Serial killer Mary Ann Cotton 'stamped with eternal infamy'

“Enough is known to stamp with eternal infamy the memory of a woman whose whole career, to all human appearances, has been without a single redeeming feature,” said the Darlington & Stockton Times in its editorial of 150 years ago this week. “The hour of doom, after lingering long, has arrived at last; and the just penalty of her awful crimes will soon be paid.”

In perhaps the most notorious case the paper has ever reported in its 175 years, the D&S Times devoted thousands of densely-packed words to an almost verbatim report of the three day trial of Mary Ann Cotton, 41, of West Auckland, at Durham Assizes.

She was charged with murdering four people – one of her sons, two of her stepsons and her lover – by administering arsenic to them in order to cash in their Prudential life insurance policies.

After three days, the jury – headed by Thomas Greener, of Darlington – unanimously found her guilty of murdering her seven-year-old stepson, Charles. That was enough for Justice Sir Thomas Archibald to don the black cap and sentence her to hang. She was never tried for the other three “murders”, even though their marked similarities were introduced to prove her guilt, and no cases were compiled for the other suspicious deaths which had occurred around her and which might take her death toll to 21.

The D&S Times' headline from 150 years ago this week

That would mean she has the highest death count of any convicted female in Britain, and she was Britain’s worst mass murderer until Harold Shipman was convicted in 2000 of murdering 15 people – although most inquiries say his total was 250 if not 450.

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Emotions in south Durham had been running high against Mrs Cotton since her arrest in July 1872, and her trial was delayed as she gave birth to her 13th child in Durham jail, but in the week before it began, the D&S suggested opinions towards her were softening. There is, it reported on March 1, 1873, “widespread sympathy…for the poor woman for having to meet the dreadful charges against her alone, helpless and undefended”.

A defence counsel, William Campbell Foster, was rustled up and given two days to prepare her side of the story while the British government sent up the leading prosecutor, Charles Russell, to ensure a conviction.

He showed how Mary Ann – “a woman of considerable energy and cleverness and ability in her station of life”, he said – had prophesised the healthy boy’s death just six days before he succumbed – “he will go like the rest of the Cottons, he will not get up”, she said – and how her motive was the insurance money. He also outlined how the stepson was a burden as she plotted to ensnare a fifth husband.

Read more fascinating stories from our Looking Back column

He told how Mary Ann had acquired arsenic and soft soap, apparently to kill bedbugs in the joints of the bedframe, from the village chemist just six weeks before the boy’s death.

The D&S praised Mr Campbell Foster for his “wonderfully telling and ingenious defence”, although it looks like the court laughed at his strongest point. He noted how the wallpaper in the house was covered in green flowers, with the green colour coming from copper and arsenic. Dust from the wallpaper combined with the anti-bedbug cleaning regime could explain how arsenic was found in the dead boy’s organs, he said.

Joanne Froggatt playing Mary Ann Cotton in ITV's 2016 adaption of her story, entitled Dark Angel

“Assuming that a little boy playing with a piece of buttered bread, let it fall upon the floor, with the buttered side down (laughter),” reported the D&S.

“The judge: “Always on the buttered side down, Mr Foster? (Laughter).

“It was conceivable that the piece of buttered bread falling upon the floor might gather up a fragment of the mixture of soft soap and arsenic.”

Before a crowded court – the “fair sex”, said the D&S, were especially interested in the case – the jury returned after 50 minutes deliberation to announce its verdict.

“When the judge uttered the awful words of doom, a deathly pallor overspread Mrs Cotton’s face and she sank back in her chair in a semi-conscious state,” said the D&S.

The judge asked if she had anything to say and “she made an inarticulate reply, which was interpreted by the gaoler to be ‘only that I am not guilty’.” She, with her two-month-old daughter, were then led to the condemned cell to await the gallows.

The D&S finished its editorial by hoping for a change to the law. “It is the only satisfactory feature of this gloomy picture that is likely to lead to the imposition of more stringent precautions in the vending of poisons,” it said. “It is surely radically wrong when it is possible for a woman of whom nothing is known to obtain for the ostensible purpose of cleaning beds sufficient arsenic to kill a whole family.”