I am about to lead you, dear reader – should you choose to follow me as I tramp along the long and arduous path I have chosen for us – on a sightseeing tour of the very bowels of fierce and howling Hell. My intended purpose in this endeavor is to provide you with certain striking and little-known facts which, in my view, constitute necessary instruction for all persons who may in the future conceive a child.

Our infernal tour shall, most certainly, be an unpleasant one for you to undergo. Should you elect to join me I can assure that you shall come out of it not only in one piece, but that you shall also come out wiser – with a keener eye for spotting scammers, hoodlums and seductive propagandists, better prepared to defend the lives of those you love.

What you will learn is something you are not supposed to learn. You are about to enter the realm of forbidden knowledge.

Welcome to the world of Gonzo history.

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Baby farm – 1). a place that houses and takes care of babies for a fee. 2). a residence for unwed pregnant girls or women that also arranges adoptions. Origin: 1865–70 (dictionary.com)

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The Baby Farmer: A type of serial killer

Psychology Today recently published a short, online-only, article “Life on the Baby Farm: Killing Kids for Cash,” by Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D., forensic psychologist and author of the blog “Female Serial Killers” (female-serial-killers.com). In her article Dr. Johnson offers a brief overview of the business of “baby farming” (a 19th-20th century term for fee-based offsite child care), describing the social and economic challenges that gave rise to this practice in Western culture.

Dr. Johnston selects for her discussion four cases of serial killer baby farmers who were prosecuted in England, the United States and Poland for killing children, usually, but not always, young babies, which they were paid to: a) care after temporarily, b) care for and then place in adoptive homes, or, as was common, c) murder the child, having been judged by the parent(s) to be an unmanageable or unwanted burden. Two of these cases resulted in the execution of the baby farmer.

Johnston’s “Life on the Baby Farm” article is, in my view, an informative introduction to the subject. I wish, however, to add to her commentary some remarkable details about the cases described which the author chose to leave out. The study of female serial killers by crime historians and criminologists is still in a primitive state. The absence of any systematic historical research of female serial killers has, until now, allowed many inaccurate stereotypes, assumptions and statistics about female serial killers to proliferate.

As I noted, Dr. Johnston’s Psychology Today article describes four cases, but the author makes reference to a single method of killing: starvation (or, “neglect”). The reader would naturally assume this single method was used by the four baby farmers under discussion, and implicitly that such a killing method would apply to most baby farmer serial killers. Yet, as you will see, this is most certainly not the case.

The fact is that these four women employed a number of other methods to kill as well: killing methods radically less passive in nature than “neglect.” My own research has turned up well over 100 baby farmer cases involving charges of murder (most of them involving series of killings). Those I have researched exhibit a broad range of murder methods, many of them horrible in their violence. Yet Dr. Johnston’s overview of the topic gives not the slightest hint that such a range exists.

We should keep in mind that the article appears on a website named “Female Serial Killers,” thus that particular sub-section of the topic of “baby farming” fatality is what is indeed under discussing in that text.

For those who wish to explore the subject of female serial killers, the study of serial killing baby farmers is of great importance. Yet it has not never been given much attention. I would argue that you cannot understand the phenomenon of the female psycho killer who repeatedly murders children, nor even, I would argue, the crime of infanticide in a more general sense, if the details of method and evidence of mentality of the killer are hidden from you.

The presentation that follows is long; it is overloaded with examples. But the overloading considered is, in my opinion, necessary. Most of the cases I introduce into the discussion are completely unknown, therefore I want them to be made available together in one place. The relentlessness of the tales of horror might feel overwhelming. To produce this unpleasant effect is a deliberate choice on my part as well.

The material is brutal and distressing and ought to be brought out into the open in a manner as blatant as possible. I refuse to soften the effect in any way. I will not white-wash.

Two English Baby Farmers Hanged for Murder

In the most thorough published studies of serial killers it is customary for the author to include a few baby farmer cases, typically those from English-speaking countries, specifically those who were found guilty of murders and executed. Among these are two out of the four Dr. Johnston discusses: such as Englishwomen Margaret Waters (“The Brixton Baby Farmer”) and Amelia Dyer (“The Reading Baby Farmer”). They are among the most well-known of all serial killer baby farmer cases.

