Welcome or welcome back to Twisted Minds. My name is James, and today we’re going to be talking all about Hilda Nilsson. The story of hers is a tragic one, though not for her own sake, rather for the sake of the people whose lives, she claimed became one of the world’s first serial killers and was certainly one of the first female killers. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, most killers are typically male.
Hilda Nilsen was by all means your average young girl who grew up in the 1800s. She was born in Sweden on May 24, 1876. We don’t know too much about her earlier years, but it seems like she lived a typical life as a child. With that said, though, we think there may have been some deeply rooted trauma throughout her formative years considering what she would go on to do in her later life.
We know that as a young woman she married a young man named Gustav, and the two eventually settled down in a small home in Helsinborg. They lived together for many years, but they never managed to get on their feet financially. It seemed like they were encountering setbacks at every turn, and this began to put a damper on their marriage. Though Hilda refused to let this situation get the better of her. Rather than run off with some other wealthy man into the sunset, she stuck it out and decided to get a job during the day while her husband was away tending to his business.
Their debt had risen so high that the only way Hilda felt they could get back on their feet as if she took a job as a nanny. During the days she dedicated her life to taking care of young children who had single mothers. These mothers would often have to leave throughout the day to carry on various types of work, so while they were gone, she’d take care of their kids and make sure they were safe and healthy, at least for a while.
To put the situation into perspective, having a child outside of wedlock at this time was considered a disgrace to the community. I mean, it was late 1009 hundred we’re talking about here. Oftentimes people who took part in this would be exiled or shunned by the local community with friends, family, and neighbors, cutting off contact with these individuals, forcing them to live a life in poverty or even leave the town altogether. By all means, having a sexual relationship out of marriage may as well have been a crime, though, in typical double standard fashion, men weren’t held to the same level of character. It would have been quite common for men to sleep around outside of marriage, though they would eventually shame the very women they had relationships with.
If you ever felt like there’s a great divide in society today, just think back to the times of the 1800s and realize just how well off we are. Hilda seemed to have recognized this problem and decided to help out these distressed mothers by offering them child care. The mothers would be charged a hefty fee for watching their children meaning Hilda was likely bringing in a pretty steady income for her family. Though there was a kink in Hilda’s plan, many of the mothers who requested services from a so-called baby farmer would simply leave their child with Hilda, pay the fee and then never return. They would often leave town to start a new life in a different area hoping for a better life for themselves and their children.
This meant that quite often baby farmers would be stuck with more children than they could realistically handle. I’m sure you’re beginning to see where this story is heading.
To top things off, the money that Hilda had been making from daycare still wasn’t enough to pay off the large debts she and her husband had to their names. It would take them decades to pay off their finances if they ever managed to pay them off entirely. This put a serious strain on Hilda as she was doing everything she could to contribute to her marriage and their finances. But it simply wasn’t enough to keep their heads above water. I mean just sit back and think about this for a second.
It’s a problem that many of us are still facing to this day. So many people work their fingers to the bone only to be sent home with a minimal paycheck at the end of the week. That hardly pays for the bills. More often than not, some bills are left unpaid and a large amount of debt can pile up incredibly quickly. When you think back to the times of the 18 hundreds when it was incredibly uncommon for women to find stable work, it makes sense that Hilda would even have been at wit’s end after doing everything she could to pay for her family’s finances only to be let down time and time again.
It seems as though this rage and discomfort.
For began to build Hilda’s heart as she began having sinister thoughts that she couldn’t shake off. The problem with baby farming is that it is a lot like foster care. When the children are dropped off and never picked up, the burden must be borne by the foster parent, in this case, the so-called farmer. Unlike many organizations these days, there were no programs that would help pay to feed and house orphan children. This meant that Hilda’s job had made things much, much worse for her family.
Not only had they already occurred a large amount of debt, but Hilda began to spend her earnings just to take care of the children she had now brought into the home. Not only did they have debts as high as a mountain, but now they had countless mouths to feed and no money coming in to feed them. In sheer desperation to get out of the situation they were in, Hilda took matters into her own hands and began to pull herself out of the mess she’d made in the only way she knew how. That’s right by claiming the lives of the children.
When Hilda came to the realization she couldn’t handle these abandoned kids both mentally and financially, she began planning the perfect way to erase the children. To Hilda, her plan seemed foolproof. As I’m sure you can expect, the police and local governments often didn’t have any records of these young children. For the most part, they had been completely undocumented. Mothers usually give birth to the children in private so that they wouldn’t have to face the shame of a public birth.
If they manage to hide their pregnancy from the outside world and give birth without raising any eyebrows, there’s a chance they may be able to live a normal life after all of this is said and done, this meant that many of these secret children would be handed over to Hilda behind closed doors and no one would ever be the wiser. As sad as it may sound, no one typically cared for these children, so no one would bother questioning the situation if Hilda showed up with one more child one day. To make matters worse, many of the children that were dropped off were so unloved by their parents that the mothers would not ever return to see how the children were doing. They’d simply drop them off and walk away, never to be seen again. Actions like this can lead to serious issues with abandonment that can follow children into adulthood and permanently impact their lives and all of their relationships in the future.
All of that is to say this. Hilda’s plan of escape from her burdensome lifestyle was to almost immediately claim the lives of any children whose mothers did not have a plan of returning for them. In essence, if a mother dropped off her child and Hildafeld as though she may not return, she would claim the life of that child the same day and put an end to their suffering. The mother would even pay her for her service. This is where the story starts to get incredibly dark.
After Hilda received the young children she’d often take them back to her home and get them ready for her cruel procedures. Her main means of getting rid of these children would be to place them in a wash Basin and simply leave the room. Keep in mind, the large majority of these young victims were infants only a few days or weeks old. This meant they didn’t have the strength or knowledge to keep their heads above water. Abandoning them in a room would be a surefire death sentence for all of them.
But when that wasn’t enough, Hilda would enlist the help of heavy objects, possibly a brick or a large rock. This would weigh the children down a bit more to speed up the process. Needless to say, the death of these young infants would have been far from painless. And they would have suffered greatly before the mercy of death would finally set them free. After the horrible deed was done, Hilda would return to the washroom several hours later to collect the bodies of the children she had just mastered.
This is where she had to make a decision. According to the court documents, Hilda would typically take the young children outside and dispose of them by placing them in a fire for a few hours. However, if this wasn’t enough she would occasionally bury them. Though it was incredibly rare for her to have done this, for the most part, she felt it was just much easier to set the evidence of blaze and let it burn. We don’t know how she managed to do this without getting caught.
Considering how many years it has been since these crimes took place. It’s difficult to completely piece together how this all played out. For example, what did she do with the unburned phones? How did no one pass by and see what she had been doing? Though most of all, the question must be asked.
Where was her husband’s road all of this?
In all of the research we’ve done, we’re yet to find a single article or case study explaining where her husband was when she was carrying out these horrible attacks. This is one of the first-ever known.