Mary Ann Cotton: 'She's Dead and She's Rotten'

most popular poison. That's right, you're getting more arsenic talk today. Arsenic. It's my it's my favorite. We always talk about I Heart Arsenic shirts coming soon, right exactly, I'm going to open a store. But with those kinds of numbers, she became known as Britain's first serial killer. So let's look first at how Mariann grew up. She was born on Halloween, which I don't know if everyone knows, this is Holly's

favorite day of the year. Every day is in my heart. Uh. And she was born in eighteen thirty two to um Michael and Margaret Robson, and their family was working class and they were very strict Methodists. So that's that's her scene as a kid. And during her childhood, mary Anne was described as and we quote exemplary and distinguished for

her particularly clean and tidy appearance. She regularly attended Wesleyan Sunday School, and it was also said of her, and again we're quoting here, she was regarded as a girl of innocent disposition and average intellect. All pretty good things right right right up to that average intellect, right, I like my life to the heart, right, things like complimentary, complementary.

So outside of that clean and tidy appearance and average intellect, mary Anne's childhood doesn't actually sound very much like a happy one. Her father when she was young, he was a strict disciplinarian and he worked as a coal miner, and as a coal miner, one day tragedy struck um, which you can imagine what tragedy and coal mining could be. So in February of eighteen forty two, he fell to his death down a narrow three hundred foot mine shaft.

So at a very young age, she was probably only about ten when this happened, mary Ann was forced to go to work and within a year or just a few years, depending on what you're reading. Mary Anne's mother married another miner. This was a man named George Stott with a T or his name was George Scott with a C. Or it might have even been Robert Scott

there a pentence. Sorry. It happens a lot when you're looking at at historical records, particularly when you're going by people's recollected a counts, right, You'll find some interesting variations and handwriting could be very difficult as well to read. And it's just Scott or Scott or maybe Robert. And there are references to all three of these names, and uh, the Robert is kind of a surprise among the George's.

But I think so these things happen, but we feel pretty confident that her stepfather's name was, in fact George stopped with a T, and so we're sticking with that, right. So, anyway, regardless of whether or not he was a George or Robert, Mary Ann did not like her new stepfather, and she didn't like how strict he was, so she left home at the age of sixteen to pursue nursing, which she did for about three years before she returned back to her child home. So that she could train as a dressmaker.

So this will obviously sound sexist, uh to listeners today, but it was certainly very true at the time that it was hard for a working class woman to make her way in the world in the midnight teenth century without the financial security that marriage offered. Certainly happened on occasion, but those were the outliers. So mary Anne went the

traditional route sort of. And as we're about to get into, she was actually married four times in her life, although one of those times big amous Lee, Yeah, which we'll get into in a little bit, but it's a little early. But we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsor, and when we returned, we're going to go into detail about each of these four marriages. Welcome back to Criminalia. All right, let's dig into the wedded bliss of mary Anne Cotton. Yeah, call it that. So

let's talk about her first husband. So in eighteen fifty two, mary Anne married William Mowbray and William worked as a foreman and then later he was a fireman on a steam vessel. He was a working class man. They had five children together quickly while they were married, but four of them died of typhoid fever. The couple then went on to have and also lose three more children during their marriage and later, And I really feel this is just sad statement of her mental health that this statement

gives us. Marianne would struggle to remember just how many children she had and had lost during that marriage to William just a few years into the marriage, so again she was having children at a pretty quick pace. William unexpectedly died of an intestinal disorder, another suspected case of typhoid fever, just as what had taken the lives of his children. The newly widowed mary Anne was left with one child and an insurance pay out equivalent to half

a year of William's salary. So we always mentioned that it's really hard to get you know, exact at all when you're trying to calculate what, for example, thirty five pounds at this time would be equivalent to in today's money. But our estimation is that mary Anne's payout was about forty pounds. For Americans, that's currently just shy of about six thousand dollars, not a huge amount, but not unsubstantial either. Still pretty significant, I think in mary Anne's time shortly thereafter.

