The Ogress of Reading

The body of a baby found in a river, a young woman’s sadness at giving up her child, one policeman’s efforts to bring a killer to justice…

Everyone has heard of Jack the Ripper who killed five women. Amelia Dyer, the Ogress of Reading, confessed to taking more than three hundred lives. She was a baby farmer and murderer in a society where unmarried women were shamed by pregnancy and the lives of their babies were not valued.

The Ogress of Reading uses a mixture of fiction and fact to explore her crimes and the lives of those affected by them.

The cover picture is “Bleeding Heart” by Joanna Bloor.