She Poisoned Everyone? The Story of Mary Ann Cotton, Serial Killer

This week, James is taking a backseat and letting Paul Bavill (History Rage Podcast) dive into one of the most chilling true crime stories in British history – the poisonous rampage of Mary Ann Cotton. Widely believed to be Britain’s first female serial killer, Cotton was a seemingly ordinary Victorian who woman became known as the infamous “Black Widow,” accused of poisoning those closest to her for financial gain.

Set against the grim backdrop of Victorian England, this episode examines the disturbing pattern of deaths that followed Mary Ann Cotton wherever she went, and how life insurance schemes may have motivated her crimes – leaving a legacy that the people of Britain still feel today. 

A must listen episode for fans of true crime, serial killer stories and tales of Victorian depravation.

When you’re done listening to this, check out History Rage 

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History's Devils is a history podcast exploring the lives of murderers, charlatans, psychopaths, dictators, war criminals, tyrants, demagogues, revolutionaries, cult leaders, conquerors, fraudsters, and other controversial figures.

History's Devils is hosted by James Crossland, professor of international history and author of:

Rogue Agent: From Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart

The Rise of Devils: Fear and the Origins of Modern Terrorism...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hello, folks, and welcome to History's Devils, a podcast journey through the lives of murderers, charlatans, psychopaths, and shithels. My name is James Crossland, and typically on History's Devils, I'm the guy steering the ship. I'm telling the story about some wretch from history who I have chosen because I've researched them, I've written about them, I have a longstanding interest, whatever it is. But on this episode, I'm handing the wheel over to someone else so that they might indulge in a topic of their choosing, namely the life and crimes of a Victorian serial killer. Not the one you're thinking about. Mr. Ripper, first name Jack, has been covered on a previous episode of History's Devils. So instead today, who what we're talking about is a killer who A, predated Jack the Ripper by a couple of decades, B, seems to have killed more people, C has a confirmed identity, very novel, and D left a legacy that, as my guests will explain to this day, affects insurance laws in the United Kingdom, which is quite interesting. She was Britain's first female serial killer, the Black Widow, the Angel of Death, the Bishop Auckland poisoner, the lady who liked arsenic a little too much, Marianne Cotton. And taking us on this ride through her life of poisoning Mayhem, I am joined by the host of the splendid History Rage podcast, Paul Babbel. Paul, welcome to History's Devils.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

You are welcome. Thank you very much for inviting me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So, Miss Marianne Cotton, Britain's first serial killer, she lives in the long shadow of Jack the Ripper. Where do you what what sparked your interest in her? Where'd you first come across her?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I actually first came across her in of all places, the British Newspaper Archives email newsletter.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

And I I hadn't really heard of her, uh, which is surprising considering that I come from the north of England where all of this goes on. Uh, but I I hadn't heard of her, but it was it they have this like headlines in history, and one of them was covering the trial. And and yeah, it was like Britain's first serial killer. And I thought I got into a history rage of my own because it's like, why does everybody bang on about Jack the Ripper? When, as you say in the intro, you know, first of all, female serial killer. Secondly, way more, more than double, nearly triple the victims of Jack the Ripper. We actually know who she is. Justice has been done. And there is no legacy of Jack the Ripper. All these people that keep going, oh, we ought to find out who it is for the victims, like, screw that.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

There's a lot of walking tours in Whitechapel.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Yeah, that we could very much do without. But you know, that is it. That's the legacy of Jack the Ripper. Whereas we're actually still living, at least in part, with with the impact of Marianne Cotton and various other Victorian poisoners.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

I'm particularly kind of into Victorian poisonings as well, because I live near Bradford, which is the uh which of course is the town of the great Victorian sweet poisoning scandal.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I see. So there's a there's a sort of regional aspect to this that ties in where poisoning in the north and you're just drawn to it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Yeah. I mean it goes on in other places as well. And who doesn't love a Victorian poisoner?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

