EARLY LIFE
Mary Ann Cotton was born Mary Ann Robinson in Low Moorsley, Hetton-le-Hole, now part of Houghton-le-Spring just outside the City of Sunderland in North East England on October 31 1832. And although she would only spend 40 years on this green earth, she sure made the most of them. Preeminent British Criminologist David Wilson has described Mary Ann Cotton as a Black Widow and Britain’s First Female Serial Killer with 15 confirmed murder victims, and another six suspected victims in 20 years.
FIRST HUSBAND WILLIAM MOWBRAY
In 1850 at the age of 20 Mary Ann met and married miner William Mowbray, and the couple soon moved to Cornwall, a county in South West England, which was another area of the UK known for mining at that time. Now, records of this part of Mary Ann’s life are sketchy to say the least, as they often were in Victorian era. Although births, marriages and deaths were supposed to be registered, in fact by the 1850s it was compulsory to register all births in the UK, it wasn’t enforced until much later in the 19th century. It is generally accepted that the couple had five children during their time in Cornwall, but four of these children died, and the only recorded birth is that of their daughter Margaret Jane, born in 1856 at St Germans, a village in Eastern Cornwall.
At some point in the late 1850s the couple returned to the North East and William found work as a fireman aboard a steam boat sailing out of Sunderland. In 1858 another daughter Isabella was born, but their oldest daughter – or oldest whose birth was recorded – Margaret Jane died in 1860. Mary Ann gave birth to another daughter in 1861 who they also named Margaret Jane, and in 1863 their son Robert John William was born, but he died a year later from gastric fever.
Tragedy didn’t stop there for the Mowbray family and in January 1865 William Mowbray died from an intestinal disorder. But it wasn’t all bad news for this budding black widow. Her husband and children all had life insurance, and so upon the death of her children Mary Ann was able to claim £35 for William, and £2 for each of her children. £35 was the equivalent to 18 months wages for a manual labourer at the time, and today would be worth roughly £4,400 and £2 in 1965 is about £250 today.
JOSEPH NATTRESS
Mary Ann quickly moved to Seaham in County Durham, which is only about five miles down the coast from Sunderland City. Mary Ann took her daughters Isabella and Margaret Jane (the second) with her. She soon struck up a relationship with local man Joseph Nattress, although some reports claim that the pair were having an affair before William’s death and Mary Ann moved to Seaham to be with him. But shortly after the beginning of this relationship her youngest daughter 3 ½ year old Margaret Jane the second died from typhus fever. Joseph Nattress was reportedly engaged to another woman and Mary Ann couldn’t get him to break off this engagement, and so after Margaret Jane’s death Mary Ann returned to Sunderland.
Once she had returned to Sunderland following Margaret Jane’s death, Mary Ann took work as a nurse at the Sunderland Infirmary: House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society, and sent Isabelle to live with her mother and step-father in Murton. While working there she met George Ward.
GEORGE WARD
George Ward was one of her patients at the Sunderland Infirmary: House of Recovery for the Cure of Contagious Fever, Dispensary and Humane Society, and the couple would be married in August 1865. So her first husband William Mowbray died in January 1865, Mary Ann moved to Seaham, had a fling with Joseph Nattress, Margaret Jane the second died, Mary Ann returned to Sunderland, sent her daughter Isabella to live with family, got a job at the Sunderland Infirmary and then met and married her second husband George Ward all in less than eight months! She’s 32 at this point as well!
Ward was an engineer on a steamboat which sailed out of Sunderland – and at the time Sunderland was like Newcastle to the North and Teesside to the South and was a huge part of the Victorian Shipbuilding industry. He was described as being a strong and well-built man, and was expected to live a long life after recovering from whatever illness he was suffering during his hospitalisation. But, in October 1866, just 14 months after his wedding to Mary Ann, George Ward died following an illness characterised by paralysis and intestinal problems. Despite this illness, the attending doctor said that he was surprised that George Ward died so quickly. The official cause of death was listed as English Cholera and Typhoid Fever.
George Ward was buried the day after his death with no post-mortem and the following day Mary Ann collected the life insurance money. She took a brief holiday following George’s death, but once again returned to Sunderland, where she soon found work as a housekeeper to widower James Robinson in November 1866.
JAMES ROBINSON
James Robinson was a shipbuilder living in the Pallion area of Sunderland, his wife Hannah has recently died leaving him with four children hence his need for a housekeeper/nursemaid. But within a month of Mary Ann taking on that role, the youngest Robinson child ten month old James Junior died from gastric fever. In his grief James Senior turned to Mary Ann for “comfort” and a month later she was pregnant.
They quickly got engaged, but in March 1867 before they could be married, Mary Ann’s mother fell ill and so Mary Ann travelled to Seaham where her mother and step-father were now living to care for her ailing mother. Her mother was diagnosed with hepatitis but was starting to recover by the time Mary Ann arrived. However, she soon began complaining of stomach pains and just nine days after Mary Ann’s arrival, her mother died. Her step-father immediately took up with his neighbour who was also widowed and so Mary Ann’s eldest surviving child Isabella was brought back to Sunderland with her and moved into the Robinson home.
Nine year old Isabella wouldn’t stay in the Robinson home for long however, and in April 1867 she suddenly developed severe stomach pains and died, along with two of James Robinson’s children, Elizabeth and James. Like all of her siblings and her father and step-father, Isabella’s life was insured with Mary Ann as the sole beneficiary and she collected £5, worth over £500 today.
