All three children had been subjects of small life insurance policies. The word was that she had killed anything up to 21 of her husbands, lovers, children and stepchildren, and even her own mother making her Britains most prolific mass murderer until Harold Shipman. The census revealed that her boys were working underground William was a collier and John was a pony driver. The couple was married in September 1870, but since Mary Ann had not divorced Robinson, it was a bigamous marriage. Then Mary Ann's mother, living in Seaham Harbour, County Durham, became ill with hepatitis, so she immediately went to her. It may well be that the name of the excise man was in fact Richard Quick Mann. [6] The first part of the dramatisation was broadcast on 31 October 2016, the second part was broadcast on 7 November. An inquest was held and the jury returned a verdict of natural causes. However, she stayed in Durham and lived in a place called Seaham Harbour. That left behind Mary, her stepson Charles Cotton, and Mary Ann's 13 child still growing in her womb. But in late March 1870 Margaret died from an undetermined stomach ailment, leaving Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick Sr. At least 15 of those were family members. The only birth recorded was that of their daughter Margaret Jane, born at St Germans in 1856. In 1871, the new fivesome moved to West Auckland: Mary Ann, Frederick Cotton, his sons Frederick Junior and Charles Edward, and the new baby, Robert Robson. 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? She then found work as a housekeeper for James Robinson, a widower. Another daughter, also named Margaret Jane, was born in 1861, and a son, John Robert William, was born in 1863, but died the next year from gastric fever. The Times correspondent reported on 20 March: "After conviction the wretched woman exhibited strong emotion but this gave place in a few hours to her habitual cold, reserved demeanour and while she harbours a strong conviction that the royal clemency will be extended towards her, she staunchly asserts her innocence of the crime that she has been convicted of." All three children were buried in the last week of April and first week of May 1867. For women of the working class, the sudden death of a husband could easily throw them into devastating poverty with little way out. But more than a dozen close friends and . "Mary Ann Cotton, a widow, is in custody at West Auckland, charged with having poisoned her stepson, aged eight years. As The Northern Echo reports, most believe that this child was probably the eighth of her biological children and one of only a few who would survive an encounter with their mother. In March 1873 her three-day trial began. During this time, her 3-year-old daughter died, leaving her with one child out of the nine she had borne. He is buried in Cambrai cemetery. Her preferred method of killing was poisoning with arsenic. After the death of Mowbray, Mary Ann moved once again. Mary Ann Robson was born on Halloween 1832 in Low Moorsley in County Durham. Cotton was no exception. Once again, Mary Ann collected insurance money from her husband's death. If you have a complaint about the editorial content which relates to Mary Ann was quickly arrested. Thank you for visiting mary ann cotton family tree page. Though, as the Journal of Victorian Culture reports, there was some financial relief available to widows, it was often highly restricted. The jury retired for 90 minutes before finding Mary Ann guilty. She was only ever convicted for the murder of one, though it led to her execution by hanging in 1873. She officially died of hepatitis, though she died just over a week after her daughter came to tend to her. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham County Gaol on 24 March 1873 by William Calcraft; she died, not from her neck breaking, but by strangulation caused by the rope being rigged too short, possibly deliberately.[4]. As per History Collection, her younger sister Margaret died in 1834, when Cotton would have been only 8 years old. got your result, Mary Ann Cotton Family Tree Check All Members List, Merovingian Family Tree You Should Check It. Up in the air Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair. , got your result about mary ann cotton family tree please comment if we missed anything here, please let us know. Gastric fever also claimed Williams life in 1864 and the lives of two other children soon afterward. It went like this: Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten. R > Robson | C > Cotton > Mary Ann (Robson) Cotton, Categories: Serial Killers of the 19th Century | This Day In History March 24 | Murderers | Death by Hanging | Serial Killers | Notables, WIKITREE HOME | ABOUT | G2G FORUM | HELP | SEARCH. Though she's been gone for nearly a century and a half, Cotton remains one of the most shocking female killers in modern history. She is the daughter of John Quick-Manning and Mary Robson . When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the County Durham village of Murton, where she went to a new school and found it difficult to . She was, as The Northern Echo reports, remembered after her 1954 death as "intelligent, warm and kind-hearted." One month later, when James' baby died of gastric fever, he turned to his housekeeper for comfort and she became pregnant. The last straw was when he found she had been forcing his children to pawn household valuables for her. After Frederick's death, Nattrass soon became Mary Ann's lodger. Although she is often said to be Britains first female serial killer, this is a