Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating
new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help
the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm
to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.
Elisabeth
WIESE
Early life
As a young woman she worked as a mid-wife. She
already had a daughter, Paula, when she married the tradesman
Heinrich Wiese. After being convicted of carrying out illegal
abortions she was prevented from carrying out her profession, and
money grew scarce. Tensions grew between herself and her husband.
She tried to murder him on several occasions, firstly by poisoning
his food and then by attempting to cut his throat with a razor
while he slept. She was not successful and was sent to prison
after being convicted of several crimes.
The murders
Upon release from prison she offered her
services as a child-carer to women who could not raise their
children themselves, or who had illegitimate children. Initially
she charged the mothers a one-time fee for handing the children
over to adoptive parents, who in turn had to be paid. However, she
did not always pay the adoptive parents, who returned the children
to her, so they had to be gotten rid of. She then informed the
mothers of babies left in her care that she had had the babies
adopted by rich families in distant countries. What she actually
did was poison the babies with morphine and burn their bodies in a
stove in her apartment. However, suspicions grew about the fate of
these babies and investigations began.
As she had to distance herself from dealing in
babies, Wiese forced her daughter Paula into prostitution. Paula
fled to London, but became pregnant. She returned to Hamburg and
gave birth in a cellar. Immediately after the birth Wiese drowned
Paula's baby and burnt the body in the stove. When the police
started investigating the case they searched Wiese's apartment and
discovered her cache of morphine and poisons. As she lived in St.
Pauli, a suburb of Hamburg, she became known as "the angel-maker
of St. Pauli".
On 10 October 1904 Wiese was convicted in court
of fraud, living off immoral earnings and the murder of five
children. She was executed by guillotine in 1905.
Media
In March 2010 the story of Elisabeth Wiese was
filmed by NDR in Germany.
Bibliography
Hugo Friedländer: Ein entmenschtes Weib.
Die Engelmacherin Wiese. (Friedländer: Kriminalprozesse, p. 250)
ISBN 3-89853-151-1
Michael Kirchschlager (Hrsg.):
Historische Serienmörder. Menschliche Ungeheuer vom späten
Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. 2007 ISBN
978-3-934277-13-7
Das freie Wort: Frankfurter
Halbmonatsschrift für Fortschritt auf allen Gebieten des
geistigen Lebens, vol. 7. Neuer Frankfurter Verlag, 1908, p. 194
Baby Farmer must die. – Notorious German
Woman Receives Five Capital Sentences. Syndicated (Bulletin
Press Association), Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, Wiskonsin (USA),
1 November 1904, p. 4
Zeitschrift für experimentelle Pathologie
und Therapie, vol. 2, A. Hirschwald 1906, p. 495
Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung mit
besonderer Berücksichtigung der pädagogischen Pathologie, vol.
17, edited by Johannes Trüper together with Dr. G. Anton, Dr.
med. Martinak, Chr. Ufer, Dr. Karl Wilker, Langensalza 1908, p.
171
Baby Farmer Must Die. – Notorious German Woman Receives Five
Capital Sentences
The details of the trial were revolting in the
extreme, proving the woman to be a monster of iniquity. The story
of her career is one of the most revolting in the criminal annals
of the empire. It appeared from the evidence given at the trial
that she was born in Hanover, in 1859. her maiden name being
Berkefeld. After a somewhat checkered career in her native
province, where several prosecutions and imprisonments for illegal
operations and imposture had rendered it impossible for her to
carry on her calling of midwife, she moved to Hamburg, renting an
expensive residence in one of the fashionable thoroughfares.
Here she established herself; as a professional
foster-mother. Her method of procedure was to insert in both
German and foreign papers prominent advertisements, in which the
adoption of children born out of wedlock was promised in return
for a single monetary payment. These notices brought her many
clients from the fashionable, as well as from the humble ranks of
society. For instance, it is stated that for taking over a child
whose parents belonged to the highest circles of the town of
Hanover she received a fee of $1,000 in addition to $250 in hush
money.
At the same time she inserted in the papers
other advertisements to the effect that a “young and beautiful
girl” appealed to noble-minded gentlemen for temporary pecuniary
assistance, and forced her own illegitimate daughter. Paula, into
improper relationships with the men who replied to these thinly
veiled enticements. She visited London and the names of persons
said to be resident in the English metropolis were mentioned in
the course of the trial just closed. It was further alleged
against her, though on this count she has been acquitted, that,
she attempted to poison her husband, who found her proceedings not
to his liking.
One of the children adopted by her is said to
have been the child of an English woman of title. Of the children
whom she was paid to take those whose age made the proceeding
profitable were corrupted. Others she poisoned with morphine,
throwing their bodies into the Elbe, or burning them in her
kitchen fireplace. The crime of the infanticide was brought home
to her in no fewer than five specific cases, and how far that
number was from completing the gruesome tale of her iniquities
there is no means of knowing. A dramatic feature of the trial was
the appearance of the woman’s husband and daughter as witnesses
against her.
Terrible Charges Against A Berlin Baby Farmer
Daily Mail (London, England)
October 6, 1903
As a result of offering a reward for proof of
fresh crimes it is asserted that the woman received for adoption
in the family of a certain doctor in London the son of a Hamburg
servant girl. The woman received thirty shillings for promising to
place the child in London, but all trace of him soon after
disappeared.
There is no reason to believe that the woman
not only deliberately made away with two children given her for
adoption, but also the child of her daughter, who was employed in
the London doctor's family, by burning them in her kitchen stove.
She is said to have had the stove enlarged for the special purpose
of carrying out her fiendish work.
The neighbours state that they had often
observed that the kitchen was heated to an intense degree and also
that horrible odours used to emanate from it. The woman kept such
a hot fire going that the stove plates burst.
Frau Wiese protests her innocence and says that
the children were killed by others.