Amelia Sach and Annie Walters
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Amelia Sach (1873-1903) and Annie Walters (1869-1903) were two British serial killers better known as the Finchley baby farmers.
[edit] Crimes
Amelia Sach operated a lying-in home in Stanley Road, and later at Claymore House in Hertford Road (both in East Finchley), London. Around 1900[1], she began to advertise that babies "could be left", and took money for adoptions. The clients, judging from the witness accounts, were mostly servants from local houses who had become pregnant, and who had employers who were keen for the matter to be resolved discreetly. There was a charge for lying in, and another for adoption, a "present" to future parents of between £25 and £30.
Annie Walters would collect the baby after it was born, and then dispose of it with poison - chlorodine[2] (a medicine containing morphine[3]). They were caught after Walters raised the suspicions of her landlord in Islington who was a police officer. An unknown number of babies were murdered this way, probably dozens.[citation needed] The evidence provided as to the scale of the crime were the quantity of baby clothes found at Claymore House. A local campaign to have their sentences commuted to life failed, and they became the first women to be hanged at Holloway on 3 February 1903, by the future father of Henry Pierrepoint, the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times.
[edit] Background
Little is known about the pair but it is clear that Sach was active long before she engaged Walters. Sach was herself a mother; the England and Wales census of 1901 shows that a child was born to her in Clapham and that she was married to a builder called Jeffrey Sach. She lied about her age - she was 32, not 29. Walters's background is unknown, but she had been married. She seems to have had a drinking problem and she would periodically advertise herself as a sick nurse. On her arrest she was determined to be "feeble", that is to say, feeble-minded.[4]