It goes goes hand in glove with, you know, lead. Um so I look, I'll just do a brief rundown of who Marianne Conn was and I'll I'll pass it over to you. But basically, the the time and place in which she came of age, I think, is is kind of interesting. She's she's born in 1832, the year of the Form Act, kind of interesting, in Lower Moresley in Durham. I guess working class background, you'd call it. Very, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Methodists are pretty strict upbringing, I would imagine, in that environment, it being Methodist. In many ways, her upbring is the picture of a sort of nascent Victorian industrialization. Her family moves to a uh, when she's quite young, moves to a town called Merton, which is expanding at the time from a small village into uh a coal mining town, goes from 50 odd people to over a thousand in the course of a few years. So she's growing up into this changing England that's changing societally, economically, the landscape's changing. And like all good Victorian working class upbringings, there's a good dose of misery and tragedy because her father, Michael, falls to his death down a mine shaft. And it's a fun, grim Victorian story that his body is delivered to the house by employees of the mining company. They've stuffed him into a sack emblazoned with the company logo. This is like some sort of dystopian corporatism. He's kind of wrapped up like some, you know, capitalist symbolic mummy. And they just kind of leave him at the door and say, yeah, they um, you know, have at it, basically. That's gotta have some impact on her, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to find anything actually on her childhood that that talks about what Marianne Roberts, as she was then, is actually thinking, feeling, uh, and so forth. You know, that most of what we get is that she's a particularly good student.

unknown 5:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

And it's not so much that I think that she changes when this happens, um, but it's just the nature of that their life completely changes. Completely changes. I mean, she was actually she was actually getting a pretty good education. Uh, we've got Sunday school reports of her that describe her as being well turned out, uh pleasant young lady of average intelligence. You know, she was I we I wouldn't say that she was going to be, you know, the next Duchess of Devonshire, but she was she was certainly on a track to be able to kind of like leave the typical industrial poverty behind.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Which seems to have been her ambition, doesn't it? Like she, this is a recurring theme in the stuff I've read, is that there's always this thing of she seems from the youngest age to kind of want to get out of the coal fields and do something with her life. What that is, I'm not sure. But she ends up becoming a nurse. But how does one become how does do you just fall into nursing at this time? How do how does this happen?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

You can just go and train as it you don't need any qualifications to be a nurse. And and in fact, we qualifications for being a nurse are actually relatively recent thing, the very 21st century thing. Because prior to that, you didn't really need a degree to be a nurse, which you which you now do. Uh and it was it had always been one of those get-out occupations is probably the wrong word, but it was one of those occupations that young working-class girls could get the hell out.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Um, especially, you know, this came more and more in the Victorian period where they actually started training people to nurse to be nurses in the infirmaries and workhouse hospitals and things like that. Because prior to that, your nurses in a workhouse infirmary were inmates themselves. And uh quite because what's more bizarre than Victorian healthcare company.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I was gonna say it's delightfully Victorian, right there.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, um, and there was the you see a lot of like workhouse reports that are complaining that all their nurses are completely pissed out of their minds. And so there's a reform that actually kind of like starts the the workhouse health uh health programs, and she does exactly that. So she's I mean she starts because she can't be a nurse at the age of 10. You know, so she actually about the age of 12 goes into domestic service.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And from what we gather, doesn't have that bad a time in domestic service either. And but at the age of 16, when she can go and become a nurse, then she leaves, she goes off, she trains a nurse and starts working in Sunderland Infirmary, place that she'll visit quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

So far, so normal, really. You know, dad dies, I guess, Victorian age, that happens. But otherwise, this is a pretty normal upbringing, pretty normal transition from childhood to adolescence. There's nothing about her pulling legs off uh spiders or trying to set fire to ants with a magnifying glass or anything. There's none of these, oh, this person's going to grow up to be a serial killer, red flags. And then we get murders.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

