may
have been involved in an earlier homicide that resulted in another
woman being executed. In 1899, Louise Masset was tried for the
murder of her young son Manfred, whose body was found in the
ladies' lavatory at Dalston Junction railway station.
Circumstantial evidence suggested that Louise was the murderer,
and the killing was to be rid of a supposed encumbrance due to her
wanting to marry a man named Lucas. However, in her claims of
innocence, Louise said she had taken Manfred out of the care of
one woman to give him to two ladies she met who had an
establishment for the care of growing children. The police claimed
they made some effort in looking for the two women, but the extent
of their investigation is unknown. In any event, Louise Masset was
tried and convicted of the murder and, despite a petition for
mercy, was executed in early January 1900.
Aftermath
The bodies of Sach and Walters were buried in
unmarked graves within the walls of Holloway Prison, as was
customary. In 1971 the prison underwent an extensive programme of
rebuilding, during which the bodies of all the executed women were
exhumed. With the exception of Ruth Ellis, the remains of the four
other women executed at Holloway (i.e. Styllou Christofi, Edith
Thompson, Sach and Walters) were subsequently reburied in a single
grave (plot 117) at Brookwood Cemetery. The grave is marked with a
horizontally laid grey granite tombstone, and the names of all the
occupants are engraved on it.
"Claymore House", the semi-detached, red-brick
villa where Sach had lived and worked in 1902 acquired a bad
reputation due to the criminal activities which took place there.
Some time after the trial of Sach and Walters, the building had
its name chiselled off the stone plaque above the window and is
now anonymous.
In Popular Culture
The plot of Nicola Upson's novel Two for
Sorrow (2010, Faber & Faber, London; Harper, New York)
revolves around the aftermath of the Finchley Baby Farming affair.
Both Sach and Walters appear as characters.
Wikipedia.org
A Baby-Farming Case. Two Women Sentenced To
Death
Otago Witness (New Zealand)
Jan. 21, 1903
London, January 18. – Annie Walters and Amelia
Sach, in the baby-farming case, were found guilty and sentenced to
death at the Old Bailey.
Annie Walters, 54 years of age, described as a
widow, who lodged at 11 Danbury street, Islington, was charged
with the wilful murder of some children; and Amelia Sach, 29,
married, of Claymore House, East Finchley — a maternity home — was
charged with being accessory to the murder.
Mr. Bodkin, who represented the Treasury at the
inquest touching one of the cases, said Claymore House was a
“private nursing home,”‘ where expectant mothers were taken in for
£1 ls or 15s a week after a first payment of £3 3s. Among Mrs.
Sach’s patients wore two young women named Pardoe and Galley. Mrs
Sach represented to them that she knew “fine, wealthy ladies” who
would adopt their children, and they arranged to pay her £30 and
£25 respectively. Counsel then described how Mrs. Walters on
October 29 took a room at 11 Danbury street, a house occupied by a
police officer named Seal. She said that she was a widow, that she
had just come out of the hospital, and that she worked for “Mrs
Sach, a lady who got children from young women who could not
afford to keep them, and employed her (Mrs. Walters) to take them
to wealthy ladies who adopted them.” She said she expected a
telegram from Mrs. Sach as to the adoption of a child by a wealthy
lady in Piccadilly, who was going to give £100.
On November 21 Miss Pardoe’s child, a girl, was
born, and the same morning Mrs. Walters received a telegram: “Five
o’clock to-night. Sach, Finchley.” She left the house and returned
with a living child, which she said was a boy. She gave Mrs
Spencer, a lodger, £1 out of which to purchase a bottle of
chlorodyne and some carbolic acid.
Mrs. Sach attended Miss Pardoe, and an hour or
so after the event presented the baby to its mother, and said,
“Now kiss it good-bye.” The mother never saw the child again. The
father paid Mrs. Sach £30 in bank notes, and these had been
traced.
On Friday, November 14, Mrs. Walters left her
lodgings carrying a bundle, and the child was never seen at the
house again. The woman’s movements that day were uncertain, but at
3 o’clock she was at one of Lockhart’s cocoa rooms at Whitechapel
with a bundle, of which one of the attendants, a Miss Jones, took
particular notice.
