Catherine was tried on just one charge of murder, that of Mrs. Maria Soames, who died in 1856. The jury found her guilty. The judge had no hesitation in sentencing her to be hanged. Mr. Justice Byles believed her, although not judicially proven, guilty of more murders. The judge described her privately to the defense counsel as "the greatest criminal that ever lived".
Catherine Wilson was hanged by William Calcraft. The hanging took place outside Newgate prison on Monday, October 20th, 1862. The event attracted a crowd of over twenty thousand people. Catherine Wilson was the last woman to be publicly hanged in London.
MARY ANN BRITLAND
Mary Ann Hague was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England in 1847. She was the second daughter born to Jonathan and Hannah Hague. In 1866, at the age of nineteen, Mary Ann married Thomas Britland at the Church of St Michaels in Ashton-under-Lyne. During the course of their marriage, they had two daughters. Mary Ann held down two jobs; by day a worker in a factory, and in the evenings as a barmaid.
Mary Ann began having an affair with a neighbor, Thomas Dixon. Thomas was married to a young woman, Mary Dixon. Mary Ann soon became determined to make him only hers.
After a while, Mary Ann became afraid that her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Hannah had become suspicious of the affair. Mary Ann took out life insurance policies on her husband and daughters before visiting the chemist complaining of mice infestations at her home. She bought a few packets of rat poison. This required Mary Ann to sign the poison register as the mixture in the packets was composed of strychnine and arsenic.
In March of 1886, Mary Ann, to silence her daughter, Elizabeth Hannah, poisoned her. The doctor who wrote the death certificate noticed nothing unusual in her death. Mary Ann claimed ten pounds on Elizabeth Hannah’s life insurance policy.
Mary Ann then set her sights on her husband Thomas. He died on May 3, 1886, and his death certificate credited the death to epilepsy. Mary Ann, on presenting the death certificate, claimed her insurance payment.
Following her husband’s death, Mary Dixon, the wife of her lover Thomas, took pity on Mary Ann and her daughter. She generously offered to let them move in with herself and her husband. On the 14th of May, Mary Dixon died.
The terrible misfortune, in such a short time, all with nearly identical symptoms, set the local tongues wagging. It was not long before the police interviewed Mary Ann, and a pathologist examined Mary Dixon’s body. The examination found a deadly quantity of two poisons: strychnine and arsenic. Mary Ann and Thomas Dixon were arrested. Thomas Dixon was released with no charges against him after having been able to satisfy the police of his innocence.
The authorities then exhumed the bodies of Mary Ann’s daughter, Elizabeth Hannah and her husband, Thomas Britland. The two bodies contained lethal quantities of two poisons: strychnine and arsenic.
Mary Ann’s trial began on the 22nd of July, 1886; she stood alone in the dock at Manchester Assizes. The trial lasted two days even with the overwhelming evidence. The jury declared her guilty of the murders. The judge sentenced her to be hanged. Following her sentence, Mary Ann declared to the court that she was innocent.
On the morning of August 9, 1886, Mary Ann was led to the gallows in a state of shock. Two male wardens had to carry her and support her while they waited for the trapdoor, which would break her neck, to open.
She was the first woman to be hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England. What effect all this could have had on the surviving daughter of Mary and Thomas Britland is hard to imagine.
STRANGEWAYS PRISON
MARGARET WATERS
Margaret Waters was born in 1835 and lived in Brixton. When her husband deserted her, she tried to use what little capital she had to start a business. In Camberwell, London, she found a house to rent in Addington-square and bought a few sewing machines. Margaret’s plan was to set herself up making collars and similar pieces of clothing and sell them. Having no business experience whatsoever, she failed and found herself in debt. She then decided to rent out rooms and that eventually led her to baby farming. With debt-collectors hounding her, she was forced to give up her house in Addington-square and moved to Bournemouth-terrace, in the suburb of Peckham, London. It is here she began baby farming. She advertised in the newspapers for children and received replies from people of all classes.
