People in Bristol are being invited to turn Victorian crime detective and help piece together the unknown parts of the city’s most horrific story – the tale of Britain’s worst serial killer, Amelia Dyer.
The notorious Victorian baby farmer was hanged for murdering seven babies in Reading and London in 1896, but detectives investigating her life believe she may have murdered as many as 400 in up to 35 years of taking in babies for a fee, most of which was spent in Bristol.
She was born and raised in Pylle Hill – now Totterdown – and from around 1869 she started a ‘career’ as a baby farmer, which was a common but notorious and unspoken role in Victorian society – women who would take in unmarried pregnant women, or take in babies to be looked after, because there was no formal adoption system and no form of social care.
Now, the Museum of Totterdown, which was set up last year to bring community stories to life on the green next to the Wells Road and Firfield Street, is staging a major exhibition about Amelia Dyer, but it will be in the form of a ‘crime scene incident room’.
The Museum of Totterdown’s John O’Connor said the idea was to get people involving in the detective work, because there was still many aspects of her notorious life that are unknown.
“Her story is familiar to residents in and around the streets of Totterdown,” he said. “This was her former stomping ground and we have been researching as much as we can about her time spent here.
“We have pieced together a picture of the societal circumstances which made her, and her like, a grim inevitability. Her story is undoubtedly gruesome, but also socially and politically intriguing. Although we have now built a substantial archive of information about her life, still, many key questions are left hanging tantalisingly unanswered.
“Though she is acknowledged as Britain’s most prolific mass murderer and has entered into ‘true crime’ lore alongside others such as Jack the Ripper, we will try to look beyond the caricatures to build a more complex understanding of the society that created her,” he added.
The event and exhibition begins this weekend and will run for the first two weeks of March, with the museum open every afternoon between 2pm and 6pm until March 16.
“The container on Zone A will become an ‘incident room’ where locals will be invited to explore evidence surrounding the murderous goings on in 19th century Totterdown and maybe, play detective,” Mr O’Connor added.
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