July 29, 2015 • 40 mins
In the mid-1800s, Mary Ann Cotton is believed to have poisoned as many as 21 people with arsenic, many of them her own children. She left a trail of bodies behind her everywhere she went, but it was her cavalier remarks that finally drew suspicion.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracey Wilson, and uh, we're gonna have
a little bit of a black widow story for today's topic.
And I feel like this topic was actually suggested by
(00:22):
a listener, but I feel super guilty because I cannot,
for the life of me find an email or other
communication about it to verify that also looked and I
can't either, which means it was probably on Facebook or Twitter,
which is impossible to find really old stuff on. So
if you were the person that suggested this, thank you,
(00:43):
and I apologize for not retaining who you're who you were.
But if you weren't a person that suggested this, then
this may be a fun ride for you. We're gonna
talk today about Mary Ann Cotton and she is often
referred to as a Victorian serial killer, sometimes the first
female serial killer. Some headlines will even list her as
the first serial killer. Uh, we don't really have her
(01:07):
as a household name though, which is kind of an
interesting factor, although it's likely to change in the not
too distant future. And we'll talk about that more at
the end. Her story is really fascinating and it's one
of those things where as is often the case with criminals,
you're going to start to see some patterns emerge in
the behavior. Uh, and we will discuss all of that.
So we're just going to dive right into it because
(01:27):
this one was a little bit long. In October eighteen
thirty two, she was born Mary Ann Robson and Low Moorsley,
which is a mining town in County Durham in the
north of England. Her parents were Michael and Margaret Robson.
Michael worked in the coal mines and the Robson's had
two other children, Margaret, who died when she was quite young,
(01:48):
and Robert, who was two years younger than Mary Anne,
and when Mary Anne was eight, the family moved to
the village of Merton in County Durham for another mining job.
Michael Robson, the father, was unfortunately killed on the job
in eighteen forty two, so the children were still very
young at this point. Mary Anne would not have yet
turned ten, and Michael's body is said to have been
(02:10):
delivered to the family's home in a coal sack stamped
with property of South Hetton Coal Company. In eighteen forty four,
a Methodist Sunday school open in the village, and Marianne
taught there. In eighteen forty six, she became a nursemaid
for the family of Edward Potter, the manager of the
colliery where her father had died. Later on in life,
(02:31):
Marianne became something of a social climber, and there's some
speculation that her time working for the Potter family, exposed
to a more upscale life than her own family had been,
gave her aspirations to a greater life, and she worked
for the Potter for three years, and then she turned
briefly to dressmaking as a trade around eighteen forty nine.
(02:54):
This is one of those interesting things that I kept
turning up while I was doing research for this. A
lot of headlines will Uh sort of tout her as
a dressmaker serial killer, but she didn't really seem to
stick with dressmaking very long, So I'm not sure why
people gloam onto that, unless they're just trying to somehow
to fame those of us who liked to make dresses.
(03:14):
But she also met a young man around this same
time named William Mowbray, and Mowbray was fairly new to town.
He had moved there for job opportunities at the mine,
and the pair would marry a few years later on
July eighth, eighteen fifty two, at the Newcastle Register Office.
It's possible that Marianne was already pregnant by Mowbray, which
(03:37):
is why the couple opted for a quick register office
wedding instead of a union at the chapel of the
church where she was teaching Sunday school. The two of
them moved to Cornwall not long after their wedding, and
the next several years for the Mowbray's are fairly undocumented.
It does appear that William worked for a time in
railway construction. But what we do know is that four
(03:59):
year after they had left Merton they then returned, and
at this point they had a child with them, named
Margaret Jane. And this is where already the facts start
to get a little funky and murky, because Marianne allegedly
told people there in Merton that in fact they had
had three other children in this brief for year period
(04:20):
that they were gone, but that all of those children
had died, and so some people like to sort of
list those children as the first victims. But we don't
actually have any uh substantiation that those children even existed. Uh.
But again, they do sometimes get lumped in when you
see like the final body count, sometimes there's an extra
three in there that maybe didn't even exist as real people.
(04:43):
Once they settled back in Merton, William Mowbray started working
at the company store for the colliery, but he didn't
keep that job for very long. In eighteen fifty eight,
he followed a job as a stoker to South Hetton.
Not long after that, the two of them had a daughter.
She was born on September twenty, teen fifty eight. Yeah,
and that daughter, Isabella, lived longer than any of the
(05:06):
other children that Marianne was involved with. Uh. In June
of eighteen sixty their daughter, Margaret Jane, who had been
with them when they moved back to Merton, died. Her
precise age at this time is unclear, although she is
believed to have been younger than three, and her cause
of death was listed as scarlet fever and exhaustion. In
(05:28):
October eighteen sixty one, the couple had another daughter, who
they also named Margaret Jane. The family moved around the
same time to Hendon and Sunderland, where William worked first
a shopkeeper, then as a fireman, and eventually as a
stoker on a steamer. Yeah, it often always comes back
to working somehow in a coal mine or other uh
(05:49):
enterprise at a colliery. But the couple had a son
named John Robert in July of eighteen sixty three, although
he died several months after his first birthday in September
eighteen s four, and his cause of death was listed
as diarrhea. William died in January eighteen six five, and
his death certificate lists both diarrhea and typus fever as
(06:12):
his causes of death. At this point, the couple had
been married for twelve years. There have been stories over
the years that the doctor who signed William's death certificate
observed Mary Anne singing and dancing through the window, although
those stories have never been substantiated with another witness or
anything like that. There are also other descriptions of Mary
(06:33):
Anne being distraught over the loss of her husband. Yeah,
and I wanted to point out these two varying accounts
of her behavior after the series of deaths, in particularly
that of her husband, because there is some sorting out
that always has to be done when you're talking about
sort of a uh, famed or at least notorious killer. Uh,
(06:57):
where you know stories that corroborate, and I'm making the
air quotes there corroborate their status, kind of as monsters
come out that may or may not have ever been real. Uh.
But what we do know is that William's life insurance
paid out the sum of thirty five pounds to marry Anne,
and she used some of that money to relocate with
her two remaining daughters, Isabella and Mary Jane, to see
(07:19):
him harbor. And we are going to talk about their
life once they get there. After we have a brief
word from a sponsor. Getting back to the story of
Mary Anne Cotton, She's often called Mary Anne Cotton, but
she actually didn't have that name until quite late in
the game. Uh. So, Mary Anne began seeing a man
named Joseph Natras almost immediately after arriving in sem Harbor,
(07:43):
and there's been some speculation by various biographers through the
years that she may have actually begun an affair with
Naturs while she was still married to William, but we
don't have any evidence one way or another. That's another
one of those cases where it it kind of supports
this idea of her as an evil woman, but we
just don't know. But regardless of when their affair began,
(08:04):
Natras was already married, and he actually had been since
eighteen sixty, although it is unclear whether and whether Marianne
knew about his wife or not. Just as Marianne's family
was in this perpetual state of morning before arriving in
Seam Harbor, life continued on this way. The second Margaret
Jane died on April thirtieth, eighteen sixty five, and her
(08:25):
death was attributed to typhus fever. At this point, Marianne's mother,
who had remarried to a man named George Stott, was
living in Newseum, not far away, and she decided that
the remaining daughter, Isabella, should actually come and live with her,
and Isabella stayed with her grandmother and her step grandfather
until Margaret died in March of eighteen sixty seven. That
(08:46):
death was attributed to hepatitis, and just six weeks after that,
Isabella died. And we're going to talk a little bit
more about those deaths in context of the timeline in
just a moment. So at this point. Just to to
to sum up Marianne. The deaths include Marianne's father, her mother,
(09:07):
her husband, and a bunch of children. Yes, okay, I'm
just making sure we're keeping an accurate count. After the
second Margaret Jane died, Isabella had moved away. Her relationship
with Joseph Natras had sputtered out, and he and his
wife had moved to find work elsewhere. Marianne was on
the move again, and this time it was back to
(09:28):
Sunderland and she started working as a nurse at the
Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever,
Dispensary and Humane Society. And that was in the summer
of eighteen sixty So this was a hospital for the poor. Uh.
It really had far less than ideal conditions and Marianne though,
(09:49):
was apparently quite good at her work there. She was
praised as a fine worker and one of the one
of the physicians there described her as one of their
best nurses. After she started working at the hospital, Marianne
met a man named George Ward. They had a brief
courtship and they got married on August eighteen sixty five.
