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FACTFILE
Amelia Sach ran a "nursing home"
which offered a haven for unmarried mothers to have their
babies in and which, for a fee, claimed it would care for
the infant afterwards.
Sach told her clients that she
could arrange for foster parents for the babies for an
additional fee. Once the mother had left the baby with
Sach, she would pass it over to 54 year old Annie Walters
who would murder it, either with a dose of Chlorodyne (a
morphine based drug that causes asphyxia in babies or by
suffocation, if the Chlorodyne didn’t work, before
disposing of the body in the Thames or burying it on a
rubbish dump.
Walters was neither literate or very bright
and in 1902 decided to take one of the babies home. She lived
in rented accommodation and her landlord was a police
officer. She told him that she was looking after the
little girl while her parents were on holiday and his wife
helped her change the baby's nappy. The policeman's wife
noted that the little girl was actually a boy. A few days
later, Mrs Walters told the couple that the child had died
in its sleep and she seemed genuinely upset about his
death. A few months later she did the same thing again and
this time her landlord became suspicious when this second
child died. She was duly arrested and charged with the
murder of the child. Further bodies were discovered from
the information Walters gave the police and Amelia Sach
was also now implicated in these murders. The police had
enough evidence to charge them both with murder. Many
items of baby's clothing were found by the police when
they searched Sach's home and they may have murdered as
many as 20 children.
15th and 16th
of January 1903, They were tried at the Old Bailey , before Mr. Justice
Darling. It took the jury 40 minutes to find them both
guilty.
Tuesday 3rd of February 1903,
.Annie Walters and Amelia
Sach, the "Finchley Baby Farmers" became the first women
to be hanged in the new women's prison at Holloway, they
were excecuted by William Billington and Henry
Pierrepoint..
On the day of her execution
Amelia Sach was in a state of virtual collapse in the
condemned cell. Pierrepoint recorded in his diary the
following:- "These two women were baby farmers of the
worst kind and they were both repulsive in type. One was two
pounds less than the other (in weight) and there was a
difference of two inches in the drop which I allowed. One
(Sachs) had a long thin neck and the other (Walters) a short
neck, points which I was bound to observe in the arrangement
of the rope,They had to be literally carried to the scaffold
and protested to the end against their sentences".
This was the
last double female hanging in Britain.
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