Margaret Waters

Case details

Margaret Waters was an English murderess who was hanged by executioner William Calcraft on 11 October 1870 at Horsemonger Lane Gaol (also known as Surrey County Gaol) in London. She was born in 1835 and lived in Brixton. She was known for baby-farming, taking in other women’s children for money, a practice often resulting in infanticide.

Background

Waters turned to baby farming in 1864 after the death of her husband to make ends meet. She began by receiving women to be confined, and then undertook the care of their children; she had been reported as having had four children in her care at one time.

She later became involved in chronic impecuniosity and debt. At one point she said her husband left her with £300, and she had done her best to earn an honest living by means of it. She became steadily worse financially and began baby-farming as a business.

The offence

Waters advertised for children to adopt, and she generally got £10 with one. She would advertise herself for children to adopt and then, after receiving a child and the money, she would arrange to put the baby out to nurse. She gained the difference between the £10 paid to her for adopting the child and the fortnight’s payment she received for nursing it.

The practice described was that when the child was placed out to nurse, she was hardly ever asked even for her address if she paid two weeks in advance, and when she went away “of course she never heard anything more of the child.” Her poverty later suggested that she might dispense with a burial charge when children died, and even that she might get rid of them living.

She was described as taking babies one at a time into the streets and approaching little boys and girls at play, telling them:

“Oh, I am so tired! Here, hold my baby, and here is sixpence for you to go into the sweets tuff shop and got something nice.”

According to the description, while the boy or girl went into the shop, she made off. It was also described that the babies were generally taken to the workhouse.

Waters drugged babies with opiates, which suppressed their appetites leaving them to slowly starve. The case description included that five babies were to die in her care of diarrhoea, wasting and convulsions, and she was suspected of murdering up to 19 infants.

Waters wrapped “their frail bodies in brown paper” before dumping them on the streets, described as a common sight in Victorian Britain due to the high cost of burial.

The trial focused on the wilful murder of an infant named John Walter Cowen, described as the illegitimate son of 16-year-old Janet Tassie Cowen.

Investigation

The arresting police officer wrote of findings at Margaret’s house:

“Some half-dozen little infants lay together on a sofa, filthy, starving, and stupefied by laudanum.”

Arrest

Waters was arrested and tried for the wilful murder of John Walter Cowen.

Trial

Waters was charged with five counts of wilful murder as well as neglect and conspiracy. She was convicted of murdering an infant named John Walter Cowen.

Her sister, Sarah Ellis, was convicted in the same case for obtaining money under false pretences and was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour.

While awaiting publication of her statement, Waters requested to be allowed to write a statement of her case for it to be published after her death. She said she pleaded guilty to obtaining money by false pretences and admitted that she had laid down “the dead bodies of five infants,” but declared that they all died of convulsions or diarrhoea. Waters said she understood why the case had been “got up,” and she considered the parents of illegitimate children who wanted to get rid of them “by any moans” were more to blame than persons like herself. She said:

“If there were no parents of this class, there would be no baby farmers.”

She did not betray any emotion while being pinioned and appeared to have recovered the firmness that characterised her during the trial.

Sentencing

Waters was condemned and executed by hanging at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on 11 October 1870.

Outcome

Waters was executed by hanging at Horsemonger Lane Gaol (also known as Surrey County Gaol).

Aftermath

On the night before her execution, Waters requested to be allowed to write a statement of her case, which she desired to be published after her death.

At the scaffold, she was described as calm and composed. After the rope had been adjusted, she uttered what was described as a “beautiful extempore prayer.” She then asked the chaplain:

“Mr. Jossopp, do you think I am saved?”

A whispered reply from the clergyman was said to have conveyed his answer to that momentous question.

She was described as having been visited on one occasion by a Baptist minister, to whose persuasion she belonged; she had asked for him not to repeat his visit. It was said she was unused to cases like hers and that his ministrations rather distracted than comforted her. The chaplain of the gaol was described as unremitting in his attentions, and “seemingly with happy effect.”

Waters was described as constantly persisting in saying she was not a murderess in intent, but she was said to have been brought to see her past conduct in its true light. She received the Holy Communion in her cell with one of her brothers.

On Thursday Dr. Edmunds, of Fitzroy-square, communicated to the “Dialectical Society” a voluminous statement of the woman that included her account of her financial circumstances and her baby-farming methods. The narrative included that medical care had been provided when children fell sick and that when they died they were buried properly at first, with the undertaker’s receipts; afterwards she suggested she might dispense with burial charges and even get rid of children living.

The narrative also included specific episodes in which a child to whom she gave a baby was served quickly and returned before she could get away, prompting her to step into an oyster shop, order some oysters, and use the fact that the boy or girl looked up and down with the baby so that after a policeman came up and the policeman walked away with the boy she left the oyster shop and got off safe.

The narrative further stated that one child found by the police at Brixton had been given to her only two days before; she got £20 with it, and the people who gave it promised her “any sum if she only took good care of it.”