It was the death of a baby boy which led the 1870 prosecution and ultimate execution of baby farmer Margaret Waters. The child was named John Walter Cowan, illegitimate son of J. T. Cowan. Before he died Little John was found by a police sergeant still inside Waters’ “farm.” Here is what the sergeant saw:

“The child Cowen, such a fine, healthy child three weeks before, had scarcely a bit of flesh on its bones, could not cry, could hardly be wakened when it was asleep, and looked more like a shriveled-up monkey than a human being.”

Waters was hanged October 11, 1870 for the death of John Cowan but she was suspected of having murdered between 16-35 babies by starvation and/or poisoning with narcotics (with laudanum, an opiate) – or other means which were never determined (she had been observed removing living babies at night who were never seen again). Margaret Waters was hanged without having ever admitting to any wrongdoing.

Amelia Dyer, called sometimes “Britain’s worst serial killer ever,” went to the scaffold on June 10, 1896 and is credited with a dozen or so proven murders, yet she was suspected of the murders of hundreds of other babies. Her favored murder method (a detail not disclosed in the Psychology Today article) was to strangle the child with cotton edging tape (which the killer left in place) and afterwards she tossed the wrapped-up tiny corpses into a nearby canal. The murders were typically committed within hours of the murderess having received payment from women she had conned.

In the mid-1880s Dyer had served time for child abuse, but the event which finally brought her down was the murder of a baby whose mother, Evilina Marnon, had been promised would be adopted into a “good home.” After being caught again, this time “red-handed,” with no hope of escaping prosecution for murder, Amelia dryly informed to police – who were in the process of searching the canal waters for dead babies – “You’ll know all mine by the tape around their necks.” Dyer reasonably suspected babies other than those she deposited there herself might turn up as well.

Dr. Johnston’s article notes in discussing the deaths of babies while in the custody of a baby farmer that, in general, “hundreds of these babies died from neglect, either directly from malnutrition or from a secondary disease as a result of a weakened immune system.” Yet poisoning with laudanum and strangling with a thin strip of cotton are methods far from being reasonably categorized as neglect. Yet the Psychology Today article neglects to mention them.

Skull Cracked in Half

The sole US case mentioned in Johnston’s article, that of immigrant Helen Geisen-Volk, a former German Red Cross Nurse, operating in New York City, is a case known to some historians specializing in the history of child care, yet the case has never been classified by a crime scholar as a serial killer case (preceding its appearance on The Unknown History of Misandry’s ongoing collection and collation of female serial killer cases, the vast majority of which are unknown to criminologists, crime historians and forensic psychologists).

In her article Dr. Johnston observes that newspapers from June 23, 1925 reported that Mrs. Geisen-Volk (who was convicted for “child substitution” but not any homicide) was sentenced to a mere 3 ½ to 7 years in June 1925. Johnston described the callousness of the baby farmer in her trial testimony. Johnston notes that: “According to the prosecutor, she had abused and murdered 53 babies at the time of her arrest; according to Mrs. Geisen-Volk, the death count was ‘only twelve or fourteen.’” The baby farmer’s dead-pan cynicism shocked everyone.

Baby farmer Geisen-Volk’s arrest was precipitated by her unsuccessful attempt to palm off a substitute baby to a couple who had placed their own son in her care and who had already died. This “substitution,” as it was called by the court, was the crime that got her a prison sentence. During sentencing he judge expressed his regret that he could not by law give her a longer term than 3 ½-to-7. No evidence that could meet the state’s high evidentiary standard was at hand that could prove the baby farmer had criminal intent in the huge number of deaths of children that had perished, sometimes quite violently, under her care.

Trial testimony did reveal, however, that Geisen-Volk’s treatment of children went beyond the common varieties of “neglect” murder used by baby farmers (heavy use of opiates, feeding with non-nutritional, or overtly harmful, formula). One trial witness, a woman, revealed the true cast of this baby farmer’s sentiment when she described violence one would ordinarily expect to be carried out only when no witness was present. Another witness, a nurse, reported that she once saw Geisen-Volk grip 18-month-old, Agnes Toohey, by the legs, and dash her against a wall. The child was dead a lay later. The nurse had, according to the District Attorney, “witnessed the assault on the baby, being at the place attending her own child, who also was ill.”

