The day has come...you are finally marrying your soulmate. Everything is absolutely great...the weather is perfect, the venue is spot on, and, of course, you look fabulous!!! You have waited forever to officially say "I do" to the person you want to spend the rest of your life with - 'til death do us part. What happens when someone decides the death part may take too long and decide to hurry it along....for money? What happens when the death of the spouse is not enough...and the decision is made to go after children?
Well...let me tell you about Mary Ann Cotton, a lady suspected of killing up to twenty-one people in the UK.
She was born Mary Ann Robson in 1832 in the village of Low Moorsley in Tyne and Wear, Northern England. Her father was a miner. He died when Mary Ann was eight and Mary Ann and her brother were raised by their mother, who ended up very poor after the father's death. Her mother later remarried and it is said that Mary Ann hated her stepfather.
Due to continuous conflicts with her stepfather, Mary Ann ended up leaving home at age 16. She married William Mowbray in 1852 at age 20. They had five children in the first four years of their marriage, four of whom died in infancy from gastric fever. Mary Ann and William constantly fought...he died suddenly of an intestinal disorder in January 1865. He had life insurance through British and Prudential Insurance office and Mary Ann collected a payout of £35 upon his death. That was the equivalent of about half a year's wages for a manual laborer at the time.
Mary Ann returned to Sunderland as a new widow. She met Joseph Nattrass at that time, but he was engaged to another woman. She left the area after his wedding. I guess her plans got shot in the a$$. During this time, she lost her three and a half year old daughter - no mention of her cause of death. She returned to Sunderland, but sent her remaining child, Isabella, to live with her mother.
Mary Ann took a job at the Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society. I wonder how "humane" things were back then. While working at the infirmary, she met a patient named George Ward. They married on August 28, 1865. So we are now on to husband #2. He never really got any better, suffering a long illness and died in October 1866. He had intestinal problems and paralysis issues. Hmmmmmmmm. The attending doctor agreed that George had been very ill for quite some time, but was surprised that George had died so suddenly. Mary Ann collected insurance money from George's death also. I'm sensing a pattern.
Mary Ann next met James Robinson who was recently a widower. He hired Mary Ann as a housekeeper in November 1866. One month later, James' baby died of gastric illness. James turned to Mary Ann for comfort and she became pregnant. Mary Ann's mother then became ill and she left to be with her mother. Her mother started getting better, but did complain of stomach pains. Good lord...are we seriously going to take out the mother, too? She died in 1867 at age 54, nine days after Mary Ann had arrived to take care of her. This sounds suspicious to me...sadly.
Mary Ann went back to James Robinson's home along with her daughter, Isabella. You'll never guess what happened next... Isabella developed bad stomach pains shortly after moving into Robinson's home and died - along with two of James Robinson's children. All three children were buried in the last two weeks of April 1867.
I'm sure you're thinking that this absolutely caused Mary Ann to be interrogated about possible murder. Who could miss all the connections, right? Well...you would be completely wrong. Due to the high rates of deaths in the 1800s, many of them stomach ailments in the lower class people, and Mary Ann moving around a lot, she had more time to do more damage.
James Robinson actually married Mary Ann on August 11, 1867. So...there is husband #3. Their child, Mary Isabella, was born in November 1867, but she became ill with stomach pains and died in March 1868. I really don't know how to wrap my brain around the fact of taking out her own children.
What James Robinson ended up getting suspicious about was Mary Ann being very insistent that he take out life insurance on himself. James discovered that she had run up debts of £60 without his knowledge and had stolen £50 that she was supposed to have put in the bank. He wasn't worried about why so many children had died of the same thing while being around Mary Ann, but he was suspicious about the money stuff. Okaaayyyyyy... I do understand that infancy deaths were very high back in the day, but come on!!! What really got to James was when he found out that Mary Ann had been forcing his children to pawn household valuables for her. That was enough to piss him off and kick her out.
Mary Ann ended up living on the streets. Her friend Margaret Cotton introduced Mary Ann to her brother, Frederick. He was another recent widower and had lost two of his four children. Margaret had become a substitute mother for the remaining boys, Frederick Jr. and Charles, but she died in March 1870...from an undetermined stomach ailment. That left Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick Sr. and soon she was pregnant with her eleventh child. Here comes the bride...and who was not legit husband #4 (she was technically still married to James Robinson). They were married on September 17, 1870. Their son, Robert, was born in 1871.
Mary Ann found out that her previous lover, Joseph Nattrass, was living nearby and was no longer married. She started an affair with Joseph and was able to convince her new family - Frederick Sr. and child - to move closer to where Joseph was living. Frederick Sr. died in December 1871 from "gastric fever". There's that diagnosis again! Life insurance had previously been taken out of Frederick Sr. and his sons.