And then we get murders. Don't we just with all of them, though? You know, it's like I I often say that when I finally leave work, it's going to be in a police interview with all my neighbors where they go, who is actually quite quiet and just a bit of a podcaster, and then this came out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Well, again, that could be what we're dealing with here, because she does seem incredibly well mundane, for want of a better word. But she is. It's a slow creep, though. Because well, there is there is something about her, and and well, maybe this is a place to start in terms of who it is that she ends up killing, because it's people who are close to her and it's a lot of husbands. She does rack up quite a few partners. So let's let's just break this down a little bit. When when when does she start killing people? We think.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

We we think. And this is very difficult to prove. And again, this comes down to the way that Victorian law works. Because for historians, the abolition of the death penalty was the single greatest thing that could ever happen for criminal historians. Because now you will get convicted of like nine murders and get nine consecutive life sentences, and there will be trial records for each one. The Victorian period, when you've still got the death penalty, you literally need to convict for one leak willful murder, and that is it. There is no point going into all of the others. So we don't have a huge amount of records about exactly kind of who she murdered. Some of them may have actually died of natural causes, but I think your suspicions will start to grow as we go through this timeline of death.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Well, let's let's work on a timeline because uh because organizing this bereft of a chronology is gonna quite frankly make my head explode. So if if there's a if there's a chronology, let's let's let's go with that. So when when does this this story of her descent into poisoning people? When does this begin? What's the year?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Okay, so you probably best starting with 1852 is our start point. Um you know, we we don't know for those reasons, we don't know exactly when her first murder was committed, but but the smart money is on husband number one, William Mowbray. Uh now, William Mowbray was a labourer, um, he was a stoker and fireman aboard ships. Um, he could disappear off for long periods of time, but it was pretty well paid work, you know. It's up there with being a miner.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

You know, it's it it's it's gonna, you know, it's not the you know, you're not gonna be affording like char women and ladies' maids, but you you're getting out of that whole kind of everybody in your family has to be a minor kind of community. Yeah. So she's doing she's doing pretty well in there. Again, we don't know how many children that they actually have. Um, we only know of three on account of what happened to them, but there were plenty of other infant deaths going on at the time, uh, both in her family and uh and beyond. So there is there are cases of early deaths, but we don't know anything about them because they weren't registered. And although at this time, well, certainly up until about I think it's 1856 before the law comes in, where it is a legal requirement to register both births and deaths.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

But the trouble is that that law's not actually enforced until one year after Marianne Cotton is hanged. So you can, you know, who's gonna know? These these things take time.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

You know, and of course, bear in mind as well that death certificates are not at the time issued by registrars, they're issued by doctors. Okay. So all you need to do is go and doctor, confirm the death. There you go, you've got a death certificate. You don't actually need to tell anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah. But we we're thinking William Mowbray is the first, even though his death is ruled, and we're gonna come across this term a bit, natural causes. Yes, aren't we? Is it like typhus or gastric fever or say or some kind of good old-fashioned Victorian wasting disease or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Um what we've actually got is intestinal disorders. Um, but let me come to that because basically they have they they marry in 1852 and things all look kind of rosy. Uh, but the trouble is that he falls down a hatch on a ship. It's people falling down things again. Yeah. Um Victorian, you know, the Victorian industry is a pretty dangerous place. Yeah, lots of things to fall off. Very sensibly, there is life insurance involved. There is life insurance on him, there is life insurance on all the children, there is actually life insurance on Mary herself. Okay. Very sensible uh thing to do when you bear in mind, uh, and I think this really stems from seeing what happened to her family when her father died, which completely ruined her education. Sounds like, no, no, no, that's that's not gonna happen. So William is insured for the sum of £35, which is equivalent to six months of his wages.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, it's a decent amount.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