The money she was paid for taking in babies did not cover her debts and the cost of caring for the children. Margaret Waters began drugging the babies to keep them quiet and neglected to feed them. On some occasions, she would place a baby into the arms of children in the street and then run away. She presumed the babies would be taken to the work-house. She told in a statement to the police how five babies in her care died. One had died from diarrhea, another wasted away, and the other children died from convulsions. To save on the burial fees, she placed the bodies in brown paper. When it was dark, Margaret took the brown paper wrapped bodies and left them in the streets where they would be found.
Disposing of a child
Her crimes were uncovered when Sergeant Richard Reif of the Metropolitan Police began investigating eighteen infant deaths in the Brixton area of London. He began by investigating baby farmers in the area which led him to Margaret Waters.
When Sergeant Richard Reif called to the house, he found several babies badly neglected and dreadfully emaciated. Downstairs in the kitchen, he saw three babies on a couch and two on chairs. They were filthy, starving, and stupefied by laudanum. One other baby on a make-shift bed had scarcely a bit of flesh on his/her bones; he/she was not crying or making any noise; he/she was too weak. He told the court later that the baby looked barely human, more like a monkey than a child.
There were four other children out in the back yard ranging in age from about two-to three-years-old.
Margaret was arrested and charged with murdering five children in her care. The authorities believed Margaret may have murdered up to nineteen infants. At her trial, Margaret’s young housemaid told the court that infants would disappear in the night and would never be seen again. Margaret was found guilty, and the judge sentenced her to be hung.
On October 11, 1870 Margaret Waters was hung by executioner William Calcraft.
Margaret Waters was the first woman ever to be executed for baby-farming in England.
Margaret Waters’ Oct. 15, 1870 Illustrated Police News
MARY ANN COTTON
Mary Ann Cotton was born in 1832 in Low Moorsley, County Durham, England. Her parents, Michael and Margaret Robson, were strict Methodists. Her father was a coal miner and a strict authoritarian who died when Mary was fourteen. He fell to his death one hundred and fifty feet down a coal pit at Murton Colliery.
In 1843, Margaret, Mary Ann's mother, remarried a George Stott, whom Mary disliked. When she was sixteen, she left home and became a nurse in a nearby village. Mary Anne, often described as “strikingly beautiful,” was said to have a kind, caring, and sensitive nature.
When Mary Ann was twenty in 1852, she married William Mowbray, a miner. The couple relocated to Devon where Mary Ann gave birth to five children. Four of the children died as babies. The death certificates noted gastric fever as the cause. Infant mortality rates were high in England in Victorian times but even so this was unusually high. However, given the times they lived in, it was likely to have been viewed as simply "bad luck.”
The family then moved to Sunderland. Here Mary Ann had three more children. They all died from gastric fever. In January of 1865, William Mowbray also died of an abdominal illness. He and all the children had life insurance policies with the British and Prudential Insurance Company, and Mary collected thirty-five pounds.
Shortly after William died, Mary Ann found work as a nurse at Sunderland infirmary. Her one remaining child from the marriage to William Mowbray, Isabella, went to stay and be looked after by Mary Ann’s mother Margaret. At the infirmary, she nursed a patient George Ward. He was an engineer and fell for Mary and before long they were married. He died just over a ye
ar after his wedding. He had life insurance, which Mary Ann received on his death.
Bottle of Arsenic tablets 1800’s
A month following George’s death, Mary Ann became a housekeeper to a shipyard foreman James Robinson. James’s wife, Hannah, had recently passed away leaving him with small children to care for. Within a month of Mary joining the Robinson household, James' youngest child, a baby, died. The death certificate certified gastric fever.
Distraught, James Robinson sought comfort in his kindly housekeeper. Within a short time, Mary Ann became pregnant. During her pregnancy, Mary went to visit her mother Margaret and daughter Isabella. A few days after Mary Ann's arrival, her mother began to complain of abdominal pains. In the spring of 1867, just ten days after Mary’s arrival, her mother was dead.
