The Vesterbro Baby Burner: Murder, Reform, and the Making of the Welfare State
Between 1913 and 1920, Dagmar Overbye murdered at least nine infants in Copenhagen, operating as an "Angel Maker" who accepted illegitimate children from desperate unwed mothers before strangling and cremating them in her apartment's masonry heater. This meticulously researched historical account traces how one woman's systematic infanticide exposed catastrophic failures in Denmark's unregulated adoption system and absent civil registration, ultimately catalyzing the 1923 Act on Supervision of Foster Children and the 1924 National Population Register that became foundational to the modern Scandinavian welfare state.
Drawing on trial transcripts, psychiatric evaluations, and contemporary sources, this book examines not only Overbye's crimes but the social conditions that enabled them: the economic desperation of working-class women earning barely survivable wages, the complete absence of support for unwed mothers facing social death, and registration systems so inadequate that children could disappear without generating official inquiry. The narrative explores how Karoline Aagesen's determination to recover her daughter finally exposed crimes that might have continued indefinitely, and how the resulting public horror translated into comprehensive reforms that fundamentally restructured the relationship between Danish families, vulnerable children, and the protective state.