It's a decent amount for 1852, and things go things go pretty well for like the first sort of 10 years of uh of that marriage. There are a few infant deaths and things like that. Um, but then he falls down this shaft, you know, fall falls down this open hatch, and the absolute worst outcome occurs. He survives. And this is a real when I was selling like life and critical illness insurance. I always used to use that line. It's like you may think that the worst thing that can happen is that your partner dies. It's like, no, the worst thing that can happen is that they survive and you're still stuck with that mortgage. And uh and so he can't work again. He's now disabled and they are basically living off parish money and poor relief uh start, which is not where not really where Marianne wants to be. Now, at this stage, I'm not entirely thinking that she's about to descend into a career of serial killing in exchange for money. Um, but 1864, their son, John Robert Mowbray, dies of an intestinal disorder. Also insured. Also insured. Uh not insured for £35, insured for about £5.10 shillings. Still not bad. Still not bad. Insured for a nipper, I guess. Yeah. Um but she is looking out there at a life that is effectively gonna be poverty and poor relief. And she's not really got the option of just ditching and moving on. So you're gonna have to do something. And then mysteriously, or not, depending on how you're looking at this, January 1865, William dies of an intestinal disorder. Now, you will you will find that this is a young woman that does not cope with being single particularly well. No, she works fast. Yeah, yeah. I I counted, and there is rarely more than nine months between husbands.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Wow. Uh it's about it's about six months, isn't it, between the first one and the second one? So it's it's it's I remember it being very short.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

She just kind of it's actually from death of William Mowbray to marriage of George Ward is a stunning eight months. Wow. Um restraint. Yeah. Now at this point, she's still got two children. Okay. She then moves off to Siam Harbour in County Durham, and this is where the nurse training comes in. Okay, because she she now needs a job. She doesn't have a husband who can support her anymore. In fact, probably for the last three months, she hasn't had a husband that could support her. Uh, but he's now out of the way. She's got 35 quid in insurance money, uh, which is gonna support her for the next six months. So, six months so that she's gonna need to find a new husband and a job in the meantime. So she does, going back to her old place of Sunderland Infirmary. And in Sunderland Infirmary, and I'm very much kind of truncating this story, but in Sunderland Infirmary is a patient who is recovering from typhus fever called George Ward. And those two get together. We don't really know how they get together. A pattern will develop, right? But we don't really know how they get together, but we do know that that they do. Uh, and they're actually she gets married 28th of August, 1865, after he is discharged from Sunderland Infirmary back into the world. Now, Typhus fever is pretty debilitating.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

And while he's recovered from typhus fever, he's never really recovered to the point where he's going to be able to work.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Now, this is the the this is the moment, I think, where Marianne Ward, as she is at the moment, has that idea of do you know what? 35 quid richer last time. Oh, this one's halfway there.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah. And they um they they don't really have they they don't really have any children uh or anything like that. I mean, it's as marriages go, it's not bad. It lasts for 15 months in total, which I think she's shown some sterling character there of effectively putting up with poor and parish relief kind of during that time.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

And he's presumably quite sickly at this time as well, because as you say, he's been discharged, but that doesn't mean he's fully healthy.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, not fully healthy at all. Um and so he dies 20th of October 1866. Intestinal problems linked to typhus. Okay. Now we actually have his death certificate. Um, so so we can see that that is exactly what is written on that intestinal disorders as a result of uh as a result of typhus. He was insured, that's another 35 pounds in the bank, another six months, uh, and away she goes. So the next one is the really puzzling one. Uh, and this is you just want to grab hold of her at some point and go, do you know what the hell are you doing? Just what you the hell are you doing? Because literally a month, uh a month goes and she's taken on as a housekeeper. Uh housekeeper to who will become husband number three, James Robinson. So switching profession from nurse to housekeeper, is that more lucrative?

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Or what is this?

SPEAKER_01 20:18

I think it's just what's there at the time because you can't just walk to Sunderland Infirmary and go, I'm going to be a nurse. You know, there's a whole issue of like vacancies and things like that. And when you bear in mind as well, there's so many working class girls going, I've got to be a nurse. We don't have a nurse shortage in Victorian England. We really don't.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