The wrap fell off, and Miss Jones noticed
something that looked like a doll — it was not moving and there
was no sound. Mrs Walters was spoken to about the bundle, and she
told a most extraordinary story. The bundle, she said, contained
“a baby under chloroform,” that it had been in a hospital, that it
was a boy about a week old, and that it had just undergone an
operation. She was going to take the child to Finchley. Miss Jones
was of opinion that the child was then dead. It would be shown,
that at 9 o’clock that morning the baby was strong and healthy.
Mrs. Walters returned home at 8 in the evening
apparently the worse for drink, and, throwing some baby’s clothes
across the table to Mrs Seal. said. “There you are; those are for
you.” “You have taken the poor little thing, then?” Mrs. Seal
inquired. “Poor little thing, indeed,” exclaimed Walters. “You
should have seen it in its laces.” thus carrying out the idea of
the wealthy lady who was to pay £100 to adopt the child. Mr.
Bodkin then dealt with Miss Galley’s child, “a healthy, vigorous
boy,” which is the subject of the present charge. Mrs Sach
received £25 for it, and it was taken away by Mrs. Walter
Police-constable Seal, the landlord of the house, had become
auspicious of Walters. She had received two telegrams and sent off
letters sealed with red wax, and he thought from this that
something was wrong. So he set his son Albert, a smart little lad
of 14-years, to watch her, and later informed his superiors.
The boy Albert told a dramatic story in the
witness box of what the coroner called his first bit of detective
work. He paid he watched Mrs. Walters on Saturday. November 15.
She came out about 6.30 p.m. and got on a tramway car. He ran from
the Angel to Highbury, and then got on the car. At the Archway
Tavern Walters met a young lady about 26 years old, and stylishly
dressed. The couple went into the tavern, and afterwards drove off
in a hansom towards Finchley. The boy then returned home, and
while watching from the opposite side of the street saw Mr.
Walters return with a baby.
On Tuesday, November 18, the lad was watching
again. Detective Wright was with him then, and they were in the
house next door. Mrs. Walters went out about 9 o’clock in the
morning carrying what appeared to be a baby. She frequently looked
back to I see if anyone was following. Little more than an hour
later Walters was arrested with a dead infant in her arms.
UnknownMisandry.blogspot.com
Finchley Baby Farm
The Islington Murder Charge - Trial of Sach And
Walters - Witnesses for the Defence
The Echo (London, England)
Jan. 16, 1903
On the resumption at the Old Bailey today of
the trial for murder, before Mr. Justice Darling, of the two
married women, Annie Walters (51) and Amelia Sach (29), in
connection with the conduct of a “nursing” home, Claymore House,
East Finchley, and the death of. an unknown male infant in
November last year, a new witness was called for the prosecution
in the person of Conrad Lambert, a clerk in the office of the
“People” newspaper, who was brought forward to prove the insertion
of an advertisement of the “home” in the “People” by prisoner
Sach.
A young woman, Teresa Edwards, who was domestic
servant at Claymore House for some months, said she wrote the
advertisement at the dictation of prisoner Sach as follows: —
‘Doctor recommends comfortable home, skilled
nurses, every care, comfortable home.—Nurse, 4, Stanley-road, East
Finchley.”
Another Secret Witness
Mr. Mathews here nodded to the custodian pt the
door of the corridor for witnesses in waiting, and a young woman
in black, with fair hair, stepped forward, and mounted the.
witness-box. Her name was not mentioned in the hearing of the
Court.”
At the instruction of Mr. Mathews (prosecuting
for the Crown), she wrote single young woman, who, being attracted
by the advertisement in the “ People,” went to Claymore House on
July 19th, last year, to be confined, and remained there until
October 22nd.
Mrs. Mathews was proceeding to question witness
regarding, the connection between Mrs. Sach and Mrs. Walters, when
defending counsel opened a discussion regarding the legality of
such evidence on a specific charge of murder.