Was a small church ceremony. The marriage was really not
(10:11):
a very happy one and it only lasted for fifteen
months because George died on October sixty six. His death
was attributed to quote English cholera and typhoid fever. Yeah, George, Uh,
she met him while he was in the hospital, so
it's kind of interesting that she would marry up with
(10:34):
him him having not really been in a great financial situation.
But shortly after George died, there was another man in
town named James Robinson who became a widower. His wife, Hannah,
died at the age of twenty seven, and at this
point James was left with five children to care for.
So even though he had some sisters in the mix
(10:54):
who could help out, he really needed someone to be
there to help him with the children almost all the time.
So he advertised for a housekeeper and mary Anne responded
to that ad and she moved in shortly thereafter, at
the end of eighteen sixty six. Not long after this,
in March in April of eighteen sixty seven, where the
aforementioned deaths of Marianne's mother, which took place nine days
(11:15):
after Maryant traveled there to see her and helped like
after while she was sick and her daughter Isabella. Before
May of that year, three of Robinson's children had also died.
Isabella and two of the Robinson children had been insured
before their deaths, and mary Anne was also pregnant. Robinson
(11:36):
was the father. The couple married on August eleventh of
eighteen sixty seven, and mary Anne listed her name on
the marriage certificate as mary Anne Mowbray, kind of skipping
over George Ward as though he had never existed. Uh
their child. Their new child, Margaret Isabella. You'll find she
repeats children's names a lot, was born on November twenty
(11:57):
nine of eighteen sixty seven, and Margaret is Bella lived
mere months before dying of convulsions in early spring of
eighteen sixty eight. In June of eighteen sixty nine, James
and Marianne had another child. This was the son named George.
Later that year, it would become a parent to James
that Marianne had been stealing from him by taking money
(12:17):
she was supposed to deposit into their building Society account,
then falsifying entries about it in the ledger to make
it look like she had made those deposits as instructed
she also ran up a bunch of bets in his
name without his knowledge, so you can imagine this turned
into quite a fight. And in the midst of all
of this arguing and wrangling that took place once all
(12:39):
of Marianne's fiscal indiscretions came to light because James Robinson
was much better off than her previous husband's. In the
midst of all of this arguing and wrangling that took
place once these fiscal indiscrections indiscretions came to late, Maryanne
somehow worked it where she asked James, as part of this,
to take out insurance policies on himself, off his two
(13:01):
remaining children from his prior marriage and their son, George.
And James refused, and mary Anne, in an angry fit,
left with young George. She moved out according to some accounts,
but she'll say later that it wasn't quite that way.
James decided to sell their house, so he boarded it up.
He moved in with one of his sisters, uh, and
then eventually he moved into a new home of his own.
(13:24):
At the end of the year, mary Anne returned to
town and left the infant George with a friend while
she went on an errand, but she never came back
for the child. Little George was eventually brought to his
father in early eighteen seventy. The time from late eighteen
sixty nine to the spring of eighteen seventy one is
kind of hazy in Maryanne's life. She would later say
that she had gone back to her home with Robinson
(13:47):
and carrying George, thinking that she was going home and
they were going to make up and set things right,
but that she felt like she had just been kicked
out into the street when she saw that their home
had been boarded up, so she was like, all right,
I'm out of here. Uh. There's been some speculation during
this period where we don't have a clear sense of
exactly what she was doing, that she may have worked
as a prostitute or a petty thief during this time
(14:09):
to make ends meet, but there's really no substantiation for that.
What we do know is that at some point she
did actually do some work for a man named Edward
Backhouse at the Smyrna House Home for Fallen Women, it,
possibly as a laundress. During this time, Marianne met her
fourth husband, Frederick Cotton. Finally were to the Cotton part
(14:31):
he was. She was introduced to him by his sister.
Frederick had been married with four children, but two of
his daughters had died of typhus and his wife had
died of consumption in late eighteen sixty nine. After his
sister Margaret moved in to help him. She connected the
two and in early eighteen seventy Marianne went to Walbottle
(14:51):
to visit the Cotton family, and Margaret, the sister of Frederick,
had sixty pounds in the bank that her brother was
going to inherit. She suddenly died on March twenty five
after suffering from stomach paints. Her cause of death was
actually reported as pleural pneumonia, and true to a pattern
that's developing, Marianne was pregnant uh some time around this
(15:15):
time with Frederick's child. She left wall Bottle briefly and
words the housekeeper for a German doctor named Hefferman. During
a short time that Marianne kept house for him, several
of his items went missing, but another employee was blamed
for it and fired. Marianne wound up quitting and was
back in wall Bottle by the summer of eighteen seventy. Yeah,
(15:36):
so that was really a very short period, like a
six weeks ish maybe month. Uh, don't have a clear
sense of the actual times, but it's sometime very briefly,
because we know that in late March she was there
and then she was back by the beginning of summer.
Marianne did get married to Frederick Cotton on September seventeenth
of eighteen seventy, and shortly thereafter she ensured Cotton's two sons.
(16:00):
In April of eight seventy one, Marianne moved to west
Auckland with Frederick Cotton, his two surviving sons, and their
new baby, Robert Robson. Marianne immediately made a very rash
and cruel move. She tried to put the younger of
Frederick's two sons, Charles Edward, into a workhouse. So a
(16:20):
workhouse was a horrible place for a child, or for
anyone really, but especially for an unaccompanied child. The children
who ended up there were normally born into circumstances where
there was just no other choice. But the Cottons were
not destitute at all. Maryanne just wanted to put the
child somewhere she wouldn't have to care for him. Workhouse
(16:43):
administrators were not willing to take a child who appeared
to have a perfectly acceptable home, although they had no
idea that the woman of this house was far more
dangerous than almost any fate that a child would face
at the workhouse, even though that was a really terrible
place to be. Once the family had moved to Stockland,
Frederick started to work at the colliery there, and coincidentally,
(17:03):
Marianne's old paramour, Joseph Naturals, was also working at that colliery.
Joseph's wife had passed away and he had no children,
so it's likely that Marianne arranged the move so that
she could hook up with him again. Frederick Cotton was
not around for long after the family settled in west Auckland.
(17:24):
He died on September two of eight seventy one of
typhoid and hepatitis. Naturals moved in with the remaining Cottons
three months later. So, after all this trouble Marianne had
gone to in order to orchestrate a reunion with Naturals,
you might think she'd savor her new fortune, but she
started working as a nurse for a while to do
(17:45):
a bachelor. Mr Quickmanning who was recovering from smallpox, had
no children, and he worked as an excise officer for Brewery,
so when short, he was a step up from what
Naturist could offer mary Anne. Over the course of several
weeks from March tenth to April one, eighteen seventy two,
Marianne worked to remove the burdens of Naturis and the
(18:07):
main remaining Cotton children from her life. The eldest son
died first, with his cause of death listed as gastric fever.
Baby Robert was the next victim on record as passing
from convulsions from teething, and finally Naturus died of typhoid
fever on April one. This left Charles Edward Cotton as
(18:28):
the only member of the family. Mary Anne tried some
pawn him off on an uncle that that didn't work out.
She moved with Charles Edwards to a smaller home, although
she still had enough space to take in lodgers, something
that she had done many times through the years that
to make to make extra money. By summer of eighteen
(18:49):
seventy two, so this was just a couple of months
after Naturus died, mary Anne was once again pregnant, possibly
with quick Manning's child. Believing that she was soon going
to be married to quick Manning, she asked her lodger,
William Lowry, to move out. She said that her soon
to be husband was not okay with her renting rooms
two men, but she did, however, continue to offer her
(19:11):
nursing services for hire. On July six, Marianne was visited
by a man named Thomas Riley who lived nearby, who
wanted to ask about nursing services for another smallpox patient,
and the conversation with the two of them turned out
to be pivotal because Riley was immediately suspicious of her.
He was pretty open about how burdened she felt and
(19:32):
having to take care of Cotton's son, Charles Edward. Marianne
even asked Riley, who worked as the assistant overseer of
poor relief for the town, if he would write an
order to send the child to the workhouse, and Riley
said he would do so, but only if Marianne was
going to go with Charles Edward, and she was insistent
that she was never going to do such a thing.