Mary Ann then went on to marry James Robinson in August 1867, their daughter Margaret Isabella was born that autumn – which again creepiness of the reusing names of her dead children – but died in February 1968. They had a second child, George, who was born in June 1869.
But the third time was not the charm for Mary Ann and her third marriage fell apart when, following the birth of George, James discovered that Mary Ann had run up debts of £60, £7100 today ($8800) as well as pawning various valuables from the home. James threw Mary Ann out of his house.
FREDERICK COTTON
Destitute and out on the streets Mary Ann soon took another housekeeping job, this time in the house of Frederick Cotton, a widower living just outside of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Frederick Cotton was a pitman who had recently lost his wife and two of his four sons, he was introduced to Mary Ann by a mutual friend Margaret, following the death of his wife, Margaret had acted as a sort of surrogate mother to Frederick’s two sons, but in March 1870 soon after Mary Ann moved in Margaret became ill and soon died from an undetermined stomach ailment, leaving Mary Ann to help “comfort” Frederick in his grief.
Mary Ann quickly became pregnant with her twelfth child, the pair were married in September 1870 and their son Robert Cotton was born in early 1871. BUT Mary Ann was still married to James Robinson so this marriage was bigamous. Shortly after the birth of Robert, Mary Ann discovered that her former lover Joseph Nattress was now single and living alone in West Auckland about 30 miles from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. The pair rekindled their romance and Mary Ann convinced her new family to move to West Auckland so that she could be with Nattress.
JOHN QUICK-MANNING/RICHARD QUICK MANN
In December of 1871 shortly after the family moved to West Auckland, Frederick Cotton died from gastric fever. As with all her previous husbands, Mary Ann had taken out life insurance on Frederick Cotton with her as the sole beneficiary. Following Cotton’s death, Joseph Nattress moved in with Mary Ann, and she took up work as a nurse for a customs officer who was recovering from smallpox. Records differ so we’re not exactly sure of his name, some say his name was John Quick-Manning but there are no historical records for a customs officer of this name, there was however an officer named Richard Quick Mann. Whatever his name once head recovered Mary Ann began an affair with him and quickly became pregnant with her thirteenth child.
In March 1872 Mary Ann’s stepson Frederick Junior became ill and died from gastric fever, soon followed by baby Robert Cotton who died from convulsions. The same month Joseph Nattress revised his will leaving everything to Mary Ann, shortly afterwards he also died from gastric fever. Mary Ann collected life insurance payouts on all three of them. This left a pregnant Mary Ann with the problem of her stepson Charles, his life was insured but he was still alive.
CHARLES COTTON
Mary Ann tried to send Charles to the workhouse so that she would not have to care for him but the parish authorities told her she would join him at the workhouse, which obviously Mary Ann did not want to do, because nobody ever wanted to go to the workhouse, it was the very last resort. When authorities refused to take Charles to the workhouse Mary Ann said “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons.” Sure enough, five days later the seemingly fit and healthy boy suddenly died, and this would prove to be Mary Ann’s downfall.
Following the death of Charles Cotton, Mary Ann’s first stop wasn’t the doctor or local coroner but instead the insurance brokers’ office, but they refused to pay out without a death certificate. Upon hearing of the young boy’s death the local doctor William Kilburn went to the police and persuaded the coroner to delay issuing a death certificate until an examination had been completed. But the cause of death was concluded once again to be gastric fever and thus natural causes. The boy was buried and Mary Ann collected the insurance money. But Dr Kilburn had taken samples from the young boy before the official postmortem, and after the funeral he began to examine them, and he found arsenic in Charles’s stomach contents.
THE DISCOVERY
Following Charles’s death local newspapers picked up on the story and quickly discovered that Mary Ann was frequently moving around the North East of England and that she had lost three husbands, eleven children, a mother and a friend, all of whom had died of stomach fevers or related illnesses. Once Dr Kilburn had completed his tests, police arrested and charged Mary Ann for Charles’s murder, although the trial was delayed until after the delivery of her thirteenth and final child in Durham Gaol on January 10 1873, whom she named Margaret Edith Quick-Manning Cotton. Margaret Edith was one of only two of Mary Ann’s children to survive her, the other being her son George Robinson, whom she had with her third husband James Robinson.
THE TRIAL
Mary Ann’s trial began two months later on March 5 1873 at Durham Assizes. The defence argued that Charles had died after inhaling arsenic in the wallpaper of the family home, as arsenic was literally found in everything during the Victorian times. But this argument wasn’t convincing and the jury took just 90 minutes to find Mary Ann guilty of Charles’s murder. She was sentenced to death by hanging. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham Gaol on March 24 1873 but she died, not from her neck breaking, but by strangulation caused by the rope being rigged too short, possibly deliberately. She was 41 years old at the time of her death.
Because Mary Ann maintained her innocence right up until the end there are no records of how many people fell victim to her, and she was only actually convicted of the one murder. Most estimates fall at approximately 21 victims, three of her husbands, eleven children, her mother, a friend, a lover and four step children from her third and fourth marriages.
And that is the story of Black Widow Mary Ann Cotton, Britain’s First Female Serial Killer.
RELATED EPISODES:
10: The Square Mile of Murder Poisoner
20: Square Mile Murder at Sandyford Place
FURTHER READING:
Mary Ann Cotton | Biography, Murders, Trial, & Execution
Dark Angel: How were Mary Ann Cotton’s terrible crimes uncovered?
Plymouth’s forgotten serial killer who murdered her own children
Mary Ann Cotton and Arsenic Poisoning in the Victorian Era
Mary Ann Cotton – Poison – Arsenic – Aerial Killer – Mary Robson