The baby-farmers of Brize Norton

In September 1898, the arrest of a quiet couple in Brize Norton caused a sensation. To their neighbours’ astonishment, Mr and Mrs Palmer, who had arrived in the village some five months before, were charged with abandoning a baby. But that wasn’t the half of it.

Mrs Palmer was revealed to be the daughter of Amelia Dyer  – the Amelia Dyer – possibly the most prolific serial killer Britain had ever known. Dyer is suspected of murdering hundreds of babies in the late Victorian period.

Dyer was a “baby farmer”, a woman who demanded a lump sum in advance to care for babies, mostly born to single mothers. She then strangled the babies. She was executed at Newgate prison in 1896. Her son-in-law Arthur Palmer, 28, was tried as an accomplice but discharged. Subsequent events suggest that this was a stroke of good luck on his part, and the police certainly still had their suspicions.

It is always fascinating to trace the relatives of a truly awful criminal to see how they merge back into normal life after such a nationwide sensation. The family's stamping ground had been Reading and points west. So Amelia’s daughter and son-in-law chose Brize Norton for their new life because they were unknown by sight there. Arthur Palmer found work as a farm labourer, and Mary Ann decided simply to carry on with the old family business. One day she left Brize Norton to travel to Plymouth, supposedly to collect a child. But she returned alone.

Meanwhile, railway workers inspecting carriages at Newton Abbot station found an abandoned parcel. Inside was a three-week-old girl, cold and wet, but still alive. A widow had paid Mary Ann twelve pounds in advance to look after the little girl but, perhaps lacking her mother’s ruthlessness (Amelia Dyer claimed that she enjoyed watching babies die) Mary Ann had simply dumped the baby on the next train. Locals told the police how, on the day of the abandonment, Mary Ann had asked around in Plymouth about finding lodgings.

Within twenty-four hours the police tracked the Palmers down to Brize Norton and they were both arrested. The speed with which this was accomplished suggests that the authorities were keeping tabs on the couple’s whereabouts. And the fact that the little girl survived probably saved Mary Ann from hanging; the only criminal charge available to the prosecution was "desertion", not murder. The Palmers were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

Upon their release, Arthur switched to his middle name, Ernest, and the couple went to live in Chantry Road, Southampton, where “Ernest” worked as a carpenter’s labourer. Whether any babies were murdered at the couple’s hands remains unknown.

This article is based on an extract from Julie Ann Godson's new book, "On this day in Oxfordshire, volume 2", now available on Amazon.