(19:54):
She was not going to a place like that, And
this conversation uh then turned to the rumors that mary
Anne was likely to soon be married to Quick Manning,
and Marianne said, yes, that was indeed likely, except for
the fact that this child that she was burdened with
was frankly an obstacle. So then, as was later recounted
(20:15):
in court testimony, mary Anne told Thomas Riley quote, perhaps
it won't matter, as I won't be troubled long. He'll
go like all the rest of the Cotton family. She
actually said this in front of the child, and Riley
sort of trying to smooth things over by mentioning how
hale and hearty this child appeared. Less than a week later,
(20:38):
Thomas Riley was walking by mary Anne's house when Marianne
appeared at the doorway and she told him that Charles
Edward was dead and she wanted him to come in
and view the body. Riley went immediately to the police
to report his suspicions that mary Anne had killed the child.
So Marianne did not know that Riley thought she was
a murderer, at least at first. I think was more
(21:01):
surreptitious than she was. The first clue came in the
form of their not being a death certificate. The doctor
who had been seeing Charles Edward, who was doctor Kilburn
wouldn't make went out right away and they didn't explicitly
tell Mary Anne. So, but this is because a coroner's
inquiry had been requested. No death certificate meant that she
(21:21):
couldn't make a claim on the life insurance policy. So
this coroner's inquiry was formed and Dr Kilburn got permission
to perform a post mortem examination of Charles Edward's body.
Mary Anne was at this point informed of the situation,
and Kilburn examined the child's corpse there on a table
in Mrs Cotton's house. But Kilburn was sort of pressed
(21:45):
for time this jury, uh this coroner's inquiry jury was
convening like in a pub nearby, and they were basically
waiting on him to make his assessment and then report back.
And uh So, when he reported his findings to the
coroner's jury, he wasn't super confident. He had just felt
like he had to rush through everything, and he thought
it was possible that the child might have died of
gastro into ritis, but he really wasn't certain. And so
(22:08):
the jury, after deliberating briefly, just deemed the death to
have happened by natural causes. Because his actions had caused
her so much trouble, mary Anne wrote to Thomas Riley
and insisted that you pay for the child's funeral expenses,
which Riley did. So things may have appeared to be
settling at this point, but Riley still really strongly felt
(22:31):
that wrongdoing had led to this child's demise, and he
continued to use his connections in local government to try
to get the case looked at more closely. Basically, anyone's
ear he could bend, he would, and he was very
quick to say I think this woman is a murderer.
Because of the coroner's inquiry, this whole episode had also
been reported in the papers. So mary Anne's fortunes started
(22:52):
to really fall apart. Her potential engagement to Quick Manning evaporated.
He wanted nothing to do with her. That's also meant
that Arianne basically became a pariah. She couldn't get nursing jobs,
she had no income. She sold all her furniture to
try to bring in some money, and she came down
with a sore throat and was sick in bed. But
when she asked a neighbor to call for a doctor,
(23:12):
the two that were summoned, one of which was Dr Kilburn,
refused to come to her in mid July, so this
had all happened in the early part of July, and
then in mid July I blew it was the seventeenth
Doctor Kilburn began a series of tests on the stomach
contents of Charles Edward which he had collected during his postmortem.
(23:34):
Using a wrench test designed to detect the presence of
heavy heavy metals in biological material, Kilburn determined the child
had indeed been murdered by poisoning, and Marianne was arrested
the following day, July eighth, eighteen seventy two. Charles Edwards
body was exhumed on July twenty six. Then additional samples
from the body were taken by Dr Kilburn and sent
(23:56):
to Thomas Scattergood at Leeds School of Medicine for forensic
and alysis. And while Maryanne was in jail but before
her trial, she actually gave birth to another child. This
is the one that was believed to have been quick
Mannings and she uh She named this child a little
girl who was born on January tenth of eighteen seventy three.
(24:17):
Margaret Edith quick Manning Cotton. Marianne Cotton's trial lasted only
three days from March fifth in March seventh, eighteen seventy three,
which is kind of mind blowing since murder trials the
day off and go on for weeks. This has she
had been charged in the murders of Charles Edward Cotton,
Joseph Naturals, Frederick Cotton, and Robert Robson Cotton, although she
(24:39):
was only tried for child Edwards murder. Yet it seems like,
though I was not able to confirm this that basically,
if she had been found innocent of this first murder charge,
they kind of had the other charges waiting in the wings,
so they would be like, then we're going to try
you on this one and then on this one. One
(25:00):
of the witnesses during this trial was a woman named
Jane Hedley, and she was a friend of mary Anne's.
It was interesting because she hadn't known her all that long,
but she kind of described her as a very close friend.
So this is one of those moments where it's kind
of important to point out that Marianne really, uh, you know,
she had a charm about her. She could make people
feel very close to her like they were confident she
(25:20):
certainly had no problem attracting men. Uh. But this woman,
Jane Hedley, was present at the death of Joseph Natras,
and her description of it is quite gruesome and unsettling.
She talks a lot about his spasms and his fits
and mary Anne having to hold him down when he
had these convulsions. And Hedley also testified that Marianne did
(25:41):
indeed keep arsenic in a pot on the top shelf
of her pantry. Another witness, Marianne Dodd, testified that she
had bought arsenic and soft soap for Marianne Cotton after
the druggist refused to sell these items to Charles Edward.
There was an eighteen fifty one Arsenic Regulation Act that
had made it illegal to sell arsenic to children. Cotton
(26:04):
had told Dodd that she needed the supplies to treat
her bedstead for bed bugs. So dodds helped Cotton use
about half the arsenic to treat the bed and then
the other half was put into a pint jug. And
then for additional testimony, relatives of some of the deceased
were called to confirm that, yes, in fact, Marianne did
care for sick family members, which sounds initially kind of nice,
(26:27):
but then that followed up with and she also had
not allowed anyone else to do so she was okay
with people being there, but basically she wanted to do
all the nursing. While Dr Kilburn gave testimony, it was
really Scattergood who was the star. In terms of forensic evidence.
Scattergood testified the best based on his tests, he believed
Charles Edward had been given multiple doses of arsenic over
(26:49):
the course of several days. Scattergood had also found evidence
of lethal doses of arsenic and the exhume remains of
Joseph Naturis, Frederick Cotton, and the baby Robert. The defense
for mary And was based largely on this kind of
wacky idea that Charles edwards poisoning had been accidental, and
(27:10):
this was suggested that it either happened through ingesting residue
of this bedbug treatment or UH that he had inhaled
or otherwise ingested wallpaper debris that had flaked off and
been circulating in the air because arsenic was used in
some colors, so we'll talk about in a bit UH.
And the rest of the defense was really built around.
(27:31):
How preposterous an idea it was that a nurse and
a mother could kill the very people she was caring for.
Today we call this the no true Scotsman fallacy. No
true nurse and mother would do this. So, after less
than an hour of deliberation, the verdict was handed down.
Marianne Cotton was found guilty of poisoning her steps in.
(27:54):
So from the day that the verdict was handed down
to the day of her execution, mary Anne wrote a
number of letters to friends and family asking them to
petition on her behalf. She also contacted her still husband,
James Robinson. Remember they had never divorced, so she had
actually been marrying other men while she was already married,
and she asked James Robinson to bring the three children
(28:18):
that he had to visit her, which seems sort of
creepy and preposterous. She also arranged for her new baby
to be adopted by a couple who had been her
neighbors in west Auckland. Apparently a lot of people offered
to adopt this child that had been born there in
the prison. Mary Anne was put to death by hanging
on March seventy three, and during prison fifty people attended
(28:40):
the execution in the prison and a crowd of about
two hundred gathered outside. She maintained her claim of innocence
to the very end, and as she left her cell
and headed to her death, she allegedly said, Heaven is
my home. So at this point, I mean, we're talking
about a couple dozen probable murders are close to that,
and so it kind of makes people wonder, and it
(29:02):
comes up a lot in biographies. If she was such
a prolific killer, why is she not a household name
akin to Jack the Ripper or other famous killers throughout
the years. And Deborah Blum, who is the author of
the Poisoner's handbook Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine
in jazz Age, New York, wrote an interesting piece on this,
(29:22):
and she put forth the idea that one of the
reasons that Marianne Cotton hasn't become a household name in
these years since her arrest and and execution is that
she was associated with Arsenic. This was the time when
Arsenic was basically the superstar of poisoning. It's estimated between
eighteen thirty five and eighteen eighty fort of all poisoning
(29:45):
homifides in Europe were the results of arsenic. Part of
the reason that arsenic was so common as a poison
was that it was so common period. It was in
all kinds of completely normal things. We've already talked about
how it was used to treat bed bugs. It was
also used in wallpaper, in tonics, in rat poison, in
fabric dye. Many of our listeners have seen and shared
(30:07):
with us articles about that lovely shade of green that
was super popular through the eighteen hundreds that was also
incredibly poisonous because it contained arsenic. Another thing is that
when eight hundred and twenty two survivors of arsenic poisoning
were interviewed by forensic chemists Rudolph Whitthouse in the late
tent nineteenth century is part of his research, fifteen of them,
(30:31):
so fifteen out of eight hundred twenty two reported having
tasted the metallic tinge of arsenic in the food or
beverage that they had consumed that was tainted. This means
that less than two percent of the people who survived
arsenic point at poisoning noticed anything amiss, which, uh gives
you some idea as to why arsenic was quite popular
(30:52):
to use to poison people. Yeah, it was so easy
to just slip into a food, especially if it was
you know, something like notemeal or a soup, or drop
into a drink. And to add to the appeal of
arsnake from a killer's perspective, the symptoms that came with
it were often easily explained away as other common ailments
(31:12):
such as rheumatism and flu, and so they often went
undiagnosed as a poisoning. I mean, we've mentioned throughout all
of these deaths sort of what a lot of them
were listed as, and they're sort of common and odd things.