This disclosure, resulting from the original investigation of the missing child who had been “substituted,” included an examination of the corpses of several children who died under the baby farmer’s care. An autopsy of the disinterred corpse of a six-months-old boy, William Winters, who had died in the custody of Geisen-Volk revealed that the baby’s skull had been “cracked in half.” The fracture, the coroner said, extended from the back of the head to the front and “its suggested cause was violent contact with a flat, hard surface.”

This is another detail which did not find its way into the Psychology Today article. Nor was freezing a child to death, as a method, given any mention.

In a probation officer’s report submitted to the judge, Mrs. Geisen-Volk was described as a “conscienceless woman” who had “strangled or frozen to death or otherwise had disposed of babies left in her custody in order that she might reap a profit through her acts.” Helen Geisen-Volk – never convicted for a single homicide – appears to have been a dangerous sadist who delighted in inflicting physical injuries on the vulnerable in addition to being a prolific serial killer deserving of the attention of criminologists specializing in the study of serial killer psychology.

“Neglect”

In summarizing the serial killing of children in her “baby farmer” article, Dr. Johnson uses the correct, yet vague, almost innocuous, to describe one of the more popular murder methods of baby farmers, noting that “these children were often neglected and given the minimal amount of care.” What, we might ask, does such “neglect” really look like?

One possible answer is offered visually in the 1906 photo of baby farm victim Frankie Heath you see here.

Another answer is offered in the following quote describing the neglect of a two-year-old girl by French midwife/baby farmer Madame Julien, France in 1867:

“On searching a cupboard about six feet long by four feet widow, a little girl about two years old was found lying on a heap of rotten straw covered by filth; the body was one mass of putrid sores; two toes of the left foot had dropped off, and the bones of the rest could be seen exposed through the decomposing flesh. One witness, who had lodged in the house for three days, proved that the child had not been once moved all that time, and that at last it had not sufficient strength to cry out.”

Pork Babies in Poland

The fourth, and last, case in Johnston’s précis (yet the first case she mentions) is one whose description is taken from a scanty two sentence blurb from an 1890 newspaper that does not give the name of the baby farmer, merely noting that she was located in Warsaw. Her conviction for 76 murders was reported. The sentence of 3 years is justly noted by Dr. Johnston as surprisingly short.

Yet there is much more information on this case available if you go looking for it.

To be fair, it must be said that there is no thoroughly researched academic source available on the history of female serial killers, thus it would be necessary to employ key word searches (such as: “76 murders” + “baby farm” + “Warsaw” + “sentenced to three years” + “1890,” in various combinations) to get at the other, more detailed vintage news sources online. Aggressive keyword cross-referencing will indeed turn up the name as well as sensational details of the case.

Three articles on this important 1890 Polish serial killer case are collected on The Unknown History of Misandry. Frustratingly, the name is in different sources given with wildly differing spellings (as is common with eastern European names appearing in English language publications of the period). The varieties include: “Skoblinska,” “Skonblinska,” “Skublinski,” “Stysinski.” Out of all the variants I have settled upon as in my writing is Marianne Skoublinska.

Madame Stysinski (or, “Skoublinska”) did not operate her business alone. Her partners were her sister, daughter and niece. But what we have here is not actually a baby farming business. The four women were what Germans called “professional murderesses” (Kindermorderin) or in France, Russia and elsewhere “angel-makers” (faiseuses d’anges). They were paid by the parent, or parents, to kill unwanted infants. In today’s terminology, the practice, which is being promoted by some bioethicists as a procedure that ought to be legalized with the consent of the female parent, is called “after birth abortion.” The practice, once legalized, is recommended for babies up to three years old for women who do not want their discarded child adopted by others. (Alberto Giubilini & Francesca Minerva, “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” Journal of Medical Ethics, Feb. 23, 2012)

Marianne Skoublinska was a resourceful businesswoman who discovered how to profit from the infant deaths beyond the initial kill-fee she received for each baby-snuffing transaction. As one newspaper reported:

“Her baby farm, or rather graveyard, became known to the police a month ago through her setting fire to her cottage, containing five little children, in order to obtain the amount of the insurance on her property. At the trial it was proved that not a single child which was entrusted to her care and entered her den ever left her house alive. It was also shown that she made two charges for taking care of children, fifteen roubles for allowing the baby to die in a few weeks, and twenty for procuring its death within a day or two. She frequently threw the bodies of the children to her hogs, and boasted of the fattest hogs in the district on account of the exceptionally good feed she provided for them, in spite of all the evidence, she could not be convicted of murder.”

