Mary Ann Cotton

Mary Ann Cotton
Cotton, c. 1870
Born	Mary Ann Robson 31 October 1832 Low Moorsley, Sunderland, County Durham, England
Died	24 March 1873(1873-03-24) (aged 40) Durham Gaol, England
Cause of death	Hanging
Occupation	Dressmaker, nurse, housekeeper
Criminal penalty	Death by hanging
Killings
Victims	up to 21
Country	England
Weapons	Arsenic
Date apprehended	1873

Mary Ann Cotton (née Robson; 31 October 1832 – 24 March 1873) was an English murderer, convicted and hanged for the murder by poisoning of her stepson Charles Edward Cotton. It is likely that she murdered three of her four husbands, apparently in order to collect on their insurance policies, and many others. She may have murdered as many as 21 people, including 11 of her 13 children. She chiefly used arsenic poisoning, causing gastric pain and rapid decline of health.

Early life

Mary Ann Robson was born on 31 October 1832 at Low Moorsley (now part of Hetton-le-Hole in the City of Sunderland), to Michael Robson, a colliery sinker, and Margaret, née Londsale, and baptised at St Mary's, West Rainton on 11 November. Her sister, Margaret, was born in 1834 but lived only a few months. Her brother, Robert, was born in 1835.

When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the County Durham village of Murton. At the time of her trial, The Northern Echo published an article containing a description of Mary Ann as given by her childhood Wesleyan Sunday school superintendent at Murton, describing her as "a most exemplary and regular attender", "a girl of innocent disposition and average intelligence" and "distinguished for her particularly clean and tidy appearance."^[1]

Soon after the move, Mary Ann's father fell 150 feet (46 m) to his death down a mine shaft at Murton colliery in February 1842. Her father's body was delivered to her mother in a sack bearing the stamp 'Property of the South Hetton Coal Company'. As the miner's cottage they inhabited was tied to Michael's job the widow and children would have been evicted. In 1843, her mother married George Stott (1816-1895), also a miner. At the age of 16, Mary Ann left home to become a nurse at the nearby village of South Hetton, in the home of Edward Potter, a manager at Murton colliery. After all of the children had been sent to boarding school in Darlington over the next three years, she returned to her step-father's home and trained as a dressmaker.

Husband 1: William Mowbray

In 1852, at the age of 20, Mary Ann married colliery labourer William Mowbray at Newcastle Upon Tyne register office; they soon moved to South West England. At the time of her trial there were reports of four or five of their children dying young while they were living away from County Durham. None of these deaths is registered but this was not compulsory until 1874. The only birth recorded was that of their daughter, Margaret Jane, born at St Germans in 1856.

William and Mary Ann moved back to North East England, where William worked as a fireman aboard a steam vessel sailing out of Sunderland, then as a colliery foreman. Another daughter, Isabella, was born in 1858, and Margaret Jane died in 1860. Another daughter, also named Margaret Jane, was born in 1861 and finally a son, John Robert William, was born in 1863, but died a year later from gastric fever.

William died of an intestinal disorder in January 1865. The lives of William and of their children were insured by the British and Prudential Insurance office and Mary Ann collected a payout of £35 on William's death (equivalent to £3,018 in 2015, about half a year's wages for a manual labourer at the time) and smaller amounts for the children.

Husband 2: George Ward

Soon after Mowbray's death, Mary Ann moved to Seaham Harbour, County Durham, where she struck up a relationship with Joseph Nattrass. During this time, her 3½-year-old daughter, (the second) Margaret Jane, died of typhus fever, leaving her with one child of up to nine she had borne. She returned to Sunderland and took up employment at the Sunderland Infirmary, House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society. She sent her surviving child, Isabella, to live with her mother.

One of her patients at the infirmary was an engineer, George Ward. They married at St Peter's Church, Monkwearmouth on 28 August 1865. Ward continued to suffer ill health and died on 20 October 1866 after a long illness characterised by paralysis and intestinal problems. The cause of death recorded on his death certificate is that of English cholera and typhoid. The attending doctor later gave evidence that Ward had been very ill, yet he had been surprised that his death was so sudden. Once again, Mary Ann collected insurance money in respect of her husband's death.