Mary took Isabella back to live with her at James Robinson’s house. Within a matter of a few weeks, Isabella suffered from abdominal pains and died. Two more of James Robinson’s children died soon after this sad event. In April of 1867, the three children were laid to rest. Even with all these deaths, on August 11, 1867 James took Mary Ann as his wife at the church of St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth.
St Michael's, Bishopwearmouth
In November of 1867, James and Mary had a daughter, Mary Isabella. She died of stomach pains in March of 1868. Soon afterward, Mary had another child. James Robinson was far from happy with his wife. He had found out that Mary Ann had incurred debts of sixty pounds and had pilfered more than fifty pounds from him.
When Mary suggested to her husband that he take out life-insurance, he began to suspect her motives were sinister. James Robinson also began to wonder about the children’s deaths. Mary Ann left the household leaving one live child behind. James Robinson failed to report his suspicions to the police.
Mary Ann moved to West Auckland, County Durham. She met and befriended a woman by the name of Margaret Cotton and before long met Margaret’s brother, Frederick. Frederick Cotton was a coal miner, who had recently suffered enormous tragedy through the death of his wife, Adelaide, from consumption, and two of their four children from typhus. Margaret was caring for her nephews, Frederick Jr. and Charles. Margaret died from abdominal pains in late March of 1870, while Mary Ann was staying in the house.
Mary Ann consoled the grieving brother Frederick and his two heartbroken children, Frederick Junior and Charles. Mary Ann became pregnant for the eleventh time. In September of 1870, Mary married Frederick Cotton, a bigamous act. Shortly after the marriage, Mary Ann insured her husband and his two son’s lives. Mary gave birth to Frederick’s son Robert in March of 1871.
A little over a year after their marriage, Frederick became ill with abdominal pains and died on September 20th, 1871. The cause of death on his medical certificate was, ‘Typhoid Hepatitis'.
Frederick Cotton’s Death Certificate.
Three months after Frederick’s death, Mary Ann moved a former lover Joseph Nattrass, four years her junior, into her house.
Mary Ann took a job as a nurse to a tax officer John Quick-Manning, who was recuperating from smallpox; Mary began a liaison with Quick-Manning and was soon expecting his child.
Her other lover, Joseph Nattras, became ill and died of gastric fever — shortly after having changed his will in Mary Ann’s favor. This death was followed by the deaths of her stepson and her son Robert.
The deaths began to raise suspicions locally among the neighbors and journalists, who thrived on local gossip and began investigating Mary Cotton’s past. They soon turned up a number of dead husbands, dead children, other relatives, and friends all of whom had died of abdominal complaints. The doctor reported his suspicions to the authorities. The police, with the doctor’s and journalist’s suspicions, were forced to act.
In July of 1872, Mary Ann Cotton was arrested at her home for murdering her stepson Charles Cotton. Mary Ann, when charged with the murder, replied, indicating her swollen stomach, "I am as innocent as the child unborn.”
The street where Mary Ann lived
While Mary Ann was incarcerated in Durham Gaol, a few, but not all, of the bodies were exhumed. All had traces of arsenic in their stomachs. However, Mary Ann was eventually only tried for the murder of her stepson, Charles.
From her jail cell, Mary Ann wrote numerous letters to newspapers protesting her innocence.
The trial of Mary Ann Cotton was delayed until the birth of her last child in Durham Jail. Margaret Edith Quick-Manning Cotton was born on the 10th of January in 1873. The baby was adopted.
Trial
Mary Ann Cotton's trial began on the fifth of March in 1873. Mary denied murder. She argued that Charles died from breathing fumes from arsenic that had been used in a dye on the wallpaper of their home.
The Jury thought otherwise. After only ninety minutes of deliberations, on March 8th, 1873, Mary Ann Cotton was found guilty of murder.
The judge, before sentencing her to death by hanging said, “You have been convicted of the murder of your stepson, whom it was your duty to cherish and take care of.” Mary Ann was forty years old.