false claim. The doctor who attended Charles had kept samples, and they tested positive for arsenic. A Mr. Aspinwall was supposed to get the job, but the Attorney General, Sir John Duke Coleridge, chose his friend and protg Charles Russell. Cotton took her daughter, Isabella Jane, who had been living with Margaret, with her. Mary Ann Cotton, she's tied up with string. She did not die on the gallows from breaking of her neck but died by strangulation because the rope was set too short, possibly deliberately. Geni requires JavaScript! inaccuracy or intrusion, then please She gained employment as nurse to an excise officer recovering from smallpox. His name is carved with countless thousands of others on the Menin Gate at Ypres. One of her patients at the infirmary was an engineer, George Ward. Margaret had acted as substitute mother for the remaining children, Frederick Jr. and Charles, but in late March 1870 she died from an undetermined stomach ailment, leaving Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick Sr. Whether or not he suspected his wife of something worse than fraud isn't clear, but we do know that Robinson refused, saving their lives. Leave a message for others who see this profile. Riley countered that the boy was a "little healthy fellow," but Charles died on July 12, 1872. An inquest was held and the jury returned a verdict of natural causes. BLOOMINGTON Kimberly Ann (Cotton) Smith, 65, of Bloomington went to her heavenly home at 2:53 p.m., on Thursday, January 5, 2023 surrounded by her family. She sent her surviving child, Isabella, to live with her mother. Perhaps most tellingly, her children lived to tell the tale. Mary Ann Cotton was born in a small village in North England on 31st October 1832, to a miner father who died while Mary was just 8. William and Mary Ann moved back to North East England where they had, and lost, three more children. She and her only surviving child, Isabella, had moved back to County Durham. Her father's body was delivered to her mother in a sack bearing the stamp 'Property of the South Hetton Coal Company'. Mary Ann Cotton had finally been caught. There, she discovered that no money would be paid out until a death certificate was issued. At 16, Mary Ann left home to become a nurse at the nearby village of South Hetton, in the home of Edward Potter, a manager at Murton colliery. Mary Ann Cotton was an English serial killer convicted of poisoning her stepson Charles Edward Cotton in 1872. By the time Nattrass was dead, Mary Ann had poisoned Robert, her infant son with Cotton, and Frederick Jr., her stepson. Daughter of Michael Robson and Margaret Lonsdale What should have been a relatively quick end turned into a bungle. They included Joseph Nattrass, the lover who had added Mary Ann to his will, along with her son Robert and stepson Frederick Cotton, Jr. Nattrass' remains showed that he, too, had been poisoned. Soon, Mary became pregnant by him with her thirteenth child. There are further versions, slightly more crude, still passed on in school playgrounds in the region, such as: She lies in her coffin with her finger up her bottom. Later in 1901, Margaret married Robinson Kell, a miner at the Dean and Chapter Colliery in Ferryhill, and had his son. The inquiry into Charles Cotton's death showed that Mary Ann's weapon of choice was arsenic. Here's the messed-up truth about this notorious 19th century murderess. Memories is aware that there are quite a lot of direct descendants of Mary Ann Cotton living in our area, and weve been asked to let their sleeping dogs lie. Just one grandparent can lead you to many That left Cotton and her daughter with an insurance payout of some 35, according to Mary Ann Cotton, Dark Angel. Depiction of Mary Ann Cotton. He continued to suffer ill health; he died in October 1866 after a long illness characterised by paralysis and intestinal problems. We meet Mary Ann as a loving wife and mother, newly returned to her native North East of England. Campbell Foster argued that it was possible that the chemist had mistakenly used arsenic powder instead of bismuth powder (used to treat diarrhoea), when preparing a bottle for Cotton, because he had been distracted by talking to other people. Cotton's trial began on 5 March 1873. Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and forgotten, He threw her out, retaining custody of their son George. Few people who lived with Mary Ann Cotton were shown mercy, not least the children who were so unfortunate as to enter her orbit. The scene is the hanging gallery. She was coming home to Durham, and to her adoptive parents, pregnant with her third child. [9], Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten Her father died eight years later in a mining accident. Cotton asked the man to circulate a petition in yet another attempt to save her, which did happen, yet it had no real effect on her ultimate fate. Ward continued to suffer ill health and died on 20 October 1866 after a long illness characterised by paralysis and intestinal problems. Although her father fell down a THE baby was the daughter born to Mary Ann Cotton, of West Auckland, in Durham jail on January 7, 1873. Wife of George Ward; William Mowbray; Frederick Cotton and James Robinson Mary Ann was charged with the murder of Charles Edward Cotton, and while she was in jail, a daughter was born in January 1873; that infantwho was reportedly her 13th childand another offspring were the only ones to outlive their mother. Where, where? Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham County Gaol on 24 March 1873 by William Calcraft. After she was finally apprehended in 1872, some estimated that she may have killed as many as 21 people, according to Britannica. The delay was caused by a problem in the selection of prosecution counsel. But faced with abject poverty and an ailing husband, we see how ruthlessly determined . She enjoyed crafting, hosting ceramics classes for many years, creating scrapbooks of family memories, and making special cards for every occasion. Though Britain passed the Arsenic Act of 1851 in an attempt to control the distribution of this deadly substance, it's clear that it wasn't all that difficult for Cotton to keep acquiring arsenic in her drive to kill the people around her. As History Collection reports, his wife was paid via yet another life insurance policy and was left with two stepsons. She was charged with his murder, although the trial was delayed until after the delivery in Durham Gaol on 7 January 1873 of her thirteenth and final child, whom she named Margaret Edith Quick-Manning Cotton. Accessed 14 August 2015. Her father Michael, a miner, was ardently religious and a fierce disciplinarian. Affair with James Nattress, a married man, while married to Mowbray and possibly again, after Nattress was widowed, while she was "married" to Cotton. Rumour turned to suspicion and forensic inquiry. According to PBS, there's even been a modern two-part television drama, Dark Angel, which premiered on PBS' Masterpiece Theater in 2017. The trap door wasnt placed high enough to break her neck. She apparently complained to a parish official named Thomas Riley that her stepson, Charles Edward Cotton, was preventing her from marrying Quick Mann. Her father, a miner, was killed in an accident when she was just nine. However, in 1870 Mary Ann met another widower, Frederick Cotton, who was the brother of a friend. If not, see our friends at Ancestry DNA. Arsenic, however, was more subtle. It is believed that he was killed in a railway accident. The sheer number of children who met their deaths after coming into contact with the murderess exceeded even the juvenile mortality rate of a dangerous time before pediatricians and obstetricians were available to most people in Britain. Mary Anns trial began two months later, and the defense claimed that the deceased had inhaled arsenic dust from wallpaper dye, a conceivable explanation given that arsenic was then common in many household items. The following year Mary Ann went to visit her ailing mother, who died about a week after her return. He threw her out. Mary Ann was desperate and living on the streets. As per Female Serial Killers, the two were married in 1865, shortly after he was discharged from the hospital. Cotton and Mary Ann were bigamously married on 17 September 1870 at St Andrew's, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and their son Robert was born early in 1871. William and John went off to fight. From above, out of sight of the gallows, members of the Press are gathered. In 1852, 20-year-old Mary Ann married colliery labourer William Mowbray at Newcastle Upon Tyne register office; they soon moved to South West England. Before their final break, Cotton had attempted to get Robinson to insure both himself and the remaining children. Then her friend Margaret Cotton introduced her to her brother, Frederick, a pitman and recent widower living in Walbottle, Northumberland, who had lost two of his four children. At the beginning of it all, the girl who would become Mary Ann Cotton seemed, frankly, pretty unremarkable. However, Mary Ann was widely regarded as the countrys deadlist killer until Harold Shipman, who was thought to have murdered as many as 260 people in the late 20th century. Mary Ann had cashed in William's life insurance, equivalent to about 1,700 in today's money. The "great moral drama," as it was described, likely used the bloody true crime tropes so beloved by Victorians to impart a decidedly un-subtle lesson about how to live one's life the right way. That man was recorded as "John Quick-Manning," though it's possible that he gave Mary Ann a partially false name. Then he found that Mary Ann had been forcing his older children to pawn household valuables. The cause of death recorded on his death certificate is that of English cholera and typhoid. Plus, it really was everywhere, from the green dye in clothes, to wallpaper, to rat poison. Updates? When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the County Durham village of Murton. Mary Ann Robson Cotton, was a serial killer convicted of murdering her mother, 11 of her 13 children, her stepson and 3 of her 4 husbands by arsenic poisoning. Her stepson, Frederick Jr., and Robert, her infant son with Frederick, died early 1872. Five days later, Mary Ann told Riley that the boy had died. He was also a widower who had lost two of his four children and lived in Northumberland. The second, which took place in February 1873, was to center on the deaths of Nattrass, along with those of Robert and Frederick. Mary Ann Cotton's trial, for allegedly murdering her stepson Charles, was delayed for several months so that she could give birth. Sing, sing, oh what should I sing? However, the first hearing led to Mary Ann's conviction for the death of Charles in March of that year. Some three minutes passed before she finally died. Up in the air Sellin black puddens a penny a pair. STREET LIFE: Watt Street, Dean Bank, Ferryhill, on an Edwardian postcard which dates from the time that Mary Ann Cottons daughter was living in the street. Lying in bed with her bones all rotten. 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