Husband 3: James Robinson

James Robinson was a shipwright at Pallion in Sunderland, whose wife, Hannah, had recently died. He hired Mary Ann as a housekeeper in November 1866. A month later, when James' baby, John, died of gastric fever, he turned to his housekeeper for comfort and she became pregnant. Then Mary Ann's mother, living in Seaham Harbour, County Durham, became ill with hepatitis, so she immediately went to her. Although her mother began to recover, she also began to complain of stomach pains. She died at age 54 in the spring of 1867, nine days after Mary Ann's arrival. In 1867, Mary Ann's stepfather George Stott married his widowed neighbour, Hannah Paley.

Mary Ann's daughter Isabella, from the marriage to William Mowbray, was brought back to the Robinson household and soon developed severe stomach pains and died, as did two of Robinson's children, Elizabeth and James. All three children were buried in the last week of April and first week of May in 1867.

Robinson married Mary Ann at St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth on 11 August 1867. Their first child, Margaret Isabella (Mary Isabella on her baptismal record), was born that November, but she became ill and died in February 1868. Their second child George was born on 18 June 1869.

Robinson, meanwhile, had become suspicious of his wife's insistence that he insure his life; he discovered that she had run up debts of £60 behind his back and had stolen more than £50 that she had been expected to bank. Then he found that Mary Ann had been forcing his older children to pawn household valuables. He threw her out, retaining custody of their son George.

"Husband" 4: Frederick Cotton

Mary Ann was desperate and living on the streets. Then her friend Margaret Cotton introduced her to her brother, Frederick, a pitman and recent widower living in Walbottle, Northumberland, who had lost two of his four children. Margaret had acted as substitute mother for the remaining children, Frederick Jr. and Charles, but in late March 1870 she died from an undetermined stomach ailment, leaving Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick Sr. Soon her twelth pregnancy was underway.

Frederick and Mary Ann were bigamously married on 17 September 1870 at St Andrew's, Newcastle Upon Tyne and their son Robert was born early in 1871. Soon after, Mary Ann learnt that her former lover, Joseph Nattrass, was living 30 miles away in the County Durham village of West Auckland, and no longer married. She rekindled the romance and persuaded her new family to move near him. Frederick died in December of that year, from "gastric fever." Insurance had been effected on his life and those of his sons.

Two lovers

After Frederick's death, Nattrass soon became Mary Ann's lodger. She gained employment as nurse to an excise officer recovering from smallpox, John Quick-Manning. Soon she became pregnant by him with her twelfth child. It may well be that the name of the excise man was in fact Richard Quick Mann as there appears to be no trace of a John Quick-Manning in the records of the West Auckland Brewery or the National Archives. The census records, birth, death and marriage records also show no trace of him. Richard Quick Mann was a custom and excise man specialising in breweries and has been found in the records and this may be the real name of Mary Ann Cotton's alleged lover.

Frederick Jr. died in March 1872 and the infant Robert soon after. Then Nattrass became ill with gastric fever and died just after revising his will in Mary Ann's favour.

The insurance policy Mary Ann had taken out on (the still living) Charles' life still awaited collection.

Death of Charles Edward Cotton and inquest

Mary Ann's downfall came when she was asked by a parish official, Thomas Riley, to help nurse a woman who was ill with smallpox. She complained that the last surviving Cotton boy, Charles Edward, was in the way and asked Riley if he could be committed to the workhouse. Riley, who also served as West Auckland's assistant coroner, said she would have to accompany him. She told Riley that the boy was sickly and added: “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons.”

Five days later, Mary Ann told Riley that the boy had died. Riley went to the village police and convinced the doctor to delay writing a death certificate until the circumstances could be investigated.

Mary Ann’s first port of call after Charles' death was not the doctor but the insurance office. There, 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. Mary Ann claimed to have used arrowroot to relieve his illness and said Riley had made accusations against her because she had rejected his advances.

Then the local newspapers latched on to the story and discovered Mary Ann had moved around northern England and lost three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother, and a dozen children, all of whom had died of stomach fevers.