The judge, over-turning the objection, said the
case for the prosecution was that the two prisoners were
associates in a “business”; that Mrs. Sach set up a “home” for the
convenience of ladies to be confined, and that Mrs. Sach was
associated with Mrs. Walters in taking the money the ladies paid
her for the babies to be adopted, and keeping it for herself and
giving the babies to Walters. When arrested Mrs. Sach said she did
not know Waiters, and Mr. Mathews was calling evidence to show
that she did know Walters.
A Lady at Kensington Gore
The witness, continuing, in reply to Mr.
Mathews, detailed a conversation Mrs. Sach commenced with her
regarding the adoption of her baby. Mrs. Sach afterwards told her
she had arranged for “a lady in Kensington Gore” to adopt the baby
for £30. Witness agreed to the arrangement, and paid Mrs. Sach £30
on the night of August 29th, the day the baby was born and the
baby was removed, the same day.
Mr. Mathews: “You asked Mrs. Sach afterwards
how the child was going on?”
“Yes; she said it was getting on fine, and
growing into a big boy.”
The witness, Teresa Edwards, recalled, was
closely questioned by Mr. Mathews regarding her duties as domestic
servant for Mrs. Sach. Witness said she went to be; confined at 4,
Stanley-road, and on the suggestion of Mrs. Sach removed with the
“home” to Claymore House.
“You had seen the prisoner Walters?”
“I knew her then as Mrs. Laming.”
Continuing, witness said that on the night of
the day the child of the last witness was born “Mrs. Laming”
called at Claymore House. She saw Mrs. Sach hand “Mrs. Laming” a
baby wrapped in a shawl, and also some money, and witness
afterwards accompanied “Mrs. Laming” and the baby to a bus.
“You went to a place where ‘Mrs. Laming’ was
living?”
“Yes, in Glasgow-road. I took a parcel to her
for Mrs. Sach.”
Medical Evidence
Counsel then proceeded to call medical
evidence, and Dr. Joseph Pepper, Divisional Police Surgeon, who
made a postmortem examination of the body of the child found dead
in the arms of Mrs. Walters, gave it as his firm and emphatic
opinion that the child had died from asphyxia—suffocation—and that
that asphyxia. had probably been caused by a narcotic poison.
Mr. Mathews: “Would the death be consistent
with the administration of chlorodyne?”
“It would.”
The Judge: “A witness (Mrs. Spencer) has stated
that she heard the child making a peculiar noise.”
Dr. Pepper: “I was in Court and heard the
witness imitate the noise.”
The Judge: “Can you account for the child
making those noises?”
“I should say they were dying gasps.”
Witness went on to state that in some eases a
child given chlorodyne would pass quietly away, but in others
would produce convulsions before death, and a child in convulsions
would make the choking noises that bad been described by a
previous witness. Continuing, witness said the child had had no
food whatever. Before leaving the witness-box, witness and that of
course the asphyxia might have been caused by other means — by
another drug, or by pressure on the air-passage leading to the
lungs.
Another medical man, Dr. Coulter, said he
agreed with Dr. Pepper in every particular except one, viz., that
he thought the mark on the back of the head of the child was not
due to the process of birth, and, net due to a direct blow, but
was due to severe and steady pressure.
This was the last witness called for the
prosecution.
The statement written by Mrs. Walters during
the Police Court proceedings, with desire that it should be put
before the jury, was now read by his lordship.
Statement by Mrs. Walters
In the statement, which was of some length,
Mrs. Walters said she received two telegrams from Mrs. Sach to
fetch the babies. “I had to meet a lady at Aldgate Station,” the
statement went on, “but was too soon, and went into Lockhart’s.”
The statement proceeded that the lady arrived at Aldgate Station
in a brougham. “I got into the brougham and gave her the baby. She
said, ‘untie the parcel,’ and I untied it. Then she undressed the
baby, gave me the clothes and dressed it in fine clothes and laces
and a beautiful cloak.”
Continuing, the statement read that “the lady”
said she was going to Ireland or Scotland, but not know which;
that whilst in the conveyance “the lady” gave her a glass of
champagne, and “dropping” her at St. James’s-street gave her 10s.