And there are actually people who will argue that Marianne
was not the serial killer she's been made out to be,
challengers to the idea that she deliberately murdered all. These
(31:35):
people point out that while she did collect insurance on
many of the deaths, none of them were considered suspicious
until her stepson died, while multiple exhumed bodies of her
believed victims have tested positive for arsnake, just as Cotton
stepson did. If Marianne were tried in the modern world,
the judgment may have gone very differently, largely due to
(31:56):
a lack of forensic evidence, and it's it's uh interesting
to think about how popular arsenic was and how it
then fell out of favor completely as a poison. Uh,
and for that you can thank the British chemist James
Marsh largely. The Marsh test for arsenic was developed in
the eighteen thirties, although at that point it was not
(32:17):
considered like a fool proof test, and it was developed
and improved over the years until it could eventually detect
even the tiniest trace of arsenic. So as Marianne was
carrying out all these crimes, this test and others like
it which would immediately detect the president of the presence
of arsenic were pretty new. Yeah, people just weren't thinking
(32:39):
about poisoning as much. You know, this is a time
when people did die in large numbers. There was a
high mortality rate for children, so in some ways it
was uh, you know, not really something that raised an eyebrow. Unfortunately.
One thing that we should note here too, though, are
the people in Marianne's life who are listed of having
(32:59):
died of typhus. Apparently that's not normally a thing that
would be diagnosed accidentally when arsenic poisoning is in the
mixed Typhus leaves a very particular set of evidence on
a body after somebody has died. However, the distinction between
typhoid and typhus had only been clinically defined in eighteen
(33:22):
forty seven to eighteen fifty one in the work of
Sir William Jenner, and prior to that, and even for
some time after Jenner kind of established these definitions, some
doctors incorrectly use these two terms almost synonymously, like it
could go either way. They would write one or the
other on the death death certificate. That makes me feel
better about the times we've accidentally said the wrong one. Uh,
(33:43):
we don't actually know why Marian committed her crimes. She
professed her innocence right to the very end, and she
collected life insurance payouts in many of the cases, but
these payouts weren't especially large. Various accounts of her life
has speculated as to what may have led her to
start and then contin in you to just eliminate people
to her from her life, But it's all speculative. Yeah,
(34:06):
in the end, we really have no idea. I mean,
it did seem if you kind of look at it
in terms of the timeline, like she kind of wanted
to get rid of things that were in her way
from kind of living the life she wanted. But we
still don't really know what the scoop is there. In
eight of Marianne's letters were sold, and these had been
(34:26):
letters that were written to the last lodger that Marianne
had rented a room to. We mentioned him briefly in
the episode William Lowry, and they focused largely on pretty
mundane topics, mostly financial issues and solicitors. They weren't like
for full of juicy details. She made no uh big
admissions during these She never made any admissions of guilt.
(34:46):
But these letters were then expected after this initial sale,
to be sold off separately. But as of early last year,
so early in spring, Victoria House of Oxford was working
to raise money to keep all of these letters to together,
to buy them from the person who would purchased them
and keep them together in the Durham County Records Office.
I couldn't find anything later on this topic than May,
(35:09):
which is when they were still working on this fundraising campaign,
so I don't know how it turned out. So on
the off chance any of our listeners do write us
and let us know. Then. Just last month, which June,
a movie about mary Anne Cotton was announced. Actress joe
Anne Froggitt has been cast as mary Anne, and you
may know her better as Lady's maid Anna from Downton Abbey.
(35:30):
I have mixed feelings just casting. Well, this is why
I said at the top of the episode that she
is going to become a household name soon. Ish I
think the movie coming out about her, and especially with
a star that is much beloved on another show, even
though very different. Well, I just I love Downton Abbey
(35:52):
a lot. Uh, it's final season. I'm gonna super watch.
Very excited about that. But I will admit, and if
you're not caught up, don't listen for the next fifteen seconds.
I am tired of murder plots involving Anna. Well, now
you're going to get a big one. But if I'm like, oh, why,
(36:15):
she will be playing mary Anne Cotton, and I'm sure
she'll be lovely in it. So and I'm excited and
really look forward to that. It's one of those interesting
things where there there's really only like one photograph that
you see circulated of Maryanne Cotton, and she looks kind
of frail and maybe kind of grouchy in that way
that sometimes victorian photographs look. There's actually been some debate
(36:38):
over whether it's actually even another woman, and some historians
have pointed out, like, again, no, she was actually described
at one point by one of her early UH employers,
is beautiful. So this kind of weird picture may or
may not even be her, and even if it is,
it may not be the best image of her. Yeah,
this explains why why when I went looking for pictures
(36:59):
to go with the episodes that we're recording today, I
could find literally only one picture anywhere of her, and
it was too small to go on our website. Yeah,
it's tricky. Sorry that I picked one that's going to
be hard to source imagery for. But she's a fascinating
character in history, and it's one of those things where
we'd like to talk about ruthlessness. There's a one of
(37:22):
the books that I read by David Wilson called Mary
and Cotton, Britain's first female serial killer. He really talks
a lot about kind of how she's been characterized through
the years, UH, and some really interesting kind of cultural
approaches that we take when we're dealing with discussions of
people that we want to label as monsters and how
(37:44):
we characterize them and how we describe them. And it's
not exactly pertinent to the historical discussion of it, but
it is a really interesting read if you're interested. I
recommend it. Uh. I also have some listener mail that
has absolutely nothing to do with this particular bit of death,
although I does have to do with death a little bit.
And since this episode ran long, this is kind of
a short listener mail. It's from a listener Jenny, and
(38:07):
it actually refers to an episode that Tracy and I
did not even work on. But it's an interesting historical
tidbit I thought I would share. So she says, So,
Holly just told me on Twitter that you get notes
about old shows all the time, so here it goes.
I did tell her that, and I'm fine with that,
even though we may not always have an answer or
insight for what you're asking about. But Jenny says, I
just listened to the show your predecessors did on the
(38:27):
Halifax explosion. This was back in December of two thousand eleven.
One fact that I find interesting that wasn't mentioned was
that the hot Halifax coroner already had a very good
system in place for mass casualty incidents that he used.
He had developed the system a few years earlier because
his office dealt with all the bodies they could pull
out of the Atlantic after the Titanic sank. So a
(38:48):
very old episode, but an interesting tidbit. Nonetheless, it's a
fascinating little tidbit. I did not know that, uh, and
I didn't double check that for very Patient's gonna trust
you on this one, Jenny. Uh. If you would like
you're right to us. You can do so at History
podcast to how stuffworks dot com. We're also at Facebook
dot com, slash missed in history on Twitter, at missed
(39:08):
in History at pinterest dot com, slash miss in History
at missed in History dot comler dot com, and at
missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com. If you would
like to purchase yourself a shirt or mug or topebag
or phonecase or other goodies, uh, you would like to
visit our parents site on the web. That's how sul
(39:29):
works dot com. You can type in the search term
serial killer and you'll get so much content. One is
how serial killers work. There's quiz about serial killers talk
all about it. Uh. If you would like to visit us,
that's a mist in history dot com. We have an
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and occasional other goodies. So we encourage you to come
(39:51):
and visit us at miss in history dot com and
our parents site how some Works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
Stuff Works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Fry and I'm Tracey Wilson, and uh, we're gonna have
a little bit of a black widow story for today's topic.
