Read Online Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Geoffrey Abbott
Tags: History
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skull reportedly passed into the ownership of the Princess Marie Bonaparte and was described as ‘being of dirty yellow, glistening, shiny and smooth, evidence that it was never interred’.
Cotton, Mary Ann (England)
Mary Ann Cotton was no ordinary, spur-of-the-moment killer; her murderous instincts were alleged to have resulted in the deaths of fifteen, perhaps even twenty people, including four husbands and eight children, and she gained the evil reputation of being the greatest mass murderess of all time.
By the age of forty she had married three times. Her first husband, whom she had married in 1852, was a young miner named William Mowbray, by whom she had four children. All of them just happened to die young, reportedly from gastric fever. William Mowbray also succumbed to illness, experiencing severe sickness and diarrhoea, and died in agony.
Mary, now seemingly grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and children, drew solace from her friends and cash from the insurance company. Realising that hospital work as a nurse would be the source not only of supplies of the poison she needed, but also of meeting further vulnerable and susceptible victims, she joined the staff of Sunderland Infirmary where, among others, she tended a patient named George Ward. So devoted were her ministrations that when he recovered he proposed marriage, her subsequent promise ‘in sickness and in health’ only applying to half the phrase, for fourteen months later, in 1866, he too shuffled off this mortal coil, but not before he had endowed all his worldly goods to her.
Not long afterwards, still in her widow’s weeds, she met James Robinson, a widower with three children. They were married in May 1867, and by December of that year regrettable coincidences also overwhelmed that family. Not only did James’ two young sons and daughter, plus William Mowbray’s nineyear-old daughter fall victim to gastric fever, but a later baby born to Mary and James joined its stepbrothers and sisters in the local cemetery. James himself had cause to thank his guardian angel when Mary incensed him so much by selling some of his possessions that he ejected her from the house.
The fact that her husband was still alive did not deter Mary from starting an intimate liaison with her next prey, Frederick Cotton, a man who already had two young sons from a former marriage. When he proposed to her, she bigamously married him, and, being a prudent wife who had to take care of her future, she took out three insurance policies, just in case. The number of children in their family became three when she had a little boy by Frederick, called Robert, the number of policies thereby increasing accordingly. ) Early in 1872 a James Nattrass attracted her attention. This complicated matters, Frederick Cotton immediately becoming surplus to requirements – but not for long. Almost without warning he fell seriously ill, but by the time a doctor had arrived he was past all medical aid. Frederick’s 10-year-old son was not long in following his father to the grave, and Mary’s child, Robert, never reached puberty.
James now became her lover, but affection wasn’t everything, and eventually Mary decided that £30, the sum for which he had been insured, was preferable to the man himself, and so another coffin received an occupant and another grave was dug.
Mary could have continued in this manner, unchecked and unsuspected, until her stock of arsenic, a poison little recognised or diagnosed at the time, ran out, but for some unaccountable reason, perhaps a rare, charitable thought, she spared the life of Charles Edward, the eight-year-old Cotton boy; instead she decided to hand him over to the workhouse. When told that such was not possible without the parents also being admitted, she retorted, ‘I could have married again but for the child. But there, he won’t live long, he’ll go the way of all the Cotton family.’ Nor did he. Dispensing with mercy, she
Cotton, Mary Ann (England)
Mary Ann Cotton was no ordinary, spur-of-the-moment killer; her murderous instincts were alleged to have resulted in the deaths of fifteen, perhaps even twenty people, including four husbands and eight children, and she gained the evil reputation of being the greatest mass murderess of all time.
By the age of forty she had married three times. Her first husband, whom she had married in 1852, was a young miner named William Mowbray, by whom she had four children. All of them just happened to die young, reportedly from gastric fever. William Mowbray also succumbed to illness, experiencing severe sickness and diarrhoea, and died in agony.
Mary, now seemingly grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and children, drew solace from her friends and cash from the insurance company. Realising that hospital work as a nurse would be the source not only of supplies of the poison she needed, but also of meeting further vulnerable and susceptible victims, she joined the staff of Sunderland Infirmary where, among others, she tended a patient named George Ward. So devoted were her ministrations that when he recovered he proposed marriage, her subsequent promise ‘in sickness and in health’ only applying to half the phrase, for fourteen months later, in 1866, he too shuffled off this mortal coil, but not before he had endowed all his worldly goods to her.
Not long afterwards, still in her widow’s weeds, she met James Robinson, a widower with three children. They were married in May 1867, and by December of that year regrettable coincidences also overwhelmed that family. Not only did James’ two young sons and daughter, plus William Mowbray’s nineyear-old daughter fall victim to gastric fever, but a later baby born to Mary and James joined its stepbrothers and sisters in the local cemetery. James himself had cause to thank his guardian angel when Mary incensed him so much by selling some of his possessions that he ejected her from the house.
The fact that her husband was still alive did not deter Mary from starting an intimate liaison with her next prey, Frederick Cotton, a man who already had two young sons from a former marriage. When he proposed to her, she bigamously married him, and, being a prudent wife who had to take care of her future, she took out three insurance policies, just in case. The number of children in their family became three when she had a little boy by Frederick, called Robert, the number of policies thereby increasing accordingly. ) Early in 1872 a James Nattrass attracted her attention. This complicated matters, Frederick Cotton immediately becoming surplus to requirements – but not for long. Almost without warning he fell seriously ill, but by the time a doctor had arrived he was past all medical aid. Frederick’s 10-year-old son was not long in following his father to the grave, and Mary’s child, Robert, never reached puberty.
James now became her lover, but affection wasn’t everything, and eventually Mary decided that £30, the sum for which he had been insured, was preferable to the man himself, and so another coffin received an occupant and another grave was dug.
Mary could have continued in this manner, unchecked and unsuspected, until her stock of arsenic, a poison little recognised or diagnosed at the time, ran out, but for some unaccountable reason, perhaps a rare, charitable thought, she spared the life of Charles Edward, the eight-year-old Cotton boy; instead she decided to hand him over to the workhouse. When told that such was not possible without the parents also being admitted, she retorted, ‘I could have married again but for the child. But there, he won’t live long, he’ll go the way of all the Cotton family.’ Nor did he. Dispensing with mercy, she
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