The fact that Skoublinska could be found guilty but given an exceedingly short sentence was noted at the time in a New York City German language newspaper:

“For a young girl who is supposed to have had the intention of attempting the life of the Tzar – the gallows; for the murderess of so many children – three years penal servitude. After that, who can reproach the Nihilists for what they do?”

Yet, when we delve into the depths of the baby killing business, such an outcome will come to be seen as perfectly comprehensible.

Money, recreational sex, and influence

One of the reasons so many baby farmers, from all parts of the world, who committed serial murder managed to avoid harsh penalties after being caught killing infants is that, in many cases, the baby farmer’s clients were wealthy and powerful members of the community in which they operated who were paying goodly sums to have their inconvenient offspring terminated, or, in other cases the killers’ clients were prostitutes or procurers who serviced such affluent and influential persons.

It is frequently argued, by those writers who discuss the subject, that infanticides committed by baby farmers, midwives or “angel-makers”, are motivated by fear that the parents could not afford to raise the child. Yet it was quite common to see in the historical record such cases as the three cases below (Frau Myer, the Przemysi women, and Madame Guzovska) where it appears that the children were murdered with the parents’ express permission because the wealthy parent(s) were not able or willing to spend money or risk social standing to save the life of a “love child.”

From 1892, Germany: “An aged nurse named Myer, residing at Bockenheim, a suburb of Frankfort, has been arrested and charged with causing the death of fifty-eight infants.” The alleged crimes cover a considerable length of time, and it is reputed that several wealthy ladies of Frankfort are to be accused of complicity in the baby farmer’s criminal operations.

In 1893, “three Austrian women were arrested in Przemysi after 27 infant corpses were discovered buried in cigar boxes on their property. A further 19 infant deaths were disclosed when babies’ skeletons were found indoors. But they felt they could avoid harsh punishment, for although “the women confessed, [they] said that if arraigned they would shake the city with their revelations.”

In Warsaw in 1903 “Madame Guzovska murdered over 500 babies in the course of two or three years, and … she received about ?10,000 for her crimes.”

There is a hackneyed and politically correct bromide which asserts that “crime is caused by poverty” which is endlessly trotted out by trainers and indoctrinators – all-too-often in the guise of professors and teachers. The purpose of this simplistic claim is to offer up a mindless, nuance-free, formulaic sound-bite equation which serves, in effect, to put the brakes on critical thinking, to erase any temptation on a student’s part to start looking deeply into complex and difficult questions of personal morality and character.

Yet the “serial killers of babies for cash” shown in these cases were swimming in money, sharing in the wealth of clients who, it would appear, had a penchant for maintaining a certain life-style of pleasure, amusement, status and luxury that they found quite pleasant; and which they preferred not to disrupt if they could conveniently, and quietly, avoid it.

A gruesome underworld of shadowy sadistic opportunists was developed to satisfy these desires for uninterrupted pleasure and convenience. It was an underworld populated by ruthless killers who were ready to “play God,” to decide who might live and who might die, and, at best though of murdering babes as no different from drowning puppies, and quite likely in many cases, gave perverse delight to psychopaths who “got off” on their cruel acts.

Social causation or personal agency?

In the concluding remarks of Dr. Johnston’s article, under the heading “The Bottom Line,” the author posits the view that it is not possible to determine whether the four baby farmers she discusses might not have become murderesses were it not for the social conditions that shaped their economic environment: “We’ll never know whether or not they would have taken some other malevolent path if the one they chose had not been available to them, a path that started with deception and ended in murder.”

True. One never can “know” the answer to a “what if” scenario. Yet of when it is our purpose to examine the mind and the behavior of the criminal one elects to abridge one’s thinking – through applying simplistic formulae – the resulting assessment cannot but be fatally flawed.

Subsuming the examination of criminal impulses of individuals strictly to the social deterministic formulae – whether such models be centered sex roles or economic influences – results in shallow explanations that lack nuance and which fail to describe reality. A social constructionist analysis all too often interferes with the process of serious inquiry, undermining serious and searching consideration of personal agency.

In order to move closer into looking at the question of agency with respect to female serial killers who specialize in the murders of children, I will present some cases of a type different yet closely related to baby farmer serial killers.

