Life story retold by Yota Dimitriadi
*Warning: This article refers to a notorious infantile case of a prolific Victorian baby farmer and murderer. The content is upsetting.
If you are affected in any way, please contact support organisations like The Samaritans or Winston’s Wish.
The information is gathered from newspaper articles and online resources, which are acknowledged. We have intentionally removed the house number mentioned in the article.
There is a link to the photo of a dead baby. Readers only access at your discretion.
The aim of this article is to commemorate the babies killed and not let their names be forgotten or obscured because of their horrific death and killer.
A small commemoration ceremony took place on 14th April 2024 (128 years from the day of their funeral) for all 4 babies buried in Reading Old and all others who died in the hands of Victorian baby farmers.
Doris was only 10 weeks old when she died in 1896. She had light brown hair and blue eyes. The length of her body was one foot and ten inches. Her name is associated with the notorious baby farmer and serial killer, Amelia Dyer, dubbed ‘the ogress of Reading’.
Doris was born in Cheltenham, the daughter of young Edith Evelina MARMON. They lived at 23, Manchester Street, Cheltenham. Edith was 25, unmarried and described as a pious Christian woman. She had been raised in the countryside but, desperate to earn a living, migrated to Cheltenham where she worked as a barmaid in the saloon of the Plough Hotel. She got pregnant by an unnamed man and gave birth to Doris in November 1895. Incapable of working and raising a child on her own, she published an advertisement in the Bristol Times and Mirror which read:
‘Wanted. Respectable woman to take young child’.
By coincidence, another advert appeared next to it, stating ‘Married couple with no family would adopt healthy child, nice country home. Terms, £10. Mrs. Harding’.
In subsequent correspondence, Mrs Harding claimed that: ‘We are plain, homely people, in fairly good circumstances. We live in our own house. I have a good and comfortable home. We are out in the country, and sometimes I am alone a great deal. I do not want a child for money’s sake, but for company and home comfort. Myself and husband are dearly fond of children. I have no child of my own. A child with me will have a good home and a mother’s love and care. We belong to the Church of England.‘
More letters were exchanged:
‘THAT DEAR CHILD. I will be a mother as far as possible lies my power to it, and if you would like to come and stay week or a few days later on I shall be pleased to make you welcome. It is just lovely here in the summer. There is an orchard opposite our front door. You will say it is healthy and pleasant. I think Doris is a very pretty name. I am sure she ought to be a pretty child.’
After several letters of similar nature had been written in answer to Edith’s communication, there came one which stated the willingness of Mrs Harding to run over to Cheltenham to take the child, and pay her own fare one way. Eventually came a meeting at Cheltenham Railway Station. On March 3lst 1896 Edith Marmon met Dyer alias Harding, at Cheltenham Station, and handed Doris, together with some clothes and the sum of £10 (at that time the average general servant was paid £14 a year). During Dyer’s trial Edith identified the baby clothing produced as belonging to her daughter, and which she had handed to Dyer in March. A cardboard box with pretty little fawn frocks, underclothing, and a new powder box and puff were shown. Edith recognised them as part of a dozen and a half of linen she had made herself and sewn and had given to Dyer.
An agreement, carefully worded, with quite a legal form, was signed by both Edith and “A. Harding,” and witnesses. Mrs Harding ‘undertook to adopt and care, and bring up as her own child, the infant Doris Marmon, for the consideration of the sum of £10.’
The mother travelled with them to Gloucester, where she bade her child goodbye for ever. Dyer got into a carriage, in which there were no other passengers. On the train Dyer told Edith that she had come from Reading that morning. Before they left from Cheltenham, Dyer took a bag out of the cloakroom, which appeared to contain clothing. That carpet bag became a significant piece of evidence during Dyer’s trial.
A day or two later Edith Marmon received a letter dated from Purvis Road, Kensal Rise, London, and signed by ‘Annie Harding’ who stated: ‘The dear child is well. She slept all the way down, and did not mind the journey.—Yours lovingly, A. Harding.’ When that letter was read in court during Dyer’s trial, Edith wept, as though the words “slept all the way down, and did not mind the journey” now had a dread significance.
Doris was loved. She was vaccinated before she left Cheltenham and Edith wrote to Harding asking how the little one’s arm was and to kiss the child for her. She had four marks from vaccination on her left arm. Mrs Harding had promised Edith that she could visit at any time but never responded to the mother’s letter. Edith heard no more of Doris until the police called on her in the course of their inquiries into this case. It appeared that Mrs Harding was Amelia Dyer and Doris was dead.
On Friday 9th April 1896 at about twenty minutes to five, a man named Botting, who lived in Ffoulkes Street, Spring Gardens, brought up another parcel from under the centre of the footbridge at Clappers Pool in Caversham. It was a carpet bag, which was proved to contain the bodies of a girl and an exceptionally pretty boy. Two bricks were also placed in the bag: one on top of the bodies and a portion of a brick underneath them. The bodies were taken to the Police Station by a man named Henry Smithwaite, a labourer, of 8, Little John’s Lane, and from there they were sent the mortuary.
Coroner Weedon engaged for several hours in hearing the evidence as to the cause of the death of the two children found in the carpet bag. The medical testimony was that both were well-nourished children, and that death was due to strangulation with a double tape prior to the bodies being thrown in the river. Doris had no clothing at all (some accounts say that she only wore a diaper) and had milky looing fluid in her stomach. Her mother, described as a stylish-dressed young woman, unmarried, of about 25 years of age identified the body of her daughter and testified at the inquest.
A boy who was living with Dyer at number xx, Kensington Road, Caversham, at the time of her arrest, Willie Thornton, identified the bag in which the bodies were found as that belonging to Dyer.
Doris’s murder was brought up as the third inquest during Dyer’s trial. The first was an unnamed baby found in the river Thames near Reading on 30th March and the second was the case of 13 month old Harry Simmons who was found in the bag with Doris. A comment was made that by 1896,
‘Father Thames himself refused to conceal any more of these foster children’ (Bourke, J.).
The media described the painful scene in the police station yard on the morning of Saturday 10th April when, for the first time since her arrest, Dyer was brought face face with Miss Marmon and Mrs Sergeant, who respectively handed her the children Doris Marmon and Harry Simmons. After Dyer had been placed with other women, Edith was taken into the yard. She immediately recognised Dyer as the person whom she had known as Harding, and bursting into tears, said, pointing to her ‘That is the woman to whom I handed my Doris‘ and Mrs Sergeant also identified Dyer the person whom treated Thomas.
Four infants were taken from the mortuary to be buried in the unconsecrated part of Reading Old on April 14th 1896: Doris, two unnamed and unidentified babies and Harry Simmons. They are buried in a common grave with 9 more people (6 infants and 7 adults). The funeral took place at 1 pm and the service was performed by A. Gibbs, the cemetery superintendent, in the presence of a large group of people. In spite of the sensational nature of the case, the funeral does not appear in the local press. In fact, the plot number of their grave is not listed on the cemetery map either.
Sources
- Berkshire Chronicle – Saturday 11 April 1896
- Canterbury Journal – Saturday 25 April 1896
- Echo (London) – Tuesday 28 April 1896
- Information is adapted from the article ‘Amelia Dyer and baby killing‘ by Prof Joanna Bourke
- Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper – Sunday 12 April 1896
- There is a lot of information about Amelia Dyer and baby farmers like her
Division 9, unmarked common grave, plot 11521.
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