Speaking of this lady, Mrs. Walters, in the
statement, proceeded:.” I met the lady before, at Mrs. Sach’s,
when I went there wee Mrs. Sach said, ‘This is Mrs. Rogers.’”
A Mysterious Lady
With regard to the other baby, Mrs. Walters
wrote that she received a telegram to take it to South Kensington
Station to meet a lady she had previously met at the archway
Tavern, Highgate. The lady told her she was going to take the baby
to a coast-guard’s wife at Eastbourne, and would give Mrs. Walters
10s. for her trouble.
“I always thought Mrs. Sach’s name was Maude,”
continued the statement.” She signed her name Maude always to me,
and she told me she received no money for the babies. The mothers
were heartless things, leaving them on her hands. I was greatly
surprised to hear she received so much money from the mothers, and
you know the rest.”
The concluding lines of the statement were: —
“I gave the baby two drops of chlorodyne, not
intending to harm it, only to make it sleep. I had taken a
bottleful, and it did not hurt me. I gave it nothing else at all.
– “Yours obediently, ANNIE WALTERS.”
After the reading, of this, Mr. Mathews
commended his address to the jury.
Demeanour of the Prisoners
As during the whole of yesterday, the two
prisoners, from their seats in the dock, had followed with
apparent keen interest the evidence adduced for the prosecution.
Mrs. Sach, in particular, seemed terribly curious not to miss a
word of what was said, and when in the case of several of the
witnesses the answers given to questions of counsel were, but
faintly uttered, and difficult to hear, she placed her head on one
side, and wrinkled her brow as though greatly annoyed at having
missed a word.
Mrs. Walters, on the other hand, whilst also
evincing the keenest interest, sat stolidly beside Mrs. Sach, and
not a muscle of her face moved; but when Mr. Mathews opened his
address she followed the example of her companion, and gazed
fixedly at counsel as he proceeded deftly to draw together the
ends of the net of the prosecution.
At 1.40 the Court adjourned tor luncheon.
Public Curiosity
As the afternoon wore on the Court became more
and more crowded, and when at three o’clock precisely Mr. Mathews
had finished his address for the Crown, having spoken for over two
hours, the pressure had reached a most uncomfortable degree, and
the feeling of the Court was tense and the atmosphere close. Not
only were the three little boxes which serve as accommodation for
the public between the squat pillars overlooking the dock packed
to excess, with the front rows filled with females, but every
available seat in the well of the Court was occupied, and counsel,
in wig and gown, and others carrying top-hats were crowded
together, standing on the staircase leading to the lobby of the
Courts.
Addresses for the Defence
For the prisoner Walters, Mr. Stephenson, in
his address to the jury, argued that the prosecution had failed to
bring forward sufficient evidence to disprove the statement Mrs.
Walters had written, and which was read in Court immediately
before the adjournment for luncheon. The prosecution, he said, had
failed to make out their case, which he regarded as having been
unduly pressed against prisoner at the bar.
Mr. Leycester, for Mrs. Sach, said he endorsed
the arguments that had been used by Mr. Stephenson – that the
prosecution had not proved their case. He argued that it had not
even been proved that there had been a murder. The babies, he went
on. left the custody of Mrs. Sach alive and well, and there was
absolutely.
UnknownMisandry.blogspot.com
The baby killer in my family: Researching
your background has never been so popular... but the past can hide
horrific secret
By Penninah Asher - DailyMail.co.uk
June 5, 2011
Digging into your family past has never been as
easy or so popular.
Millions of us spend weekends trawling the
internet and poring over ancestry sites and magazines.
We are glued to television programmes such as
the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?.
We all want to know where we come from, to
build up a picture of our family's past and to discover how our
forebears used to live.
My interest in genealogy started ten years ago
when I was inspired by my mother Judith's attempts to complete her
family tree.
She told me stories of a grandfather who fought
in Sudan and an ancestor who ran away to sea aged 14. I was
intrigued.
So, pregnant with the first of my two children
and home all day with very little to do, I did some research,
starting with friends' families.
Then I turned to my own father and his roots, a
subject of great curiosity to me. I come from a fractured family
on his side.