They're actually turning out to me that many of the loved ones in mary Anne's life began dying under some mysterious circumstances. So not long after William's death, mary Anne began a relationship with Joseph Natris. She also was involved at the time with a man named John quick Manning. But when it comes to John, there's something a bit strange, Dear, don't appear to be any records of any kind. We're turning like sensus birthday mentions, anything to prove John quick

Manning's existence. So we talked about this Alton all the time, that records were not perfectly kept. They weren't perfectly kept in the eight hundreds, you know, they were trouble with them in the before that, there might have not even been any um But there have also been a lot of records lost over the years, whether it's fires or wars or even just you know, something boring like organizational failure. But it's difficult to know exactly what was going on

with her relationships at this time. However, there was also a man named Richard Quickman and Richard does appear to have in fact existed. He can be found in some records, and many believe that this may be the real name of her lover. You may notice that Richard Quickman and John quick manning some similarities there. This could have been another one of those cases where there's a whoopsie in the communication. So soon Mary Ann became pregnant by this

man Richard. That is not Joseph, who she is on record as having been involved with. Right, she got married at this time as well, But she didn't marry Joseph or John or Robert or whatever names we can come up with. She married George. George Ward was an engineer, and I am sad to say that he actually plays

a very small role in this story. They had no children um and just a little more than one year after they had wed, George died after an illness and his primary symptoms which by now we can all guess we're intestinal problems. Once again. Marianne collected insurance money from his death. Yeah, if you're putting together a Criminalia Bingo card, they should probably make sure arsenic and intestinal issues are on there to make sure you're a winner. Arsenic and

vomiting after on there. Somebody. Uh, mary Anne did get married again. Her third husband was a man named James Robinson, a widower whose wife had died and left him with young children to care for. James is a really interesting part of mary Anne's story, and we're going to get into that in just a little bit. It started though their relationship when he hired her as a housekeeper. That was in November of eighteen sixty six, and shortly after she was hired, one of his children, who was still

just an infant, died in her care. Devastated by the loss of his child, James turned to mary Anne for comfort and the pair quickly became a couple. So their romance was blossoming. But mary Anne's mother became ill, and

it was probably with a hepatitis flare up. Although it changed a little bit, most of the records suggests that that's what it could be, and so mary Anne traveled to be with her to be her caregiver, and despite having been on the mend for a few days before her daughter's arrival, just nine days after Maryanne arrived, her mother died. When Marianne returned home, things were pretty quiet for not very long at all. In fact, by the end of April eighteen sixty seven, three of James's children

had died. Despite all of that bad luck, though, mary Anne and James got married that summer and their first child, a daughter named Margaret Isabella, was born that November, so she was a healthy baby. Margaret Isabella became ill and

by March, she too had died. Mary Anne and James had a second child, named George, and George was born in June of eighteen sixty nine, So unlike her former husband's, James actually, and this is what we when we said he's an interesting character in her life, and this is why he began to grow suspicious of Marianne, and not just because of the number of deaths that seemed to

surround her. Marianne was adamant and we say that with all caps, that her husband take out a life insurance policy on himself, but James pretty much Fratto refused the request. And it wasn't just that she harped on him about that. He had also found out that she had been forcing her stepchildren to pawn items from their home for cash. So James wasn't having any of this, and he asked

Marianne to leave. Um he did, and a surprisingly great move for his son, retained custody of George, and of the four husbands that she had, James is the only one who survived being married to mary Anne. And we haven't talked about all of her husbands, so we've gotten to the point where she moves to a fourth marriage. This was to a man named Frederick Cotton. Desperate without a husband, mary Anne's friend Margaret Cotton, introduced Marianne to

her brother, Frederick. Frederick was a recent widower as well. He had two children who were named Frederick Jr. And Charles Edward, and it was not long before Marianne and Frederick Cotton were married. But there was a small, big problem with mary Anne's marriage to Frederick though. Um she was still actually legally married to her third husband, James, which makes this fourth marriage to Frederick an active bigamy, which,

as we all know, not legal. Definitely. I always find this to be an interesting aspect of her story because she is known publicly as mary Anne Cotton. But that was the one last name that never legally was hers. I know it's it's it's sort of cookie, but it's the last name she took, so I understand why it stuck. But yes, so bigamy, though was not the only thing that was complicating this, this marriage. We're going to use

air quotes when we say marriage to Frederick. You'll recall earlier we mentioned a man named Joseph Natraz who was one of mary Anne's lovers. She was in a relationship with him women you know earlier in this episode. Um So, shortly after she married Frederick, mary Anne learned that Joseph had become single again, and hearing about this, she convinced Frederick to move closer to where Joseph lived. But the why of the move was most definitely not known to Frederick.

But they packed up and they went, and then she secretly rekindled her old romance. She stayed married to Frederick, but spoiler alert, not for a whole lot longer. Frederick, their infant son, Robert, Frederick's child from a previous marriage, Frederick Jr. And Frederick's sister Margaret, who had introduced them, all died very quickly, and all from undetermined stomach ailments.