My comparative approach seeks to move beyond the notion that this class of serial killers (baby farmers) presents a “go figure” unsolvable criminological mystery. More than enough evidence exists which allows the question of motive, sociopathic tendency and deliberate personal agency on the part of repeat child-killers to be examined and weighed.

When looking at the numerous cases of child care providers who murdered children, over and over again, and wondering why they did it, I have chosen to invert the question. Instead of merely asking why some baby farmers chose to kill for money I also ask why did other people choose not to make money off of the serial murder of children when such opportunities were commonly available? There is a difference between choosing and choosing not. There is a difference between a conscious human agent who continues a pattern of criminal behavior in series and, conversely, an agent who, at some point, quits that malicious, or impulsive, criminal behavior voluntarily. Let us consider what kind of person can go about killing children over and over and over again.

Burned Alive

Let us look at what the historical record can further teach us about the type of person who murders babies for a living but looking specifically at what they said and how they behaved.

In 1875, Margaret McCloskey, a New York baby farmer, was arrested after neighbors complained of incessant cries. A neighbor, Elizabeth Clifford visited the McCloskey place to find out what was going on. The New York Times reports that “Mrs. Clifford found the youngest child apparently dying from starvation, and was told by one of the women that Mrs. McCloskey had been angry because the other infant had been removed, and had struck the little one, saying: ‘Let it die; it’s paid for.’” The callousness displayed by this baby farmer is, in the lay opinion of this writer, that of a psychopath.

Several baby farmers have been accused of burning babies alive.

From testimony in a 1907 affidavit regarding homicide accusations against Mrs. Fred West of Des Moines, Iowa:

“Babies have been burned at the West baby farm before they were dead — thrown into the furnace to end their helpless cries” – is a charge which Miss Flora Goble, the chief witness for the prosecution and a former nurse at the home makes. In a sworn affidavit she declares she saw Miss Beattie give ten drops of laudanum [opiate solution] to Baby Jim under the direction of Mrs. West. Mrs. Goble’s said that “Mrs. West asked me to give the laudanum to the baby and brought me the poison bottle. I refused. Mrs. West told me not to be foolish – that it was [when] the babies gave any trouble they [put] them out of misery as fast as possible.”

According to nurse Flora Goble’s declaration, we see that for her own part she chose, of her own free will, to refuse to follow orders despite any economic incentive, and then ended up becoming a “whistleblower.”

Mrs. West profited from selling babies she was paid to care after and put up for adoption. The ones who she killed were the left-over merchandise.

Dagmar Overbye, the infamous Copenhagen baby farmer, was convicted in 1920 by the Danish courts of nine child-murders. She was suspected of a great many other baby-slayings beginning in 1916. Wikipedia tells us that “she strangled them, drowned them or burned them to death in her masonry heater. The corpses were either cremated, buried or hidden in the loft.”

Similarly, in the United States Elizabeth Ashmead, baby-farmer and abortionist, who operated – constantly on the run from infamy and the law – successively in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, was repeatedly put on trial during her baby farming and abortion career. She is best known for the Philadelphia prosecution of 1904 which prompted such headlines as “Babies Were Buried Alive – Mothers’ Bodies Were Cut Up,” and which, unsuccessfully, attempted to put her away for murder.

A news report on this 1904 murder trial showed that “The bodies of the infants brought into the world in these sore-spots on a civilized globe, were often burned in the furnace of the house, so two witnesses testified. One man said he had seen Mrs. Ashmead throw crying infants into a red-hot furnace, and had also seen her dispose of dead bodies in the same way.” Ashmead made between $800 and 900 weekly during a period in which the buying power of the dollar was, according to one calculation, 25 times the present rate.

It is clear that certain “baby farmers” were paid, often exceedingly well, to kill babies who were “in the way” and were, in a sense, hired killers whose dirty work was much easier and much less risky than was that of her counterpart, the “hit man” who got his living from murdering adults.

We are already miles away from the notion that serial killer baby farmers somehow let babies fade vaguely away by a process vaguely denoted as “neglect,” yet there is more, much more, to be said in reference to the “we’ll never know” position.

“Exactly the same as the others.”

