“Angel Maker”: the story of Hilda Nilsson, who killed children

Mothers believed: this nice neat woman will definitely take care of their illegitimate babies. But the babies who fell into Hilda Nilsson’s hands rarely lived more than a few days.

Hilda was born in the countryside. When the girl was 17, she moved to Helsingborg, hoping to become a servant in a wealthy household. Hilda’s hopes were misplaced: no one was in a rush to hire an ignorant villager.

For many years the girl earned money through prostitution – during this time she gave birth to three children, two of whom died. At 29, it seems to the woman that the difficult life is coming to an end: a petty merchant Gustav Nilsson offers her a hand and a heart.

But it soon became clear that nothing had changed. Gustav did not understand at all the business he had undertaken: he only incurred debts that he could not repay. And then Frau Nilsson decided to take the well-being of the family into her own hands.

In Sweden in 1900, three out of every 100 children ended up in “foster families”. Often those who fostered orphans and illegitimate babies were called “angel bearers”. These people – most often women – were not going to raise boys and girls like their own. Children who arrived there soon died of starvation and unsanitary conditions. Teenagers who could work were sold to farmers.

Most often, illegitimate children entered the homes of “foster parents”: having given birth without a husband, a woman forever became an outcast. Thus, girls often entrusted babies born without fathers to the care of those who, for a small fee, promised to raise the child or place him in a “good family”.

The police knew full well that in the homes of the “angel makers” the conditions were terrible: shriveled, emaciated babies, looking like old men, lay unattended in their cradles among their own excrement until they died. But no one was interested in this: only in very extreme cases did law enforcement take the matter to court.

Hilda Nilsson, who started her “business”, was different from other “foster mothers”. The women who came to her saw a perfectly clean house. Hilda only took a small, one-time amount, she was always affectionate with children in front of strangers, and she invariably wrote letters to her parents, assuring that their children would live happily ever after.

But the children of Hilda’s house disappeared very quickly. She usually explained this by the fact that there were kind people who wanted to house an orphan. This version suited the neighbors and the husband, and the mothers of Fra Nilsson’s wards generally did not return to visit or bring their babies back.

Only one woman was an exception: Blenda Henriksson wanted to see her son, whom she had left with Hilde. She did not believe the confusing explanations about the “good family” who had successfully presented themselves and surrendered to the police, where they launched the investigation. Very quickly it became clear: out of 10 neighborhoods of Nilsson, eight were killed.

Hilda admitted that some of the wards died within hours of entering her house. In front of her mothers, she said affectionately, “Dear child, I will love you as mine!” But as soon as the woman left, Nilsson would put the baby in a zinc basin full of water, put a bucket of charcoal on the baby, and leave, only to return a few hours later for the body. Hilda burned the corpses in an oven or buried them.

Fru Nilsson was sentenced to death by guillotine. The verdict was never carried out: the ‘Brux Street angel maker’ hanged herself in her cell, by twisting a rope out of her own clothes.

Photo: Wikipedia