And I feel like this topic was actually suggested by
(00:22):
a listener, but I feel super guilty because I cannot,
for the life of me find an email or other
communication about it to verify that also looked and I
can't either, which means it was probably on Facebook or Twitter,
which is impossible to find really old stuff on. So
if you were the person that suggested this, thank you,
(00:43):
and I apologize for not retaining who you're who you were.
But if you weren't a person that suggested this, then
this may be a fun ride for you. We're gonna
talk today about Mary Ann Cotton and she is often
referred to as a Victorian serial killer, sometimes the first
female serial killer. Some headlines will even list her as
the first serial killer. Uh, we don't really have her
(01:07):
as a household name though, which is kind of an
interesting factor, although it's likely to change in the not
too distant future. And we'll talk about that more at
the end. Her story is really fascinating and it's one
of those things where as is often the case with criminals,
you're going to start to see some patterns emerge in
the behavior. Uh, and we will discuss all of that.
So we're just going to dive right into it because
(01:27):
this one was a little bit long. In October eighteen
thirty two, she was born Mary Ann Robson and Low Moorsley,
which is a mining town in County Durham in the
north of England. Her parents were Michael and Margaret Robson.
Michael worked in the coal mines and the Robson's had
two other children, Margaret, who died when she was quite young,
(01:48):
and Robert, who was two years younger than Mary Anne,
and when Mary Anne was eight, the family moved to
the village of Merton in County Durham for another mining job.
Michael Robson, the father, was unfortunately killed on the job
in eighteen forty two, so the children were still very
young at this point. Mary Anne would not have yet
turned ten, and Michael's body is said to have been
(02:10):
delivered to the family's home in a coal sack stamped
with property of South Hetton Coal Company. In eighteen forty four,
a Methodist Sunday school open in the village, and Marianne
taught there. In eighteen forty six, she became a nursemaid
for the family of Edward Potter, the manager of the
colliery where her father had died. Later on in life,
(02:31):
Marianne became something of a social climber, and there's some
speculation that her time working for the Potter family, exposed
to a more upscale life than her own family had been,
gave her aspirations to a greater life, and she worked
for the Potter for three years, and then she turned
briefly to dressmaking as a trade around eighteen forty nine.
(02:54):
This is one of those interesting things that I kept
turning up while I was doing research for this. A
lot of headlines will Uh sort of tout her as
a dressmaker serial killer, but she didn't really seem to
stick with dressmaking very long, So I'm not sure why
people gloam onto that, unless they're just trying to somehow
to fame those of us who liked to make dresses.
(03:14):
But she also met a young man around this same
time named William Mowbray, and Mowbray was fairly new to town.
He had moved there for job opportunities at the mine,
and the pair would marry a few years later on
July eighth, eighteen fifty two, at the Newcastle Register Office.
It's possible that Marianne was already pregnant by Mowbray, which
(03:37):
is why the couple opted for a quick register office
wedding instead of a union at the chapel of the
church where she was teaching Sunday school. The two of
them moved to Cornwall not long after their wedding, and
the next several years for the Mowbray's are fairly undocumented.
It does appear that William worked for a time in
railway construction. But what we do know is that four
(03:59):
year after they had left Merton they then returned, and
at this point they had a child with them, named
Margaret Jane. And this is where already the facts start
to get a little funky and murky, because Marianne allegedly
told people there in Merton that in fact they had
had three other children in this brief for year period
(04:20):
that they were gone, but that all of those children
had died, and so some people like to sort of
list those children as the first victims. But we don't
actually have any uh substantiation that those children even existed. Uh.
But again, they do sometimes get lumped in when you
see like the final body count, sometimes there's an extra
three in there that maybe didn't even exist as real people.
(04:43):
Once they settled back in Merton, William Mowbray started working
at the company store for the colliery, but he didn't
keep that job for very long. In eighteen fifty eight,
he followed a job as a stoker to South Hetton.
Not long after that, the two of them had a daughter.
She was born on September twenty, teen fifty eight. Yeah,
and that daughter, Isabella, lived longer than any of the
(05:06):
other children that Marianne was involved with. Uh. In June
of eighteen sixty their daughter, Margaret Jane, who had been
with them when they moved back to Merton, died. Her
precise age at this time is unclear, although she is
believed to have been younger than three, and her cause
of death was listed as scarlet fever and exhaustion. In
(05:28):
October eighteen sixty one, the couple had another daughter, who
they also named Margaret Jane. The family moved around the
same time to Hendon and Sunderland, where William worked first
a shopkeeper, then as a fireman, and eventually as a
stoker on a steamer. Yeah, it often always comes back
to working somehow in a coal mine or other uh
(05:49):
enterprise at a colliery. But the couple had a son
named John Robert in July of eighteen sixty three, although
he died several months after his first birthday in September
eighteen s four, and his cause of death was listed
as diarrhea. William died in January eighteen six five, and
his death certificate lists both diarrhea and typus fever as
(06:12):
his causes of death. At this point, the couple had
been married for twelve years. There have been stories over
the years that the doctor who signed William's death certificate
observed Mary Anne singing and dancing through the window, although
those stories have never been substantiated with another witness or
anything like that. There are also other descriptions of Mary
(06:33):
Anne being distraught over the loss of her husband. Yeah,
and I wanted to point out these two varying accounts
of her behavior after the series of deaths, in particularly
that of her husband, because there is some sorting out
that always has to be done when you're talking about
sort of a uh, famed or at least notorious killer. Uh,
(06:57):
where you know stories that corroborate, and I'm making the
air quotes there corroborate their status, kind of as monsters
come out that may or may not have ever been real. Uh.
But what we do know is that William's life insurance
paid out the sum of thirty five pounds to marry Anne,
and she used some of that money to relocate with
her two remaining daughters, Isabella and Mary Jane, to see
(07:19):
him harbor. And we are going to talk about their
life once they get there. After we have a brief
word from a sponsor. Getting back to the story of
Mary Anne Cotton, She's often called Mary Anne Cotton, but
she actually didn't have that name until quite late in
the game. Uh. So, Mary Anne began seeing a man
named Joseph Natras almost immediately after arriving in sem Harbor,
(07:43):
and there's been some speculation by various biographers through the
years that she may have actually begun an affair with
Naturs while she was still married to William, but we
don't have any evidence one way or another. That's another
one of those cases where it it kind of supports
this idea of her as an evil woman, but we
just don't know. But regardless of when their affair began,
(08:04):
Natras was already married, and he actually had been since
eighteen sixty, although it is unclear whether and whether Marianne
knew about his wife or not. Just as Marianne's family
was in this perpetual state of morning before arriving in
Seam Harbor, life continued on this way. The second Margaret
Jane died on April thirtieth, eighteen sixty five, and her
(08:25):
death was attributed to typhus fever. At this point, Marianne's mother,
who had remarried to a man named George Stott, was
living in Newseum, not far away, and she decided that
the remaining daughter, Isabella, should actually come and live with her,
and Isabella stayed with her grandmother and her step grandfather
until Margaret died in March of eighteen sixty seven. That
(08:46):
death was attributed to hepatitis, and just six weeks after that,
Isabella died. And we're going to talk a little bit
more about those deaths in context of the timeline in
just a moment. So at this point. Just to to
to sum up Marianne. The deaths include Marianne's father, her mother,
(09:07):
her husband, and a bunch of children. Yes, okay, I'm
just making sure we're keeping an accurate count. After the
second Margaret Jane died, Isabella had moved away. Her relationship
with Joseph Natras had sputtered out, and he and his
wife had moved to find work elsewhere. Marianne was on
the move again, and this time it was back to
(09:28):
Sunderland and she started working as a nurse at the
Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever,
Dispensary and Humane Society. And that was in the summer
of eighteen sixty So this was a hospital for the poor. Uh.
It really had far less than ideal conditions and Marianne though,
(09:49):
was apparently quite good at her work there. She was
praised as a fine worker and one of the one
of the physicians there described her as one of their
best nurses. After she started working at the hospital, Marianne
met a man named George Ward. They had a brief
courtship and they got married on August eighteen sixty five.