Execution
The execution took place at Durham County Gaol on March 24, 1873. At 8am on March 24, 1873, Mary Ann Cotton, 40, was unlocked from her cell and walked across the yard at Durham prison. Two women officers escorted her; they reported her as saying, “Heaven is my home.”
Execution Yard Durham Jail
There were about fifty witnesses present for the execution, half of whom were the press. They reported that she looked small and frail and wore a black and white shawl over her black dress. They said she walked shakily but resolutely, head back and praying. What were her thoughts as she walked towards the gallows on that cold, gray morning? Did she have any regrets?
Mary Ann’s Executioner William Calcraft
The execution was botched. The onlookers watched in shock as her body writhed in agonizing spasms for at least three minutes after the trap was released. Her neck had not been broken. She was according to some observers...
“STRANGLED LIKE A RABID DOG,WITH NO DIGNITY EVEN IN DEATH”
Mary Cotton’s body was buried in the grounds of Durham Prison.
Nursery Rhyme
Mary Ann had a nursery rhyme sung about her following her hanging.
BLACK WIDOWS OF LIVERPOOL
In the middle part of the 19th century, in the English northern port city of Liverpool, two widowed Irish women, Catherine Flanagan and her sister Margaret opened a boarding house, at 5 Skirving Street close to Scotland Road in northern Liverpool. Friends and neighbors knew the sisters as Maggie and Catty.
The boarding house was in a deprived lower working class area roughly bounded by Boundary Road to the north, Vauxhall Road to the west, Burlington Street to the south and Great Homer St to the east. It was a part of the city, particularly popular with the Irish community. An area where the majority of the men worked as laborers or at the city’s docks and women who went out to work found employment as domestic servants.
In 1880, Margaret and Catherine, Catherine’s twenty-two year old son John and two families who rented rooms occupied the boarding house. The tenants were Patrick Jennings and his daughter Margaret and Thomas Higgins, a hod carrier, his young wife and his daughter Mary. Soon after moving into the house, Thomas’s wife died.
In December 1880, the previously healthy John Flanagan suddenly died. In Victorian England, it was considered extremely important, amongst the working classes to have a proper funeral to avoid the humiliation of a pauper's funeral.
In light of this, burial societies sprung up which provided a solution. Families would pay the agents of the society a few pennies each week, to avoid the stigma of a poor man’s funeral. The societies ran much as life insurance companies today, some like the Prudential Assurance Co and the British Workmen's Insurance Company were honestly run, but there were also unregistered societies who took advantage of legal loopholes and exploited the poorest in society, and allowed policies to be taken out without the insured
person being notified.
The sisters had taken out several insurance policies on John’s life without John’s knowledge. When John died, Catherine gave him the cheapest funeral possible and ended up with a sizeable amount of money left over. Catherine collected £71 (worth roughly £5242 ($8477) in 2012) a considerable sum in a working-class community where laborers would take home only 75 pence ($1.10) a week.
During the course of the following year, Maggie began dating Thomas Higgins, who was nicknamed `Crack of the Whip' due to his strength. Their dating led to the couple getting married in October1882. Within months of the marriage, Thomas’s eight-year-old daughter Mary became unexpectedly ill and died. Yet again, the sisters, unbeknown to Thomas, had taken out policies on Mary with various burial societies and collected another sizeable payout.
Just three months later, in January 1883, Patrick Jennings nineteen-year-old daughter Margaret died. The sisters collected the funeral payout. It was an era of high mortality rates, but the number of deaths in one house, in such a short time, began to make the neighbors talk.
The sisters decided it was time to move. They moved their business first to 105 Latimer Street and then to 27 Ascot Street. Shortly after moving into Ascot Street, Thomas, then aged 45 became mysteriously ill with horrendous stomach pains. A Dr Whitford was called who attributed Thomas’s illness to dysentery, caused by consuming cheap whiskey. He prescribed castor oil and opium. Thomas Higgins died two days later on October 2, 1883, the doctor on the death certificate attributed his death to dysentery.
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