In fact, I'm estranged from my dad, I haven't
seen him since I was 16 and I didn't even know the names of his
parents. I knew nothing about my father's family, other than what
my mother had told me.
I've always enjoyed piecing a story together,
so day after day I sat at my kitchen table in front of the
computer, next to a growing box of certificates and other
documents.
I found the website www.freebmd.org.uk, my
first and most valuable source.
It gives free access to the index of birth,
marriage and deaths in England and Wales, and I managed to trace
my grandparents through it.
Then I joined the website www.rootschat.com, a
free messaging forum where members give helpful advice and I
started building a family tree on www.ancestry.co.uk.
It is a well-trodden path. But, while I
suspected some members of my father's side of the family were
pretty colourful, nothing prepared me for what I discovered when,
out of the blue, I received an email from a man through the
website ancestry.co.uk, who asked if I was aware I was related to
'a notorious lady' called Amelia Sach.
Sach, explained my correspondent, was a
murderess better known as the Finchley 'baby farmer'.
On a bitter winter's morning in 1903, she
became one of the first two women to be executed at Holloway
Prison - along with her colleague Annie Walters.
And Amelia Sach, convicted as an infamous
killer of babies, was the sister of my great-grandmother, so she
was my great-great-aunt.
My first reaction was confusion, then shock and
then disbelief. Did I really have a murderess in the family? And
if I did, then why did I know nothing about it?
The answers were not hard to find. I went back
to my family tree and found Amelia Sach had been baptised Frances
Amelia Thorne in Hampreston, Dorset, on May 5, 1867, the fourth
child of ten.
She had three sisters, the youngest being
Eunice Priscilla May Thorne, my great-grandmother.
I tracked Amelia through the censuses, and
discovered her marriage to Jeffrey Sach in 1896.
I checked and double-checked, and the emailer -
who I understand was a lawyer researching the fate of children
born to murderesses - was right.
I'd heard the term 'baby farming' before (it
was first used by the British Medical Journal as long ago as 1867)
but now I needed to find out more.
I began reading everything I could, including a
transcript of Amelia's Old Bailey trial and, as I did so, I
started to uncover a story so astonishing and sad it is now the
basis of a new novel, The Ghost Of Lily Painter, by Caitlin
Davies.
Legitimate baby farmers provided a much-needed
service for pregnant unmarried women in Victorian and Edwardian
times.
These women were often servant girls who were
forced to 'farm' out their illegitimate child to avoid scandal or
to keep their jobs.
Such women had few choices at a time when even
orphanages might refuse to take a child born out of wedlock.
Advertising their services in the local Press,
baby farmers charged a weekly sum - five shillings a week in 1890s
London - or a oneoff 'premium' ranging from £5 to £50 to have the
baby adopted or fostered.
Most were honest and caring. Some, though,
starved, abandoned or even murdered the babies to maximise their
profits.
Sach and Walters were two of seven baby farmers
executed between 1871 and 1908, often following sensational
trials.
Some figures suggest that half of all babies
born in Edwardian London died before they were one.
Burials were expensive and barely a week went
by without police finding a little dead body abandoned in a
railway carriage, or left on the banks of a canal.
Two weeks after Sach and Walters were arrested,
nine starving children were found in a house not far away in Wood
Green, including two babies lying in the lid of an old rush
basket.
The elderly woman in charge had received £30 to
care for each child.
Amelia Sach was a midwife who arrived in London
where her father, an odd-job man, had found work.
Shortly after her father died, she married
Jeffrey, a builder, and they had a daughter, Lillian.
Perhaps he provided the money she needed to get
her business off the ground because, in her early 30s, Amelia
decided to open a 'lying in' home, where unmarried pregnant women
could stay before giving birth.
By 1902 she was working from Claymore House, a
semi-detached, red-brick villa in East Finchley, North London.
She put an advertisement in the local papers
under the name Nurse Thorne: 'Accouchement, before and during.
Skilled nursing. Home comforts. Baby can remain.'