Arrest

Rumour gave rise to suspicion and scientific investigation. The doctor who attended Charles had kept samples, and tests showed they contained arsenic. He told the police, who arrested Mary Ann and procured exhumation of Charles' body. She was charged with his murder, although the trial was delayed until after the delivery in Durham Gaol on 10 January 1873 of her thirteenth and final child, whom she named Margaret Edith Quick-Manning Cotton.

Trial and execution

Cotton's trial began on 5 March 1873. The delay was caused by a problem in the selection of prosecution counsel. A Mr Aspinwall was first considered but the Attorney General, Sir John Duke Coleridge, whose decision it was, chose his friend and protégé Charles Russell. Russell's appointment over Aspinwall led to a question in the House of Commons. However, it was accepted, and Russell conducted the prosecution. The Cotton case was the first of several famous poisoning cases he would be involved in during his career, including those of Adelaide Bartlett and Florence Maybrick.

The defence in the case was handled by Mr. Thomas Campbell Foster, who argued during the trial that Charles had died from inhaling arsenic used as a dye in the green wallpaper of the Cotton home. The doctor testified that, in the chemist's shop, there was no other powder, only liquid, on the same shelf as the arsenic; the chemist himself, however, claimed that there were other powders. Campbell Foster argued that it was possible that the chemist had mistaken the arsenic powder for bismuth powder (used to treat diarrhoea), when preparing a bottle for Cotton, because he had been distracted by talking to other people. The jury retired for 90 minutes before returning a guilty verdict.

The Times correspondent reported on 20 March: "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 been convicted of." Several petitions were presented to the Home Secretary, but to no avail. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham County Gaol on 24 March 1873 by William Calcraft; she died, not from her neck breaking, but by strangulation caused by the rope being rigged too short, possibly deliberately.^[2]

Of Mary Ann's 13 children, only two survived her: Margaret Edith (1873–1954) and her son George from her marriage to James Robinson.

Theoretical explanation

Cotton's murders can be classified as "Black Widow" murders, a description which "applies exclusively to women who kill mates, generally for profit."^[3] Cotton killed her husbands for monetary gain, sometimes after insisting that they take out life insurance. She was not driven by emotion or lust, but only by monetary purposes. Unlike many male serial killers, who are often driven by sexual lust, female serial murderers tend to take a more pragmatic approach to their killings.^[4][5]

TV drama

In 2015 ITV began filming a two-part TV drama, Dark Angel,^[6] starring Joanne Froggatt of Downton Abbey fame as Cotton. The series also features Alun Armstrong, Jonas Armstrong and Emma Fielding.^[7] The first part of the dramatisation was broadcast on 31 October 2016, the second on 7 November.^[8] The TV drama was inspired by the book Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by David Wilson, a prominent criminologist.^[9]

Music references

A nursery rhyme concerning Cotton was composed after her hanging on 24 March 1873.^[10]

Other music

• Hardnoise recorded "Serve Tea, then Murder" (1991) as a reference to Mary Ann Cotton, as DJ AJ described in a 2014 interview.^[11]
• Macabre released a song about Mary Ann Cotton, called "Mary Ann" on their Grim Scary Tales (2011) album.
• The Raveness, an English performance poet from Warwickshire,composed a spoken word piece entitled "Of rope and arsenic" about Cotton and featured the nursery rhyme in her debut extended play "The Raveness" (2003). The piece was also published in her debut poetry anthology Lavinia : Volume One (2006) - ISBN 9781502313966
• Dead Milkmen released a song about Mary Ann Cotton, called "Mary Ann Cotton (The Poisoner's Song" on their Pretty Music for Pretty People (2014) album.
• In July 2008 Martin Bowes, of the band Attrition, issued an album entitled All Mine Enemys Whispers - The story of Mary Ann Cotton.^[12]

References

Bibliography

• Appleton, Arthur: Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story and Trial (London: Michael Joseph, 1973). ISBN 0-7181-1184-2
• The Times, contemporary reports, 1872–3
• Flanders, Judith (2011) The Invention of Murder (London: Harper Ress) ISBN 978-0-00-724888-9
• Connolly, Martin: "Mary Ann Cotton – The North Eastern Borgia?" (West Auckland, Oakleaf Publishing 2012) ISBN 9780957465107