The testimony of convicted thief, brothel owner and midwife Madame Delpech of Montauban, France at her 1869 trial gives us a lens into the mind of a serial baby killer. Here’s a revealing snippet – in her own words:

Judge: “These children were found after they had been dead two or three days?”

Delpech: “Yes, sir; I kept one for two or three days at the foot of my bed!’

Judge: “You killed them by putting their heads in a pail of water. Is it not so?”

Delpech: “Yes sir.”

Judge: “You suffocated another?”

Delpech: “Yes; exactly the same as the others.”

Outcome: Madame Delpech, a confessed serial killer, was convicted of murder and sentenced to hard labor for life. We are not talking about “neglect” here, we are talking about violence.

•?•?•?•

This concludes part one of Death on the Baby Farm.

Link to PART TWO

NOTE

Photo of rescued baby, Frankie Heath, from: [“New Baby-Farm Horror – Little Frankie Heath Is Found by His Mother Dying of Starvation Amid Most Revolting Conditions.” The Sunday Journal (Minneapolis, Mn.), Nov. 11, 1906, p. 1]

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D., “Life on the Baby Farm: Killing Kids for Cash,” female-serial-killers.com, June 12, 2013

• Dr. Biederman • Bruce E. Levine, “Exposed: Harvard Shrink Gets Rich Labeling Kids Bipolar,” AlterNet, Jun, 17, 2008

• Dr. Scarr • William Norman Grigg, “New Century Children,” The New American, Vol. 19, No. 18, Sep. 3, 2008; Brian C. Robertson, Day Care Deception (book), Encounter Books, 2004

• “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?” Journal of Medical Ethics, Feb. 23, 2012

••• Historical Cases:

• Exposure to elements method – a case not cited in the text body, but an excellent example of the type: Christiana Breitschweidt, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1892 – [“Leaving Infants To Die – Mrs. Breitschwert Arrested For Baby Farming In Jersey City.” The New York Times (N.Y.), Jan. 15, 1892, p. 10]

• Philanthropy, professionalism & neglect – The Nivison case, not mentioned in my article, provides a bizarre example of apparent incompetence (or, perhaps insanity) on the part of a professionally trained and well-funded nurse who operated a publicly sanctioned baby farm – [“Terrible Revelation – Evidence of Infants Being Murdered by the Score.” Daily Evening Bulletin (Mattville, Ky.), Jun. 6, 1884, p. 1] [“Miss Nivison’s Denial – Indignant At The Charges Against Her Home. – She Says That the Babies Died From Measles and Pneumonia, and Were Buried With Religious Ceremonies Whose Offspring the Infants Were.” The Evening Herald (Syracuse, N. Y.), Jun. 6, 1884, p. 8] [Untitled, The Upper Des Moines (Algona, Io.), Jul. 9, 1884, p. 2]

• Ashmead, Elizabeth – [“New-Jersey ‘Baby Farm’ Mystery Rivals Gunness Case,” syndicated The Waterloo Times-Tribune (Io.), May 21, 1910, p. 8]

[“Babies Were Buried Alive – Mothers’ Bodies Were Cut Up,” The Tacoma Times (Wa.), Apr. 11, 1904, p. 4]

[“Given Five Years – Baby Farmer Was Sent to Federal Prison,” The Lowell Sun (Ma.), Jul. 1, 1911, p. 7]

• “Christiana Baby Farmers” – [“Christiania The Wickedest Capital in All Europe,” The Atlanta Constitution (Ga.), Jul. 6, 1902, p. 16]

• Delpech, Madame –[From “Parisian Gossip.” The Southland Times (Invercargill, New Zealand) May 20, 1869, pp. 2-3] [“Wholesale Infanticide.” Lloyd’s Weekly Newsletter (London, England), Mar. 14, 1869, p. 1] [“Infanticide In France.” The Saturday Review (London, England), Mar. 20, 1869, p. 385]

• Dyer, Amelia – [“Hundreds of Victims. – Amelia Dyer, Baby Farmer and Strangler.” syndicated, The Logansport Pharos (In.), May 15, 1896, p. 6]

“Hundreds of Victims. – Amelia Dyer, Baby Farmer and Strangler.” syndicated, The Logansport Pharos (In.), May 15, 1896, p. 6

[“Britain’s worst ever serial killer: The Victorian angel of death that murdered 400 babies,” Written by 24 Tanzania Reporter, Tanzania.com, Feb. 23, 2013]