Was a small church ceremony. The marriage was really not
(10:11):
a very happy one and it only lasted for fifteen
months because George died on October sixty six. His death
was attributed to quote English cholera and typhoid fever. Yeah, George, Uh,
she met him while he was in the hospital, so
it's kind of interesting that she would marry up with
(10:34):
him him having not really been in a great financial situation.
But shortly after George died, there was another man in
town named James Robinson who became a widower. His wife, Hannah,
died at the age of twenty seven, and at this
point James was left with five children to care for.
So even though he had some sisters in the mix
(10:54):
who could help out, he really needed someone to be
there to help him with the children almost all the time.
So he advertised for a housekeeper and mary Anne responded
to that ad and she moved in shortly thereafter, at
the end of eighteen sixty six. Not long after this,
in March in April of eighteen sixty seven, where the
aforementioned deaths of Marianne's mother, which took place nine days
(11:15):
after Maryant traveled there to see her and helped like
after while she was sick and her daughter Isabella. Before
May of that year, three of Robinson's children had also died.
Isabella and two of the Robinson children had been insured
before their deaths, and mary Anne was also pregnant. Robinson
(11:36):
was the father. The couple married on August eleventh of
eighteen sixty seven, and mary Anne listed her name on
the marriage certificate as mary Anne Mowbray, kind of skipping
over George Ward as though he had never existed. Uh
their child. Their new child, Margaret Isabella. You'll find she
repeats children's names a lot, was born on November twenty
(11:57):
nine of eighteen sixty seven, and Margaret is Bella lived
mere months before dying of convulsions in early spring of
eighteen sixty eight. In June of eighteen sixty nine, James
and Marianne had another child. This was the son named George.
Later that year, it would become a parent to James
that Marianne had been stealing from him by taking money
(12:17):
she was supposed to deposit into their building Society account,
then falsifying entries about it in the ledger to make
it look like she had made those deposits as instructed
she also ran up a bunch of bets in his
name without his knowledge, so you can imagine this turned
into quite a fight. And in the midst of all
of this arguing and wrangling that took place once all
(12:39):
of Marianne's fiscal indiscretions came to light because James Robinson
was much better off than her previous husband's. In the
midst of all of this arguing and wrangling that took
place once these fiscal indiscrections indiscretions came to late, Maryanne
somehow worked it where she asked James, as part of this,
to take out insurance policies on himself, off his two
(13:01):
remaining children from his prior marriage and their son, George.
And James refused, and mary Anne, in an angry fit,
left with young George. She moved out according to some accounts,
but she'll say later that it wasn't quite that way.
James decided to sell their house, so he boarded it up.
He moved in with one of his sisters, uh, and
then eventually he moved into a new home of his own.
(13:24):
At the end of the year, mary Anne returned to
town and left the infant George with a friend while
she went on an errand, but she never came back
for the child. Little George was eventually brought to his
father in early eighteen seventy. The time from late eighteen
sixty nine to the spring of eighteen seventy one is
kind of hazy in Maryanne's life. She would later say
that she had gone back to her home with Robinson
(13:47):
and carrying George, thinking that she was going home and
they were going to make up and set things right,
but that she felt like she had just been kicked
out into the street when she saw that their home
had been boarded up, so she was like, all right,
I'm out of here. Uh. There's been some speculation during
this period where we don't have a clear sense of
exactly what she was doing, that she may have worked
as a prostitute or a petty thief during this time
(14:09):
to make ends meet, but there's really no substantiation for that.
What we do know is that at some point she
did actually do some work for a man named Edward
Backhouse at the Smyrna House Home for Fallen Women, it,
possibly as a laundress. During this time, Marianne met her
fourth husband, Frederick Cotton. Finally were to the Cotton part
(14:31):
he was. She was introduced to him by his sister.
Frederick had been married with four children, but two of
his daughters had died of typhus and his wife had
died of consumption in late eighteen sixty nine. After his
sister Margaret moved in to help him. She connected the
two and in early eighteen seventy Marianne went to Walbottle
(14:51):
to visit the Cotton family, and Margaret, the sister of Frederick,
had sixty pounds in the bank that her brother was
going to inherit. She suddenly died on March twenty five
after suffering from stomach paints. Her cause of death was
actually reported as pleural pneumonia, and true to a pattern
that's developing, Marianne was pregnant uh some time around this
(15:15):
time with Frederick's child. She left wall Bottle briefly and
words the housekeeper for a German doctor named Hefferman. During
a short time that Marianne kept house for him, several
of his items went missing, but another employee was blamed
for it and fired. Marianne wound up quitting and was
back in wall Bottle by the summer of eighteen seventy. Yeah,
(15:36):
so that was really a very short period, like a
six weeks ish maybe month. Uh, don't have a clear
sense of the actual times, but it's sometime very briefly,
because we know that in late March she was there
and then she was back by the beginning of summer.
Marianne did get married to Frederick Cotton on September seventeenth
of eighteen seventy, and shortly thereafter she ensured Cotton's two sons.
(16:00):
In April of eight seventy one, Marianne moved to west
Auckland with Frederick Cotton, his two surviving sons, and their
new baby, Robert Robson. Marianne immediately made a very rash
and cruel move. She tried to put the younger of
Frederick's two sons, Charles Edward, into a workhouse. So a
(16:20):
workhouse was a horrible place for a child, or for
anyone really, but especially for an unaccompanied child. The children
who ended up there were normally born into circumstances where
there was just no other choice. But the Cottons were
not destitute at all. Maryanne just wanted to put the
child somewhere she wouldn't have to care for him. Workhouse
(16:43):
administrators were not willing to take a child who appeared
to have a perfectly acceptable home, although they had no
idea that the woman of this house was far more
dangerous than almost any fate that a child would face
at the workhouse, even though that was a really terrible
place to be. Once the family had moved to Stockland,
Frederick started to work at the colliery there, and coincidentally,
(17:03):
Marianne's old paramour, Joseph Naturals, was also working at that colliery.
Joseph's wife had passed away and he had no children,
so it's likely that Marianne arranged the move so that
she could hook up with him again. Frederick Cotton was
not around for long after the family settled in west Auckland.
(17:24):
He died on September two of eight seventy one of
typhoid and hepatitis. Naturals moved in with the remaining Cottons
three months later. So, after all this trouble Marianne had
gone to in order to orchestrate a reunion with Naturals,
you might think she'd savor her new fortune, but she
started working as a nurse for a while to do
(17:45):
a bachelor. Mr Quickmanning who was recovering from smallpox, had
no children, and he worked as an excise officer for Brewery,
so when short, he was a step up from what
Naturist could offer mary Anne. Over the course of several
weeks from March tenth to April one, eighteen seventy two,
Marianne worked to remove the burdens of Naturis and the
(18:07):
main remaining Cotton children from her life. The eldest son
died first, with his cause of death listed as gastric fever.
Baby Robert was the next victim on record as passing
from convulsions from teething, and finally Naturus died of typhoid
fever on April one. This left Charles Edward Cotton as
(18:28):
the only member of the family. Mary Anne tried some
pawn him off on an uncle that that didn't work out.
She moved with Charles Edwards to a smaller home, although
she still had enough space to take in lodgers, something
that she had done many times through the years that
to make to make extra money. By summer of eighteen
(18:49):
seventy two, so this was just a couple of months
after Naturus died, mary Anne was once again pregnant, possibly
with quick Manning's child. Believing that she was soon going
to be married to quick Manning, she asked her lodger,
William Lowry, to move out. She said that her soon
to be husband was not okay with her renting rooms
two men, but she did, however, continue to offer her
(19:11):
nursing services for hire. On July six, Marianne was visited
by a man named Thomas Riley who lived nearby, who
wanted to ask about nursing services for another smallpox patient,
and the conversation with the two of them turned out
to be pivotal because Riley was immediately suspicious of her.
He was pretty open about how burdened she felt and
(19:32):
having to take care of Cotton's son, Charles Edward. Marianne
even asked Riley, who worked as the assistant overseer of
poor relief for the town, if he would write an
order to send the child to the workhouse, and Riley
said he would do so, but only if Marianne was
going to go with Charles Edward, and she was insistent
that she was never going to do such a thing.
