The Poisonous career of Mary Ann Cotton

The date is March 24th, 1873. The place is Durham Gaol. The scene is the hanging gallery. From above, out of sight of the gallows, members of the Press are gathered. For weeks they have been pulsating with stories of the lady about to be executed. She, meanwhile, was having a cup of tea in her cell, still vainly hoping that she might be set free; that her pleas of innocence would be heard and that she might once more walk the streets of her local town and enjoy the sights and sounds of daily life.

Mary Ann Cotton, born Mary Ann Robson in 1832, grew up in County Durham in the north of England. She was, as reported to the journalists who probed her past, a quiet young lady, a regular attender at Sunday school where she was well thought of as being intelligent and very clean and tidy in appearance.

At the age of 20 Mary Ann was married to a mine worker named Mowbray. They moved to the South West of England and together they had five children, four of whom died. The family moved back to the North East and had four more children. The children died, seemingly from typhus or from gastric fever. Mowbray, her husband, who had taken a job as a fireman on a steamship, died. Also of gastric fever. His life was insured and so Mary Ann received a pay-out equal to around six months wages.

Mary Ann went back to Sunderland and worked as a nursing attendant.

In the hospital where she worked she met a patient named George Ward. They married in 1865 but Ward died a little over a year…