The phrase 'baby can remain' meant that an
unmarried pregnant woman could go to the lying-in home, give
birth, and leave without the child.
Once the child was born, Amelia would offer to
arrange an adoption; assuring her clients that for £25, their
offspring would start a new life with a 'well-to-do lady'.
But according to newspaper reports and evidence
at their subsequent trial, her colleague Annie Walters - a highly
disturbed 54-year-old midwife - removed the babies from the
lying-in home, drugged them with a lethal narcotic and then
wandered the streets looking for somewhere to dump them.
In the winter of 1902, Walters took lodgings at
Danbury Street, Islington, where she asked the landlady if she
could bring a baby back for one night before it was adopted.
On November 12, she received a telegram from
Claymore House - 'To-night, at five o'clock' - and Walters set off
for the lying-in home.
She brought a baby back to Danbury Street. Two
days later the boy had gone.
Walters told her landlady that the adoptive
parent, a widowed lady in Piccadilly, was delighted and the baby
was now finely dressed in 'muslin and lace'.
On November 15 she received another telegram,
and brought home another baby, telling a fellow lodger: 'This one
is going to a coastguard's wife at South Kensington.'
Her actions had already aroused suspicion and
this time the police placed a watch on Danbury Street.
On November 18, Walters was followed to
Kensington Station where she was discovered in the ladies'
lavatory with a dead infant in her arms, his hands clenched, his
tongue swollen and lips purple and black.
The victim was the four-day-old son of Ada
Charlotte Galley, a servant who had recently given birth at
Claymore House.
The cause of death was said to be asphyxia and
Sach and Walters were arrested for murder.
Walters admitted having given the child
chlorodyne, a lethal but widely available mixture of chloroform,
cannabis and opium, originally used as a treatment for cholera.
Walters was probably addicted to it herself,
telling the arresting officer: 'I never killed the baby, I only
gave it two little drops in its bottle, the same as I take
myself.'
Sach was charged as an accessory and, in the
eyes of the police, the existence of the telegrams was enough to
prove her role in the crime.
In January 1903 the women stood trial at the
Old Bailey. Both pleaded innocent, although neither took the
stand.
An all-male jury quickly convicted them and the
Press denounced the 'horrible and extensive traffic in babies' and
their 'unwomanly callousness'.
The case was reported as far away as Australia.
When police searched Claymore House they found 300 items of baby
clothing in Amelia Sach's bedroom.
When the police arrested her, she denied
knowing any Annie Walters, although there's no doubt she had sent
the telegrams.
It is far from absolute proof that she was a
willing accomplice, although I suspect she was not entirely
innocent.
It was enough, certainly, to convince the jury,
and on February 3, 1903, Sach and Walters were executed together
on a newly built scaffold in the yard of Holloway Prison.
It was the last double hanging in Britain and
with them - or at least soon after - went the trade in babies.
Five years later the Children And Young Persons
Act required all foster parents to be registered, and the industry
dwindled.
For me the story won't be over until I find out
more about my greatgrandmother Eunice.
It seems she never told a soul about her
sister. When she married three years after the execution, she
changed her first name to Mabel and changed her father's name on
the marriage certificate, as well as his occupation.
Only in 1930, 14 years after the death of her
husband, did she revert to her real name. The crime has lost none
of its power to inspire revulsion, by the way.
When I told my family what I'd found, one
relative, worried what people would think, advised me to keep
things to myself. It is no wonder the story was so well hidden.
How do I feel about having a murderess in the
family? We might not like the truth when we find it, but we can't
ignore it.
It's human nature to want to know our roots. I
come from a poor family, so there have been no documents or
photographs to help me during my search; their lives were not
chronicled.
In this story at least, there has been no happy
ending, only a terrible family secret and more than a century of
denial. But even that is better than nothing at all.
Sach,
Amelia (1873-1902); Walters, Annie (d. 1902)
SEX: 2F
RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: CE
DATE(S):
189?-1902
VENUE:
London, England
VICTIMS:
"Numerous"
MO: "Baby
farmers" who killed infants of unwed mothers.
DISPOSITION: Hanged together, 1902.
Michael Newton -
An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