(19:54):
She was not going to a place like that, And
this conversation uh then turned to the rumors that mary
Anne was likely to soon be married to Quick Manning,
and Marianne said, yes, that was indeed likely, except for
the fact that this child that she was burdened with
was frankly an obstacle. So then, as was later recounted
(20:15):
in court testimony, mary Anne told Thomas Riley quote, perhaps
it won't matter, as I won't be troubled long. He'll
go like all the rest of the Cotton family. She
actually said this in front of the child, and Riley
sort of trying to smooth things over by mentioning how
hale and hearty this child appeared. Less than a week later,
(20:38):
Thomas Riley was walking by mary Anne's house when Marianne
appeared at the doorway and she told him that Charles
Edward was dead and she wanted him to come in
and view the body. Riley went immediately to the police
to report his suspicions that mary Anne had killed the child.
So Marianne did not know that Riley thought she was
a murderer, at least at first. I think was more
(21:01):
surreptitious than she was. The first clue came in the
form of their not being a death certificate. The doctor
who had been seeing Charles Edward, who was doctor Kilburn
wouldn't make went out right away and they didn't explicitly
tell Mary Anne. So, but this is because a coroner's
inquiry had been requested. No death certificate meant that she
(21:21):
couldn't make a claim on the life insurance policy. So
this coroner's inquiry was formed and Dr Kilburn got permission
to perform a post mortem examination of Charles Edward's body.
Mary Anne was at this point informed of the situation,
and Kilburn examined the child's corpse there on a table
in Mrs Cotton's house. But Kilburn was sort of pressed
(21:45):
for time this jury, uh this coroner's inquiry jury was
convening like in a pub nearby, and they were basically
waiting on him to make his assessment and then report back.
And uh So, when he reported his findings to the
coroner's jury, he wasn't super confident. He had just felt
like he had to rush through everything, and he thought
it was possible that the child might have died of
gastro into ritis, but he really wasn't certain. And so
(22:08):
the jury, after deliberating briefly, just deemed the death to
have happened by natural causes. Because his actions had caused
her so much trouble, mary Anne wrote to Thomas Riley
and insisted that you pay for the child's funeral expenses,
which Riley did. So things may have appeared to be
settling at this point, but Riley still really strongly felt
(22:31):
that wrongdoing had led to this child's demise, and he
continued to use his connections in local government to try
to get the case looked at more closely. Basically, anyone's
ear he could bend, he would, and he was very
quick to say I think this woman is a murderer.
Because of the coroner's inquiry, this whole episode had also
been reported in the papers. So mary Anne's fortunes started
(22:52):
to really fall apart. Her potential engagement to Quick Manning evaporated.
He wanted nothing to do with her. That's also meant
that Arianne basically became a pariah. She couldn't get nursing jobs,
she had no income. She sold all her furniture to
try to bring in some money, and she came down
with a sore throat and was sick in bed. But
when she asked a neighbor to call for a doctor,
(23:12):
the two that were summoned, one of which was Dr Kilburn,
refused to come to her in mid July, so this
had all happened in the early part of July, and
then in mid July I blew it was the seventeenth
Doctor Kilburn began a series of tests on the stomach
contents of Charles Edward which he had collected during his postmortem.
(23:34):
Using a wrench test designed to detect the presence of
heavy heavy metals in biological material, Kilburn determined the child
had indeed been murdered by poisoning, and Marianne was arrested
the following day, July eighth, eighteen seventy two. Charles Edwards
body was exhumed on July twenty six. Then additional samples
from the body were taken by Dr Kilburn and sent
(23:56):
to Thomas Scattergood at Leeds School of Medicine for forensic
and alysis. And while Maryanne was in jail but before
her trial, she actually gave birth to another child. This
is the one that was believed to have been quick
Mannings and she uh She named this child a little
girl who was born on January tenth of eighteen seventy three.
(24:17):
Margaret Edith quick Manning Cotton. Marianne Cotton's trial lasted only
three days from March fifth in March seventh, eighteen seventy three,
which is kind of mind blowing since murder trials the
day off and go on for weeks. This has she
had been charged in the murders of Charles Edward Cotton,
Joseph Naturals, Frederick Cotton, and Robert Robson Cotton, although she
(24:39):
was only tried for child Edwards murder. Yet it seems like,
though I was not able to confirm this that basically,
if she had been found innocent of this first murder charge,
they kind of had the other charges waiting in the wings,
so they would be like, then we're going to try
you on this one and then on this one. One
(25:00):
of the witnesses during this trial was a woman named
Jane Hedley, and she was a friend of mary Anne's.
It was interesting because she hadn't known her all that long,
but she kind of described her as a very close friend.
So this is one of those moments where it's kind
of important to point out that Marianne really, uh, you know,
she had a charm about her. She could make people
feel very close to her like they were confident she
(25:20):
certainly had no problem attracting men. Uh. But this woman,
Jane Hedley, was present at the death of Joseph Natras,
and her description of it is quite gruesome and unsettling.
She talks a lot about his spasms and his fits
and mary Anne having to hold him down when he
had these convulsions. And Hedley also testified that Marianne did
(25:41):
indeed keep arsenic in a pot on the top shelf
of her pantry. Another witness, Marianne Dodd, testified that she
had bought arsenic and soft soap for Marianne Cotton after
the druggist refused to sell these items to Charles Edward.
There was an eighteen fifty one Arsenic Regulation Act that
had made it illegal to sell arsenic to children. Cotton
(26:04):
had told Dodd that she needed the supplies to treat
her bedstead for bed bugs. So dodds helped Cotton use
about half the arsenic to treat the bed and then
the other half was put into a pint jug. And
then for additional testimony, relatives of some of the deceased
were called to confirm that, yes, in fact, Marianne did
care for sick family members, which sounds initially kind of nice,
(26:27):
but then that followed up with and she also had
not allowed anyone else to do so she was okay
with people being there, but basically she wanted to do
all the nursing. While Dr Kilburn gave testimony, it was
really Scattergood who was the star. In terms of forensic evidence.
Scattergood testified the best based on his tests, he believed
Charles Edward had been given multiple doses of arsenic over
(26:49):
the course of several days. Scattergood had also found evidence
of lethal doses of arsenic and the exhume remains of
Joseph Naturis, Frederick Cotton, and the baby Robert. The defense
for mary And was based largely on this kind of
wacky idea that Charles edwards poisoning had been accidental, and
(27:10):
this was suggested that it either happened through ingesting residue
of this bedbug treatment or UH that he had inhaled
or otherwise ingested wallpaper debris that had flaked off and
been circulating in the air because arsenic was used in
some colors, so we'll talk about in a bit UH.
And the rest of the defense was really built around.
(27:31):
How preposterous an idea it was that a nurse and
a mother could kill the very people she was caring for.
Today we call this the no true Scotsman fallacy. No
true nurse and mother would do this. So, after less
than an hour of deliberation, the verdict was handed down.
Marianne Cotton was found guilty of poisoning her steps in.
(27:54):
So from the day that the verdict was handed down
to the day of her execution, mary Anne wrote a
number of letters to friends and family asking them to
petition on her behalf. She also contacted her still husband,
James Robinson. Remember they had never divorced, so she had
actually been marrying other men while she was already married,
and she asked James Robinson to bring the three children
(28:18):
that he had to visit her, which seems sort of
creepy and preposterous. She also arranged for her new baby
to be adopted by a couple who had been her
neighbors in west Auckland. Apparently a lot of people offered
to adopt this child that had been born there in
the prison. Mary Anne was put to death by hanging
on March seventy three, and during prison fifty people attended
(28:40):
the execution in the prison and a crowd of about
two hundred gathered outside. She maintained her claim of innocence
to the very end, and as she left her cell
and headed to her death, she allegedly said, Heaven is
my home. So at this point, I mean, we're talking
about a couple dozen probable murders are close to that,
and so it kind of makes people wonder, and it
(29:02):
comes up a lot in biographies. If she was such
a prolific killer, why is she not a household name
akin to Jack the Ripper or other famous killers throughout
the years. And Deborah Blum, who is the author of
the Poisoner's handbook Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine
in jazz Age, New York, wrote an interesting piece on this,
(29:22):
and she put forth the idea that one of the
reasons that Marianne Cotton hasn't become a household name in
these years since her arrest and and execution is that
she was associated with Arsenic. This was the time when
Arsenic was basically the superstar of poisoning. It's estimated between
eighteen thirty five and eighteen eighty fort of all poisoning
(29:45):
homifides in Europe were the results of arsenic. Part of
the reason that arsenic was so common as a poison
was that it was so common period. It was in
all kinds of completely normal things. We've already talked about
how it was used to treat bed bugs. It was
also used in wallpaper, in tonics, in rat poison, in
fabric dye. Many of our listeners have seen and shared
(30:07):
with us articles about that lovely shade of green that
was super popular through the eighteen hundreds that was also
incredibly poisonous because it contained arsenic. Another thing is that
when eight hundred and twenty two survivors of arsenic poisoning
were interviewed by forensic chemists Rudolph Whitthouse in the late
tent nineteenth century is part of his research, fifteen of them,
(30:31):
so fifteen out of eight hundred twenty two reported having
tasted the metallic tinge of arsenic in the food or
beverage that they had consumed that was tainted. This means
that less than two percent of the people who survived
arsenic point at poisoning noticed anything amiss, which, uh gives
you some idea as to why arsenic was quite popular
(30:52):
to use to poison people. Yeah, it was so easy
to just slip into a food, especially if it was
you know, something like notemeal or a soup, or drop
into a drink. And to add to the appeal of
arsnake from a killer's perspective, the symptoms that came with
it were often easily explained away as other common ailments
(31:12):
such as rheumatism and flu, and so they often went
undiagnosed as a poisoning. I mean, we've mentioned throughout all
of these deaths sort of what a lot of them
were listed as, and they're sort of common and odd things.