How novel.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

I know. Um so what she's done is she's gone, she's gone back to her experience of domestic service because she knows how to run a house. You know, she knows how to run a uh a reasonable house, and she's seen how people run like house staff and that sort of thing. So again, that education, the fact that she's quite bright, you know, she's built experience. But yeah, she's taken on as housekeeper to well-to-do and recently widowed shipwright James Robinson.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Um recently widowed.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah. Now, here's where a pattern starts to develop, really, because what you find is that all of her future husbands uh pretty much got clinical depression.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Because he's a he's recently widowed, so presumably his brain is jelly.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

He's a bit cheesed off with the whole thing, I would I would say. Um, he's also lost two children as well, which is another thing, which is just sending him there. So, as housekeeper and kind of part time nurse and carer uh and so forth, she well, he's in a prime mental state to accept exactly the sort of solace that Marianne feels that she can deliver at this point. I will leave that to your own kind of imagination. Doesn't really take long before she's pregnant.

unknown 22:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Now, we have an element of confusion here because part way through husband number two and into husband number three, she has also started an affair with a minor called Joseph Natras.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Oh, good grief.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

This guy is gonna keep recurring and recurring and recurring. I'm fairly certain that a lot of her children are actually his children, that she's passed off as the latest husband's child.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

I see.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

She seems to like a lot of sex.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Just curious about that, because presumably the if the insurance, looking at it from the insurance scam point of view, if it's just a lover, you can't insure them, right? She if if he dies, she won't get anything out of him.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

At this stage, you can pretty much insure anybody for anything. Insurance is really new, and they've done that Victorian upper class thing of assume that everybody will just abide by the rules. How quaint. Yes. The insurance insurance industry has learned a lot since then.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yes, yeah, they've become wily.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah, but this again, it's one of the other reasons why you you can't insure children, uh you can't insure children for as much is just it more comes down to just the risk. You know, if you've got if you've got a lot of infant mortality, you start insuring nine-year-old, you start insuring one-year-old and a three-year-old and a nine-year-old, then you're going to be basically covering the funeral costs of the infants. But that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

But in theory, husbands aren't meant to drop like flies in this period.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Ideally, no. Um, and even today, you can, you know, you can insure, you can insure your spouse for an unlimited sum. Jeez. I don't let the delightful Lady Rage know this. Not least because she studied as many Victorian poisons as I have. But yeah, so we've got this kind of love triangle going on with Joseph Natras and with uh with James Robinson, which is a bit of a stupid thing to do because James Robinson is like proper wealthy. I mean, we are talking, we we are talking a middle class, shipwright. This is a guy that can afford a housekeeper.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah. She could have she could have made it with this one.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

I absolutely. If she'd have just behaved herself, you know, then there wouldn't have been any need for this shit at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Um but she can't but she can't help herself, can she? No, she can't. She can't. But you know, very quickly into meeting this, she is pregnant again. We're not entirely sure who's. James Robinson is fairly convinced it's his because he's absolutely unaware that anything else is going on. But with her being pregnant, she's gonna have to get married. Trouble is, there is something standing in the way of the marriage. So at that point, Marianne's mother becomes ill with hepatitis, and she's basically called back to her home village to nurse her mother. Now we've got a bit of a ticking clock here because having a child outside of wedlock is not going to be a good thing. She needs to get married before that birth happens. She's about three months in at this point, and now she's looking at a long-term caring stay for her mother with hepatitis. So something's got to give. Now her mother is actually well on the road to recovery by the time that Mary Ann gets there. I I don't like the way this is going. You don't like you're right to not like where this is going because it does not sound good at all. Uh because having having recovered from hepatitis, nine days after Mary arrives, her mother dies of intestinal gastric fever. Gastric fever. Gastric clothes. Gastric fever.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

God damn it. Now, this is one of the areas where I I don't know. I don't know. Because the Victorians didn't investigate this in in graphic detail, then we don't know actually whether that was gastric fever. Because when Mary when Mary Ann returns after that to the Robinson household, there is also two of Robinson's existing children from his first marriage and her own eldest daughter, Isabella, all die of gastric fever. Now, it's it's contagious, so this is not beyond the realms of possibility.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