• Eckhart, Wilhelmena – [“Murderer of Infants Charge Against Woman – Grave Accusations Against Mother by Her Two Daughters, Who Caused Her Imprisonment in Tombs.” The Washington Times (D.C.), Nov. 21, 1906, p. 8] [“Light Sentence For Baby Farmer,” The Pensacola Journal (Fl.), Dec. 22, 1906, p. 1]

• Falling, Christine – [Max Haines, Deadly Babysitter,” Lethbridge Herald (Alberta, Canada), Jan. 25, 2004, p. A9]

“Christine Falling,” from Murderpedia.org

• Geisen-Volk, Helen – Jay Maeder, “Mother’s Day; Baby Nest, May 1925 Chapter 34, Daily News (New York, N.Y.), Mar. 15, 2000

• Guzovska, Madame – [Untitled, The Bruce Herald (Tokomairio, New Zealand), Jun. 16, 1903, p. 4]

• Holmen, Mr. & Mrs. – [“A Thousand Babies Murdered – On Huge Baby Farm in Stockholm. Decoy Infants.” Syndicated, New Zealand Truth (Wellington, N.Z.), Dec. 22, 1906, p. 8]

• Ishikawa, Miyuki – “Miyuki Ishikawa,” on Wikipedia; [“Two New ‘Baby Death Suspects Rounded Up,” Pacific Stars and Stripes (Tokyo, Japan), Jan. 20, 1948, p. 1]

[“On Trial As Baby Murderers,” Pacific Stars and Stripes (Tokyo, Japan), Sep. 24, 1948, p. 4]

• Jaspers, Virginia –[“Nurse Admits Shaking Three Babies to Death – They Refused to Take Formulas and Got On Her Nerves, She Explains To Police,” syndicated (AP), The Milwaukee Journal (Wi.), Aug. 28, 1956, p. 1]

• Julien, Madame – [“Systematic Child Murder.” The Atlas (London, England), Sep. 21, 1867, p. 8]

• Kusnezowa, Madame – [“Thousand Murdered Babies. – Russian Woman Charged. – Victims Killed By Poison.” Poverty Bay Herald (Gisborne, New Zealand), April 12, 1913, p. 10]

• Makin, Sara Jane – [“Hearts Pierced With Needles. – Bodies of Many Infants Found on Australian Baby Farms.” syndicated (AP), The World (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Nov. 14, 1892, p. 2]

• McCloskey, Margaret – [“Baby Farming.” New York Tribune (N.Y.), Jun. 28, 1876]

The New York Times report on this case gives the name as“Margaret McClinchy.” (“Baby Farming. A Woman Sent To The Penitentiary For Six Months And Fined $250.” New York Times (N.Y.), Jul. 2, 1876, p. ?)

• Moore, Helen Patricia – “The Ultimate Female Sentencing Discount: Helen Patricia Moore,” Porky’s Place, undated

[“Babysitter ‘was killer,’” The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Apr. 2, 1980, p. 3]

[“Woman faces further murder, assault charges – Boy now blind, unable to walk, SM told,” The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Apr. 10, 1980, p. 2]

[Alison Stewart, “Portrait of a baby killer – A life of agony haunts babysit killer’s family,” The Sun-Herald (Melbourne, Australia), Dec. 14, 1980, p. 2]

• Noskina, Feige – [“Wholesale Infanticide In Russia. – Shocking Disclosures.” The South Australian Chronicle, Adelaide, SA, Australia), Jun. 18, 1892, p. 6]

[“Baby Farmers Sentenced.” The Sun (New York, N.Y.), May 5, 1892, p. 2]

• “Osaka Baby Farmers” – [“Three Hundred Babies Victims Members of a Japanese Family Arrested at Osaka on Charge of Child Slaughter.” (Special By Scripps-McRae.), Dec. 29, 1902, p. 1]

• “Osaka Devil Woman” – [“Wholesale Infanticide – Woman Charged With Murdering Over 100 Babies.” The West Australian (Perth, Australia), Aug. 28, 1906, p. 2]

• Ostrovoskafa, Rachel – [“A Murderous Sect.” Marlborough Express (Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand), Mar. 25, 1885, p. 3]

