Amelia Sach and Annie Walters
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Amelia Sach and Annie Walters were two British serial killers better known as the Finchley baby farmers.
Amelia Sach operated a lying in home in Stanley Road, and later at Claymore House in Hertford Road (both in East Finchley). She advertised 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 had employers who were keen for the matter to be resolved discretely. 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. They were caught after Walters raised the suspicions of her landlady in Islington. An unknown number of babies were murdered this way, probably dozens. 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 unsurprisingly failed, and they were the first women to be hanged at Holloway on 3 February 1903, by the young Henry Pierrepoint, the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times.
Little is known about the pair but it is clear that Sach was active long before she engaged Walters. Sachs was herself a mother The census of 1901 shows that the child was born 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, possibly necessary given the crimes she committed, and she would periodically advertise herself as a sick nurse.
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