Mary Ann Cotton

[dothawkes31]

on the Martina Cole show in abit, she's supposed to have committed mass murder in the 1870s so i am going to check her out on the census cos I;m nosy like that lol

[craft1948]

you don't know Zacs...one of my ancestors owned up to being a Quack Doctor on a census...

[craft1948]

groan...........how did I know you'd say that :-)

[dothawkes31]

found her in 1861 as mary ann mowbray with a 2 year old daughter but she's in durham not cornwall

[dothawkes31]

in 1861 her daughter is isabella aged 2 not matgaret jane

[Eve]

I had to go have a nose on Wiki and a fair bit of into and timeline on there.

[Sandy-Wroe]

There might be something in this heredity business. Dot Cotton's son in Eastenders was a right stinker.

[mike11111]

Mary Ann Cotton had a number of names, Cotton being the name of her last husband. She killed her husband and her children for the insurance money. She was hanged in 1873 in Durham, 15 miles from my home. She was such a reviled figure that children in the late 19C had a skipping rhyme about her:

Mary Ann Cotton,
She's dead and she's rotten
She lies in her bed,
With her eyes wide open
Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing,
Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string
Where, where? Up in the air
Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair.

Full info can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Cotton

[dothawkes31]

sorry so far not going with the mass murderer thing, but let's see what else martina can come up with, my great great grandfatehr lost 7 children in 2 years and on my other side my greta gretra grandmother lost 4 in 3 years, what was forensics like back then? or did she admit it?

[mike11111]

The corpses exhumed all showed traces of arsenic. Given the number of husbands and children that she 'lost', despite the mortality rate of the 19C, it seems a bit excessive. And everyone of them was insured, on which she collected speedily.