Cotton, Mary

Early life

Mary Ann Robson was born in 1832 in the Low Moorsley town near Hatton -le-Hole in the north-east of England in the family of miner Michael Robson and his wife Margaret. In 1834, another daughter was born, Margaret, but she died a few months later. Another child, Robert, was born in 1835. Mary Ann was thus the eldest of the two surviving children.

When Mary Ann was eight, the family moved to the village of Merton in County Durham . As later, during the trial at Mary Ann, the Northern Echo newspaper reported, teachers at Sunday school spoke positively about Mary Ann, noting her innocent disposition, accuracy, diligence and invariably neat appearance ^[2] .

Shortly after moving, in February 1842, Michael Robson fell into the shaft of a mine from a height of 46 meters and died. Since the house in which the family lived was connected with the work of the father, the widow and the children were evicted. In the family, and before the needy, a very difficult period began. However, already in 1843, Margaret Robson again married, the miner George Stott (1816-1895). Mary Ann did not have a relationship with her stepfather and at 16 she left the house to work as a nanny in the neighboring village of South Hatton . When, after three years, all the children she looked after went to study at a boarding school, Mary Ann returned to her mother and stepfather and studied as a dressmaker.

First Marriage

In 1852, at the age of 19, Mary Ann married a miner named William Mowbray. Mary Anne was probably already pregnant at the time of the wedding, as the couple’s first child was born very soon. Mowbray worked on the construction of the railway, which is why the young family often moved from place to place. During this period, four or five children who die before the age of two are born one after another. For the Victorian era, and also taking into account the plight of the English miners at that time, infant and child mortality was very high - half of the children survived at adulthood, at best, and two-thirds of deaths were up to a year ^[3] . The deaths of children were not recorded, since this was not mandatory until 1874.

Having lost all the children, the couple returned to Southeast England , where in 1858 their daughter Isabella was born. Mowbray worked for a while as a fireman on a steam ship, and then again as a miner. Children born to Mary Ann continue to die - two daughters, both named Mary Jane (born respectively in 1856 and 1861), died at the age of about 3 years old, and son John Robert William, born in 1863 and died a year later. All children die from the mysterious “stomach fever” - an uncertain diagnosis of the time, which included diseases such as typhoid fever , cholera , dysentery, or indigestion (the latter was most often observed in children from poor families due to irregular feeding and early feeding). )

In January 1865, William Mobray dies of an "indigestion." Mary Ann receives an insurance benefit equal to 35 pounds (about half of the miner's annual earnings at that time) for her husband and two and a half pounds for her son.

Second Marriage

After the death of her husband, Mary Ann moved to the town of Siem Harbor, where she entered into a relationship with local resident Joseph Nuttrass. Unable to persuade him to marry, Mary Ann moved again, leaving her only surviving daughter Isabella in the care of her mother and stepfather. In Sunderland, Mary Ann takes a job at an infectious diseases hospital, where she meets one of the patients, engineer George Ward. In 1865, Mary Ann and Ward got married, but Mary Ann was in no hurry to take her daughter to her new family. Despite the necessary treatment at Ward Hospital, after discharge and the beginning of his life with Mary Ann, his health is rapidly deteriorating. He dies in 1866 after a long illness accompanied by paralysis and chronic stomach problems. Mary Ann inherited his property and received substantial insurance. After the death of her second husband, she again changed her place of residence.

Third Marriage

A month after Ward's death, in November 1866, Mary Ann took a nanny at the home of a wealthy widowessman James Robinson. And a month after her arrival, in December of that year, one of Robinson’s children dies from stomach fever. A love affair begins between a heartbroken father and a nanny, and Mary Ann soon becomes pregnant. She counted on a marriage with a wealthy owner, but in March 1867 she had to leave for her parents' house to look after her sick mother. Mother Mary Ann died nine days after her daughter arrived.

With her only daughter, Isabella, Mary Ann returns to Robinson’s house, where in April two children of Robinson and 9-year-old Isabella die as a result of an epidemic of stomach fever. James Robinson did not suspect Mary Ann's involvement and even interrupted the mourning laid in those days to marry her. The wedding took place in early August, and at the end of November, the couple’s child was born - the daughter of Mary Isabella, who dies in March 1868, not having lived to see six months. Thus, in the year and a half after the arrival of Mary Ann, five children died from stomach fever in the house.

Soon Robinson's first suspicions appeared regarding his new wife - she constantly demanded money, borrowed without his knowledge, and even made Robinson's surviving children mortgage and sell valuables from the house and their deceased mother's belongings. Enraged, Robinson drove his wife out into the street with their second child, a newborn daughter. After wandering for a while, Mary Ann left the child with her friends and never returned after her. At the beginning of 1870, the daughter was returned to her father.