And then, of course, right Joseph then became ill with suspected typhoid fever, and he also died not long after Frederick had passed a way and conveniently from mary Anne his death happened just after he revised his will in her favor. Yeah, even though they were not married, right,

but she got everything. She still got everything. By eighteen seventy two, mary Anne had lost an astonishing number of family members and close friends sixteen sixteen, but there was one left, her seven year old stepson, Charles Edward, who, just to help everybody keep track, was the son of her fourth husband, who she wasn't legally married to, Frederick. If it feels like this is the time for a

flow chart, we concur. I completely agreed. There needs to be columns and colors right the branches that is there, more than one Charles is there. I have to just have to keep it all together. So Um, things get a little bit odd and suspicious at this part of this story. And I'm not suggesting that they weren't suspicious before now. But then this happened. Marianne went to a local workhouse and tried to give Charles this is Charles

Edward to them. Yes, she did try to give away her stepchild, um, but they refused to take him a workhouse. If you happen to be wondering what that is um. In Victorian England, workhouses were primarily where poor and homeless people worked for food and accommodation. Women usually had domestic jobs like sewing, mended hard laborers such as stone breaking. Uh. They there's the people who live there were also It could include people who were physically and mentally ill, those

who were disabled, elderly people who would now where to go. Um. And additionally, unmarried mothers also lived in the workhouses and so in general though, these were not places that you really wanted to be, and there were also orphaned and abandoned children who lived there. If you kind of look around in history for very long, you'll find instances of families who were simply too poor to provide for their kids and would give them to a workhouse. But no

one ever wants to do that. Uh. Maryanne did not come under suspicion until she showed up at a workhouse looking to be done with her stepson. But there are actually two versions of the workhouse story that we want

to get into here, right. So the first one was like this um when asked if she a recent widow, was planning to marry the man she was having a relationship with, Richard quick Man, she had gone back to him, if you recall he was one of her lovers we mentioned earlier, and she allegedly replied, and we quote this reply, it might be so, but the boy is in the way. Perhaps it won't matter, as I won't be troubled long.

It's an aluminous a little bit, a little bit suspicious little bit is that could be long, like uneasy making. I'll figure this out with your help or without it. Um. The second version of this workhouse story goes like this, that the coroner in town asked Marianne to help care for a woman who was ill with smallpox. She was, as you'll recall, trained as a nurse after all, at least for a while, but her response probably was not

as he might have expected. Instead of a yes or a no, she replied that if he wanted her to do this, she was going to have to commit her stepson to a workhouse first. When the workhouse thing didn't work out either whichever story you know, it's true or not. It didn't work out, and poor Charles ended up staying with Marianne, and he died when in five days um So. Unlike the dozen or so deaths before him, Charles's death

didn't go unnoticed. We were looking at multiple versions of what went down here, and there are two versions of this story about the death. Yeah, it's the dovetail of like splitting realities. There are two versions of the workhouse part and two versions of what actually happened when Charles died. So in the first version, Charles's death seemed suspicious to the manager of the workhouse that Marianne had spoken with,

and he contacted the police. This is probably not the real version that happened though, right, you know, it's it's difficult to think that, and it's it's hard to find sources that would suggest that five to you know, even a week later, the manager of the workhouse would even know that that happened. Um, but it is out there, so we want to address it. The second version is where the coroner, who was also a parish official, was suspicious of the child's death after Marianne's comment, and he's

the one who went to the police. He also convinced the attending physician to delay writing a death certificate until the circumstances of the boy's death could be investigated. And it's this version where we hear that Marianne also went to the insurance office and discovered that no money would be paid out to her for Charles's death until the

death certificate was actually issued. But regardless of which of these stories is the real deal, the story ends with the authorities concluding that Marianne had poisoned the boy, and they also suspected that they knew how she had done it, with that magical star of the season, arsenic arsenic. So finally, after twenty years of mysterious deaths and probable poisonings, it was only after the death of her one stepson that finally the suspicion fell upon mary Anne and the authorities

were totally right. We're going to take a quick break from Marianne's story, uh, and we will hear from one of our sponsors. But when we return, we're going to dive into mary Anne's trial. Welcome back to from Analia. So let's get to talking about mary Anne's trial and her boxed execution. Arsenic was mary Anne's weapon of choice, as it was for a lot of people who poisoned in Victorian England. As we have talked about throughout this entire season, Arsenic was a very popular poison because it

was both easy to administer and easily accessible. It's believed that mary Anne's method was to brew poisoned tea and serve it to her victims. She was suspected of all of these poisonings, but at this point in her story, no one had actually performed any tests, taken any samples.