And there are actually people who will argue that Marianne
was not the serial killer she's been made out to be,
challengers to the idea that she deliberately murdered all. These
(31:35):
people point out that while she did collect insurance on
many of the deaths, none of them were considered suspicious
until her stepson died, while multiple exhumed bodies of her
believed victims have tested positive for arsnake, just as Cotton
stepson did. If Marianne were tried in the modern world,
the judgment may have gone very differently, largely due to
(31:56):
a lack of forensic evidence, and it's it's uh interesting
to think about how popular arsenic was and how it
then fell out of favor completely as a poison. Uh,
and for that you can thank the British chemist James
Marsh largely. The Marsh test for arsenic was developed in
the eighteen thirties, although at that point it was not
(32:17):
considered like a fool proof test, and it was developed
and improved over the years until it could eventually detect
even the tiniest trace of arsenic. So as Marianne was
carrying out all these crimes, this test and others like
it which would immediately detect the president of the presence
of arsenic were pretty new. Yeah, people just weren't thinking
(32:39):
about poisoning as much. You know, this is a time
when people did die in large numbers. There was a
high mortality rate for children, so in some ways it
was uh, you know, not really something that raised an eyebrow. Unfortunately.
One thing that we should note here too, though, are
the people in Marianne's life who are listed of having
(32:59):
died of typhus. Apparently that's not normally a thing that
would be diagnosed accidentally when arsenic poisoning is in the
mixed Typhus leaves a very particular set of evidence on
a body after somebody has died. However, the distinction between
typhoid and typhus had only been clinically defined in eighteen
(33:22):
forty seven to eighteen fifty one in the work of
Sir William Jenner, and prior to that, and even for
some time after Jenner kind of established these definitions, some
doctors incorrectly use these two terms almost synonymously, like it
could go either way. They would write one or the
other on the death death certificate. That makes me feel
better about the times we've accidentally said the wrong one. Uh,
(33:43):
we don't actually know why Marian committed her crimes. She
professed her innocence right to the very end, and she
collected life insurance payouts in many of the cases, but
these payouts weren't especially large. Various accounts of her life
has speculated as to what may have led her to
start and then contin in you to just eliminate people
to her from her life, But it's all speculative. Yeah,
(34:06):
in the end, we really have no idea. I mean,
it did seem if you kind of look at it
in terms of the timeline, like she kind of wanted
to get rid of things that were in her way
from kind of living the life she wanted. But we
still don't really know what the scoop is there. In
eight of Marianne's letters were sold, and these had been
(34:26):
letters that were written to the last lodger that Marianne
had rented a room to. We mentioned him briefly in
the episode William Lowry, and they focused largely on pretty
mundane topics, mostly financial issues and solicitors. They weren't like
for full of juicy details. She made no uh big
admissions during these She never made any admissions of guilt.
(34:46):
But these letters were then expected after this initial sale,
to be sold off separately. But as of early last year,
so early in spring, Victoria House of Oxford was working
to raise money to keep all of these letters to together,
to buy them from the person who would purchased them
and keep them together in the Durham County Records Office.
I couldn't find anything later on this topic than May,
(35:09):
which is when they were still working on this fundraising campaign,
so I don't know how it turned out. So on
the off chance any of our listeners do write us
and let us know. Then. Just last month, which June,
a movie about mary Anne Cotton was announced. Actress joe
Anne Froggitt has been cast as mary Anne, and you
may know her better as Lady's maid Anna from Downton Abbey.
(35:30):
I have mixed feelings just casting. Well, this is why
I said at the top of the episode that she
is going to become a household name soon. Ish I
think the movie coming out about her, and especially with
a star that is much beloved on another show, even
though very different. Well, I just I love Downton Abbey
(35:52):
a lot. Uh, it's final season. I'm gonna super watch.
Very excited about that. But I will admit, and if
you're not caught up, don't listen for the next fifteen seconds.
I am tired of murder plots involving Anna. Well, now
you're going to get a big one. But if I'm like, oh, why,
(36:15):
she will be playing mary Anne Cotton, and I'm sure
she'll be lovely in it. So and I'm excited and
really look forward to that. It's one of those interesting
things where there there's really only like one photograph that
you see circulated of Maryanne Cotton, and she looks kind
of frail and maybe kind of grouchy in that way
that sometimes victorian photographs look. There's actually been some debate
(36:38):
over whether it's actually even another woman, and some historians
have pointed out, like, again, no, she was actually described
at one point by one of her early UH employers,
is beautiful. So this kind of weird picture may or
may not even be her, and even if it is,
it may not be the best image of her. Yeah,
this explains why why when I went looking for pictures
(36:59):
to go with the episodes that we're recording today, I
could find literally only one picture anywhere of her, and
it was too small to go on our website. Yeah,
it's tricky. Sorry that I picked one that's going to
be hard to source imagery for. But she's a fascinating
character in history, and it's one of those things where
we'd like to talk about ruthlessness. There's a one of
(37:22):
the books that I read by David Wilson called Mary
and Cotton, Britain's first female serial killer. He really talks
a lot about kind of how she's been characterized through
the years, UH, and some really interesting kind of cultural
approaches that we take when we're dealing with discussions of
people that we want to label as monsters and how
(37:44):
we characterize them and how we describe them. And it's
not exactly pertinent to the historical discussion of it, but
it is a really interesting read if you're interested. I
recommend it. Uh. I also have some listener mail that
has absolutely nothing to do with this particular bit of death,
although I does have to do with death a little bit.
And since this episode ran long, this is kind of
a short listener mail. It's from a listener Jenny, and
(38:07):
it actually refers to an episode that Tracy and I
did not even work on. But it's an interesting historical
tidbit I thought I would share. So she says, So,
Holly just told me on Twitter that you get notes
about old shows all the time, so here it goes.
I did tell her that, and I'm fine with that,
even though we may not always have an answer or
insight for what you're asking about. But Jenny says, I
just listened to the show your predecessors did on the
(38:27):
Halifax explosion. This was back in December of two thousand eleven.
One fact that I find interesting that wasn't mentioned was
that the hot Halifax coroner already had a very good
system in place for mass casualty incidents that he used.
He had developed the system a few years earlier because
his office dealt with all the bodies they could pull
out of the Atlantic after the Titanic sank. So a
(38:48):
very old episode, but an interesting tidbit. Nonetheless, it's a
fascinating little tidbit. I did not know that, uh, and
I didn't double check that for very Patient's gonna trust
you on this one, Jenny. Uh. If you would like
you're right to us. You can do so at History
podcast to how stuffworks dot com. We're also at Facebook
dot com, slash missed in history on Twitter, at missed
(39:08):
in History at pinterest dot com, slash miss in History
at missed in History dot comler dot com, and at
missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com. If you would
like to purchase yourself a shirt or mug or topebag
or phonecase or other goodies, uh, you would like to
visit our parents site on the web. That's how sul
(39:29):
works dot com. You can type in the search term
serial killer and you'll get so much content. One is
how serial killers work. There's quiz about serial killers talk
all about it. Uh. If you would like to visit us,
that's a mist in history dot com. We have an
archive of every episode that's ever happened, We have show
notes for all the episodes that Tracy and I have hosted,
and occasional other goodies. So we encourage you to come
(39:51):
and visit us at miss in history dot com and
our parents site how some Works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is that how
Stuff Works dot com. M
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