Fourth Marriage

In 1870, Mary Ann's old friend, Margaret Cotton, introduced her to her brother Frederick Cotton, a widower with two children, Frederick Jr. and Charles Edward. Margaret helped her brother, taking care of her nephews, but she soon became ill and at the end of March 1870 died of a stomach ailment. Mary Ann and Frederick got married in September of the same year, despite the fact that Mary Ann was married to Robinson, duality was severely punished by law. Mary Ann insured the life of her husband and her two stepsons. As was the case with Robinson, Mary Ann was pregnant at the time of the wedding, her first child, son Robert, was born three months after the wedding.

In early 1871, Mary Ann renewed her relationship with her longtime lover, Joseph Nuttrass. In December 1871, Frederick Cotton dies, leaving his wife a three-story house, and Nuttrass becomes the tenant of Mary Ann. She herself gets a job as a nurse to wealthy official John Quick-Manning, recovering from smallpox . Relations with the patient soon turned into a love affair and Mary Ann became pregnant from Quick Manning, but John Nuttrasson, two stepsons and his own one-year-old son, interfered with the marriage. First, in March 1872, Frederick Jr. dies, followed by Robert, and then Nuttrass. Mary Ann was left with one stepson, Charles Edward Cotton.

Charles Cotton's assassination and arrest

It is known that in late spring 1872, Mary Ann sent the boy to the pharmacy for arsenic, but the pharmacist refused to sell arsenic to a minor. Then Mary Ann asked a neighbor to buy the drug. In July, Charles died of stomach fever. This time, the death of a perfectly healthy child aroused suspicion. Thomas Riley, a junior government official, recalled that shortly before the boy’s death, Mary Ann consulted about the possibility of a new marriage and said that Charles would not cause problems, since “he would soon leave, like the rest of the Cottons.” Riley noted that the child was completely healthy, and was very surprised when he learned about his death a few days later. Riley went to the doctor, who regularly examined Charles, and convinced him to carry out an examination to confirm the initial diagnosis. The doctor listened, but a superficial examination showed no signs of violent death. However, the doctor retained the tissues of Charles's organs and examined them in the laboratory, where traces of arsenic were detected. The doctor went to the police, and Mary Ann was arrested. However, the court had to be postponed because the woman was again pregnant, apparently from Quick Manning.

At the same time, the press was attracted to the case, Mary Ann, who had often changed her last name and place of residence, was in the center of public attention. The number of deaths that accompanied her life, aroused suspicion of her address, rumors spread that frightened the failed bridegroom - Quick Manning. The bodies of Charles Cotton and Joseph Nuttrass were exhumed, arsenic was found in the tissues.

Judgment and Execution

The court refused to judge Mary Ann for crimes that would have been difficult to prove because of the old age, so she was officially charged with only one episode - the murder of Charles Edward Cotton. At the trial, Mary Ann denied her involvement until the very end and alluded to the fact that the cause of Charles’s death could have been green wallpaper in his father’s house. Indeed, the bright green color of textiles and wallpapers in the Victorian era was achieved by adding arsenic to the dye and the deaths of children from inhalation of vapors or by accidentally licking green wallpapers were recorded in newspapers of that time. In fact, arsenic was widely used in everyday life, for example, during cleaning, and in industry, so it was sold completely freely. The court, however, did not find these arguments convincing enough.

Mary Ann was opposed by the results of an autopsy of her stepson, the testimony of Dr. and Thomas Riley, as well as other witnesses who saw Mary Ann buying arsenic or rejoicing in receiving insurance payments after her next death. She was convicted of the murder of her stepson, Charles Cotton, and sentenced to death by hanging.

Mary Ann Cotton was executed March 24, 1873 in the city of Durham . During the execution, the executioner incorrectly calculated the length of the rope, so the convict died not from rupture of the cervical vertebrae, as occurs when the body falls from a height, but from strangulation with a noose for three minutes.

The list includes relatives of Mary Ann Cotton, who died at different times from stomach fever or other stomach problems. The list includes 21 people; most researchers suggest that all or most of them were victims of Mary Ann ^[4] .

• The folk memory of Mary Ann Cotton was reflected in the children's room:

• In 2015, the two-part television film Dark Angel ^[5] , dedicated to Cotton, starring Joan Froggatt in the title role ^{[6] [7]} was shot. The film adaptation was inspired by the book of Scottish forensic artist David Wilson Mary Ann Cotton: Britain's First Female Serial Killer ^[8] .

• Appleton, Arthur. Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story and Trial . London: Michael Joseph, 1973. ISBN 0-7181-1184-2
• Connolly, Martin. Mary Ann Cotton: The North Eastern Borgia? West Auckland, Oakleaf Publishing, 2012. ISBN 9780957465107
• Flanders, Judith. The Invention of Murder . London: Harper Ress, 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-724888-9

In English:

• Mary Ann Cotton - Encyclopedia Britannica
• Who was Mary Ann Cotton?
• Victorian multi-murderer
• Mary Ann Cotton - Murderpedia

In Russian:

• England's first serial killer
• Black Widow Cotton