After Frederick Sr. died, Joseph Nattrass moved in. Mary Ann took a job as a nurse and met John Quick-Manning. She became pregnant by him with her twelfth child.
More death followed with Frederick Jr. in March 1872 and baby Robert soon after. Joseph Nattrass became ill with gastric fever - shocker - and died. He had recently revised his will in Mary Ann's favor. How convenient...
After all of the men and children...and her own mother...died over the past so many years in the presence of Mary Ann, what finally sealed her fate was the death of Charles Edward Cotton, the son of her "fourth" husband. A parish official, Thomas Riley, asked Mary Ann to help nurse a woman who had smallpox. Mary Ann made a complain that Charles Edward was in the way and asked if he could be committed to the workhouse. Good lord, woman! Thomas Riley, who was also the West Auckland's assistant coroner, said that Mary Ann would have to accompany the boy. Mary Ann stated that Charles Edward was sick and added: "I won't be troubled long. He'll go like all the rest of the Cottons." It's awesome when dumbasses don't pay attention to what they say...or think others are too stupid to catch on to anything.
Mary Ann told Thomas Riley five days later that Charles Edward had died. Thomas Riley went to the village police and convinced the doctor to hold off on writing a death certificate until the boy's death could be investigated. Finally...someone got suspicious!!!
After Charles' death, Mary Ann did not call the doctor, she called the insurance office. Dumbass! She discovered that no money would be paid out until a death certificate was issued. An inquest was held and the jury returned a verdict of natural causes. Ummmm...excuse me? Mary Ann claimed that she used arrowroot to relieve the illness. She also stated that Thomas Riley made the accusations against her because she had rejected his advances. I have no idea if Thomas ever tried to get together with Mary Ann, but I certainly hope he was smart enough to not go there.
The local newspapers caught wind of the story and found out that Mary Ann had moved around northern England and lost three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother, and a dozen children - all dying of similar "stomach fevers".
Rumors led to more suspicion and eventually a forensic inquest. The doctor who attended to Charles after his death had kept samples. Thank the gods above! The samples were tested and were positive for arsenic. You don't say??? The doctor sent for the police and they went and arrested Mary Ann Cotton...finally! They ordered the exhumation of Charles' body. Mary Ann was charged with his murder, but the trial was delayed until after the delivery of her last child...born on January 10, 1873. She named her Margaret Edith Quick-Manning Cotton.
Mary Ann's trial began on March 5, 1873. There was a delay due to a problem in the selection of the public prosecutor. Attorney General Sir John Duke Coleridge chose his friend Charles Russell over a Mr. Aspinwall. No information as to why, but it caused some questions in the House of Commons. Eventually, Charles Russell was accepted and he conducted the prosecution. The Mary Ann Cotton case would be the first of several famous poisoning cases he would be involved in during his law career.
The defense was handled by Mr. Thomas Campbell Foster. The defense claimed that Charles Edward Cotton died from inhaling arsenic used as a dye in the green wallpaper in his home. Maybe that could have been a possibility, but why did Mary Ann not died from inhaling the same arsenic? The jury deliberated for 90 minutes before finding Mary Ann Cotton guilty.
The Times correspondent reported on March 20, 1873: "After conviction the wretched woman exhibited strong emotion but this gave place in a few hours to her habitual cold, reserved demeanour and while she harbours a strong conviction that the royal clemency will be extended towards her, she staunchly asserts her innocence of the crime that she has ben convicted of."
Several petitions were presented to the Home Secretary, but to no avail. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham County Gaol ('jail' for those of us who have never seen that word before...or just me) on March 24, 1873, by William Calcraft. Amazing how people were not on death row for long back in the day. Sentences were carried out fairly quickly. Mary Ann Cotton was 40 years old.
It is believed that Mary Ann Cotton killed anywhere from 15 to 21 people...which included husbands, children, stepchildren, her own mother, a lover, and a friend. I wonder how happy James Robinson was to know how lucky he was to escape death by the hands of Mary Ann.
After Mary Ann's death, a nursery rhyme was created:
Mary Ann Cotton,
Dead and forgotten
She lies in her bed,
With her eye wide open
Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing,
Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string
Where, where?
Up in the air
Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair
"Black puddens" refers to a black pudding, a type of sausage made with pig's blood (for those of us who have never heard of that...mainly me...and - yuck!)
-- Audre
Photo by: Wikipedia.org
Sources:
Look for the Woman by Jay Robert Nash, M. Evans and Company, Inc. 1981. ISBN 0871313367
Amazing True Stories of Female Executions by Geoffrey Abbott
Murder Grew With Her: On The Trail of Mary Ann Cotton, Britain's First Serial Killer, by Professor David Wilson
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