Nothing had happened yet. And in the meantime, a local newspaper became interested in the story and they started their own investigation into mary Anne, and their stories inspired a doctor by the name of William Kilburn to do his

own scientific investigation. He had actually attended to Charles when the boy was ill, and he had taken and kept samples from his time with him, and when put to the test, doctor Kilburn confirmed that the samples from Charles's body contained arsenic He took his results to the police

and Marianne was arrested and charged with murder. So we talked a lot about women who have murdered many people, adults, children, doesn't matter, friends, family, So there is this world where husbands and children can be poisoned without the attention of authorities. But there are there are reasons. This was a time when there was a problem with substandard nutrition among working poor. There was a high infant mortality rate, which was just

a fact of life at the time. And as we talked about before, let's not forget that the record keeping well sketchy at this time as well. Right, the life expectancy was a little different. So when people died it was tragic, but kind of a shrugger in many ways. Yes, it was. It was a part of sort of daily life. In March eighteen seventy three, Marianne Cotton was put on trial. The prosecution was led by Charles Russell. His team called

several of mary Anne's neighbors as witnesses. According to two local newspapers, The hailes Worth Times in the East Suffolk Advertiser, these witnesses did not paint a flattering picture of mary Anne. Little Foster and his team were responsible. From mary Anne's defense, Dr Kilburn testified that he had found arsenic in Charles's body, and interestingly, the defense team then asked the doctor about

wallpaper in the boy's room. And this actually isn't as weird as it sounds, because during this time arsenic was used to make a lot of things green clothing, you know, he's sort of fabrics, wallpaper, lots of things turned green because of arsenic, and it was suggested by the defense that Charles had been poisoned by fumes from the wallpaper,

but not by mary Anne. And Dr kil Warren discounted this whole proposition, and he replied that not only were the walls in the boy's room not green, he thought that the idea of death by inhaling arsenic from your wallpaper was dubious at best. Yeah, it's such an odd defense because it would bring up so many other questions, Well, why isn't anybody else sick? That was, Yeah, it was. It's an interesting way to try to defend her. But going back to scientific evidence, it was not only doctor

Kilburn who found arsenic in Charles's body. A doctor at Leeds College of Medicine also tested samples and also concluded that the boy had died after being small but repeated doses of arsenic. He too suggested that death by green wallpaper was highly unlikely. Additionally, both doctors also reported that they noticed similar symptoms were reported in three other people who Maryanne was accused of murdering. So let's get back

to Marianne for a second. So how was she holding up through all of this, I mean this is she's on trial for murder. The local papers reported that she paid very close attention to the evidence, that she occasionally smiled during her trial, but mostly she held a demeanor that you could expect from someone who's on trial for murder. She appeared fearful. The trial lasted three days before the jury went out to deliberate, and it only took them

about an hour before they returned. She was found guilty for the lethal poisoning of her fourth husband's son, Charles Edward Cotton, in the court of public opinion, though she was convicted of many, many more killings, many so though she was never put to trial for any of these murders, she was held responsible for the lethal poisonings of and this is a list eleven of her children, three of her four husbands, one lover, one friend, and her mother

and in almost every instance, in fact, I think it's the I think it's only Frederick's sister Margaret that this doesn't hold true for mary Anne collected life insurance on every single one of them. An interesting note about the man mary Anne did not poison. She didn't kill her third husband, James Robinson, who seems to have survived because, if you recall from earlier, he refused to take out a life insurance policy on himself and in regard to

her children to survive. Her daughter, Margaret Edith Quickmanning, who was born while Marianne was in jail awaiting trial, survived, although we don't actually really know what became of her after her birth. And her son George from her marriage to James Robinson survived almost certainly because James kept custody of him. While waiting for her execution, Marianne did give a final statement, and included in that statement she claimed

something very interesting. She claimed that although she had indeed administered the arsenic, she had not done so intentionally. You know, you know, everybody's innocent until the very end. Was she like, I just kept accidentally putting it in everybody's drinks. I don't know what I thought I was doing. I honestly had trouble with that. I was like, how could she not know? I didn't do it on purpose. I just mixed it in because I thought it was sugar. I

don't did it, Yeah, I just did it. So on on March three, at the age of forty, Marianne was hanged at Durham County Jail. Her execution was really well publicized and there were as many as fifty people who came as spectators just to watch it happen. It's an afternoon for him. So her execution, however, did not go as planned. And this is really grim, so bear bear

