Mary Ann Cotton
(née Robson; 31 October 1832 – 24 March 1873) was an English serial killer, convicted of, 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 wider Houghton-le-Spring, part of 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."
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 laborer
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 although
registration was compulsory at the time, the law was not enforced 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 lastly 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 £3,371 in 2019, about half a
year's wages for a manual laborer at the time) and £2 5s for John Robert
William.
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. Mary Ann received a
life insurance payment of £5 10s 6d for Isabella.
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 twelfth pregnancy was underway.
Cotton 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 48 kilometres (30 mi) away in the County
Durham village of West Auckland,
and was no longer married. She rekindled the romance and persuaded her new
family to move near him. Cotton died in December of that year, from "gastric fever." Insurance had
been affected 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. Popular culture sources have called him John Quick-Manning. Soon she became pregnant by him with her thirteenth
child. The name of the excise man may actually have been 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 specializing 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 favor.
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
eleven children, all of whom had died of stomach fevers.
Arrest
Rumor gave rise to suspicion and scientific investigation. Doctor William Byers Kilburn, 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 defense 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 diarrhea), 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 harbors 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.
Of Mary Ann's 13 children, only two survived her: Margaret
Edith (1873–1954) and her son George from her marriage to James Robinson.
Television drama
In 2015 ITV filmed
a two-part television drama, Dark Angel,
starring Joanne Froggatt as Cotton.
The series also featured Alun Armstrong,
Jonas Armstrong and Emma Fielding. The first part of the
dramatization was broadcast on 31 October 2016; the second part was broadcast
on 7 November. The drama was inspired by the book Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by David Wilson, a criminologist.
The ITV two-part
television drama, Dark Angel, was
broadcast over two hours on PBS in
the United States on 25 March 2018.
Cultural references
A nursery rhyme concerning Cotton was composed after her
hanging on 24 March 1873.
Mary Ann Cotton, she's
dead and she's rotten
Lying in bed with her
eyes wide open.
Sing, sing, oh what
should I sing?
Mary Ann Cotton, she's
tied up with string.
Where, where? Up in
the air.
Selling black
puddings, a penny a pair.
Mary Ann Cotton, she's
dead and forgotten,
Lying in bed with her
bones all rotten.
Sing, sing, what can I
sing?
Mary Ann Cotton, tied
up with string.
Hardnoise
recorded "Serve Tea, then
Murder" (1991) as a reference to Cotton, as DJ AJ described in a 2014
interview.
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 on her album The Raveness (2003). The piece was also
published in her poetry anthology, Lavinia: Volume One (2006) – ISBN
9781502313966
The band Attrition's
2008 album was entitled All Mine Enemy’s
Whispers – The Story of Mary Ann Cotton.
Macabre released
a song about Cotton called "Mary
Ann" on their Grim Scary Tales
(2011) album.
The Dead Milkmen
released a song about Cotton called "Mary
Ann Cotton (The Poisoner's Song)" on their 2014 album Pretty Music for Pretty People.
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