• Overbye, Dagnmar – [Helle Harbo Sørensen, “Child killer Dagmar Overbye,” TV2 Finans, Jun. 22, 2008] Link to Danish original: Helle Harbo Sørensen, “Bardemordersken Dagmar Overbye,” TV2 Finans, Jun. 22, 2008]

• Pankow, Sandra K. – [Lee Bergquist, “Appleton sitter gets 40 years for 2 killings,” Milwaukee Sentinel (Wi.), Aug. 22, 1986, p. 1]

• “Premysi Baby Farmers” – [“Wholesale Infanticide. – Terrible Revelations of an Austrian Baby-Farm – Dozens of Bodies Found by the Authorities – Social Scandals Threatened.” The Toronto Daily Mail (Canada), Mar. 6, 1893, p. 1]

• Roseberry, Edna – [“Woman Convicted of Beating Baby,” St. Petersburg Times (Fl.), Feb. 20, 1948, p. 8]

• Schnell, Ida – [Bernard Fischer, “Girl of Thirteen Slays Six Babies – Remarkable Record of Murder Is Confessed by a Child in Munich.” Syndicated, The Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Nov. 10, 1907, p. 17]

• Scott, Amy Lynn –[Jill Redhage, “Woman convicted of killing three babies decades after their deaths,” East Valley Tribune (Tempe, Az.), Mar. 7, 2007 (updated Oct. 7, 2011)]

• Skoublinska, Marianne; “Skublinski,” “Stysinski, ” etc. – [“Horrible Crimes At Warsaw – Fifty Murdered Babies Found.” The Echo (London, England), Feb. 24, 1890, p. 3]

[“A Diabolical Crime.” Supplement to Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), May 17, 1890, p. 1]

[“The Polish Baby Murderer Sentenced,” The Nelson Evening Mail (New Zealand), May 27, 1890, p. 4] [« Les faiseuses d’anges, » (Chronique Ou Crime) Le Stéphanois (Paris , France), Feb. 28, 1890, p. 2] [Untitled, Free Russia, (The Organ of the English Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, American Edition), (New York, N.Y.), Apr. 1891, p. 6]

• Tanaka, Mrs. Juniki – [“Infants Starved To Death For Dowries – Eight Murders Charged to Tokyo (Japan) Couple.” The Kingston Daily Freeman (N.Y.), Sep. 11, 1924, p. 7]

• Tann, Georgia – “Devil in disguise: Adoption in America,” The Buffalo News, May 22, 2007 (book review); Barbara Raymond, The Baby Thief, The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption,2007 (book; highly recommended)

• Thorman, Lillian B. –[“Fire Used To Kill. – Girls Says She Killed Three Children by Placing Them on the Stove.” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Oh.), Feb. 23, 1906, p. 1]

• Turner, Lise Jane – [“Lise Jane Turner,” murderpedia.org] [“Lynn Turner (murderer),” Wikipedia]

• Waters, Margaret – [“Trade Of Murder – Review of the Case of Margaret Waters, the Murderess, Hanged on Oct. 11.” (from the London Spectator, Oct. 1), The New York Times (N.Y.), Oct. 15, 1870, p. ?] [Untitled, The Guardian (London, England), Oct. 12, 1870, p. 1191 (p. 7 of issue)] [“Baby Farming,” Victorian History, Mar. 14, 2012]

• Weber, Jeanne – [“‘The Fatal Woman.’ – Mystery Of Seven Infants’ Deaths.” From Paris Daily Mail, The Daily Mail (London, England), May 11, 1908, p. 5] [“Ogress’s Fate – Murderess of Many Children Sent to a Lunatic Asylum.” Lloyd’s Weekly News (London, England), Nov. 29, 1908, p. 10]

• Wiese, Elizabeth – [“Terrible Charges Against A Berlin Baby Farmer.” Daily Mail (London, England), Oct. 6, 1903, p. 5] [“Baby Farmer Must Die. – Notorious German Woman Receives Five Capital Sentences.” Syndicated (Bulletin Press Association), Oshkosh Daily Nortwestern (Wi.), Nov. 1, 1904, p. 4]

• West. Mrs. Fred Mr. – [“Babies Instead of Dogs Said to Be Sold in Iowa – Woman Charged With Killing Unsalable Child – Accused of Throwing Noisy Infants Into Furnace.” The Washington Times (D.C.), Jun. 4, 1907, p. 4

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