with us on this um it's sure, I promise. The hangman is the person who calculates the drop distance required to break the prisoner's neck, so it's based on the prisoners weight, their height, just sort of their general build. But this day and this hangman misjudged the drop distance and instead of breaking the prisoner's neck, Mary actually died of a slow choking death instead. And Mary Anne, it seems,

has a bit of a legacy. It did not take long for Madame Tussaut's to decide to include Mary Anne and the Chamber of Horrors area of the Wax Museum where the wax figures of other prominent murderers from history we're on display. And this is what the exhibition catalog

stated about Mary An. This is a quote this series of cold blooded murders for which this wretch was hanged on the morning of Monday, March seventy three are crimes against which no punishment in history can atone for the child she rocked on her knee today was poisoned tomorrow. Most of her murders were committed for petty gains, and she killed husbands and children with the unconcern of a farm girl killing poultry. The story of her crimes is still fresh in the public mind and that's the end

of the quote. And today, and actually this has been the case since ninety two, you can see Mary Anne's small black wedgwood teapots, said to be the one in which she brewed her arsenic placed teas, and that is at the Beamish Museum in the United Kingdom. So we're going to the Beamish Museum, yes, as soon as possible, right, as soon as we don't have to wear masks anymore.

Where I totally want to do a poison tour. The good stories absolutely, Like early on in the season we had a woman named Tilly Clinic and you can still go to her house. I want to go to her house, but I gotta get to Chicago. So let's end mary Anne's story with a little bit of curiously a nursery rhyme. It was written shortly after her execution and dedicated to her, Maryanne Cotton. She's dead and she's rotten, lying in bed with her eyes wide open, sing sing, oh what should

I sing? It goes on, but I won't. Mary Anne's poison, Holly was arsenic. But let's please say that yours is not not today? Okay, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, So for this edition of What's Your Poison? I always when I'm trying to come up with something, I think about pieces of the story that, for some reason or another stick in

my head. And in the instance of mary Anne, the things that really just stuck with me where James Robinson, who thankfully had the wisdom to get out of that situations, right, you know, that man and saving his child, right, he's the highlight of this whole story, he is. There's not a lot to be like giggly about this one at all. And also the teapot, and so I thought it would be nice to make a warm tea dedicated to James that we're going to call the one that Got Away.

I love this and I don't even know what comes in it yet. Oh it's very simple and yummy. You can make it without the alcohol. It's another one of those, and you can you can switch up the nature of how you serve it if you want so. Uh, in a saucepan. First of all, make your cup of tea however you like, like a black tea. Um And then I'm sorry, should it be a black tea or could you use like an herbal? Would you prefer a black on this one? I think you're gonna want a black

tea on this one. You could do a herbal, but I think it's going to be overwhelmed by other flavors. That's what I want, dirt. Yeah, So while you're brewing your tea in a small saucepan, you're also going to take a half cup of milk. I used oat milk, you can use whatever kind you like. A quarter cup of heavy cream, an ounce of maple syrup, and then just a dash of cinnamon, and you're just gonna let that start to bubble around the edges. You don't want

it to boil over and get a skin. It's more very like the lowest low simmer, so that your ingredients are combining. You know, cinnamon is never going to dissolve completely, but you it will clump up for a while before it gets warm enough to really disperse through the whole thing pretty evenly. So once that is done and you've got your tea in this milk concoction, you're gonna put an ounce and a half of bourbon in your cup, pour in your tea, and then pour in this maple

milk with cinnamon. You can sweeten it more if you like, and you can drink it as it is hot. But you can also put it over ice like. You can either it cool first, or you can do that thing where you transfer it back and forth in vessels with ice that it cools more quickly and it is very delicious cold. I must say, throw a cinnamon stick in that, and don't tell people it was inspired by poison, and tell them it's like you're you're yummy Thanksgiving, Um, you know,

post dinner cocktail or. Um. Take the bourbon out and give it to your son George. Right without the bourbon, it's still super nice because it's a maple cinnamon latte made with tea basically. At that point, Um, and again, I also want to make sure I stress because you know, I like everybody to customize everything to the way they like it. You can use as much or as little

of that milk mixture as you wish. I like, you know, one part tea, one part the milk mixture, because I do like things to be very much in that latte space um where there's a lot of dairy. But if you want to lean more heavily on the tea or the milk, you totally do it. It sounds delicious bourbon, and I'm going to need to make it because it sounds very holiday ish and I'm feeling very holiday ish,

So maybe this one is going to have to happen. Yes, thank you once again for joining us today and spending this time with us, and we cannot wait to meet you back here next week for another poison story. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.