You can see why Is Is there some sort of epidemic of this happening at this time, or is this just something that is everywhere at this time? I mean people are just eating food with shit on it.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Well, certainly in terms of her mother, the uh doctor that wrote the death certificate was actually quite surprised. He actually stated that he he was surprised that she died so quickly, which is what leads me to suspect and add the mother to the poison list.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

But what why would she give is she killing the mother out of spite? You know, you you you were roadblocking my you dragged me all the way up here as about to get married to this wealthy guy, you've you pissed me off, I'm killing you. Is that is that it or is it just to be rid of her?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

I I read it as this ticking clock that she's got to get back to to sort this marriage out.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

But she she can't do this. But if the mother's not there No reason to be up there, you know, is going to die of something, let's be honest, gastrointensity or related.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Then uh out of the way that she goes. Um she wasn't insured, but Marianne's eldest daughter Isabella was. She collected five pounds, ten shillings, and sixpence for that one. Not bad. Um with the loss of the you know, with the loss of the two children, the depression just stinks further into James Robinson, and they they end up getting married. Finally. Damn fool. I know, it's well we we say, we say, it's actually the smart guy. Um they have a their first child is born in November, but actually dies an infant death. Now, I don't suspect Marianne of that uh at all. Probably because you couldn't get that insured. Yeah, they have a second child born June 1869. That is George. Again, things have gone that things things could be good for her, and this is where I just want to kind of grab hold of her and go, what the hell are you doing? Because she starts nagging Robinson to get life insurance, and she is constant about this, constant and repeated, and for both him and the children. Subtle. Yeah. To the point where he starts to get suspicious that she's on the take and is just interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

So yeah, he's not an idiot, then he's not an idiot at all, is this?

SPEAKER_01 29:25

He's got so he basically has him and his accountant really go through the accounts quite thoroughly uh of the entire family. And what he finds is that Marianne has actually built up debts of 60 pounds and has stolen 50 pounds from him. She has pawned his first wife's wedding ring. Oh, that's a bad move. Quite a few other things of sentimental value, and she's been gay, she's been basically forcing the children to go and pawn things as well. And he's like, enough. What the hell?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Did she force the children to go pawn their dead mother's wedding ring? I don't think the wedding ring was on the children.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Because that that would have been next level. It's like items of lace and things like that. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

It's still bad, but I I just that would have been perfect.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Yeah. I told you I was coming on with somebody despicable and an absolute shithel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

And it's not just poisoning, like there's myriad other crimes in here. This is fantastic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Uh and he's like at this point, Robinson's just enough. Uh, and he throws her out very sensibly, keeps custody of George. Um, so she's now homeless. So she's gonna so she goes back home. And insurance policyless as well. Yes, insurance policy-less because she hadn't taken it out on any of them. Yeah. So she ends up now homeless, goes back to her home village again, moves in with a childhood friend, Margaret Cotton. Now we're getting to the final surname that we can drag this woman. Yeah. Uh and Margaret Cotton is basically nursing her incredibly depressed brother, who has recently widowed and lost two children. Are we seeing a pattern here? Just a bit. Yeah. So he he's very depressed. He's not really going to be going anywhere, not going to be doing much. But she can she can move in there and she's got a home. And he's got two remaining children already. And there's a chance for another marriage here. Now, you say that she's racking up the crimes because we've got racking up with poisonings, and we've also got thefts and we've got frauds. Why not add bigamy into that as well? Of course, because they never got divorced. Yes, bingo. Um, but before we're going to dive into bigamy, we're gonna go back to that old favourite, murder. Okay. So standing in the way of the marriage to Fred Cotton is, of course, his sister and Mary Ann's childhood friend, Margaret Cotton. Oh man. Yeah, she's got to go. She's just got to go. And late March 1870, Margaret does go. Of gastric flu.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Can't she change it up and like have him trampled by a horse or something just to there is method in this.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Uh this is her old friend. This is like a childhood friend. This is a childhood friend.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

I mean, to be fair, she would have done off with her own mother. I I suppose, I mean, yeah, there's clearly no depths, but this is um, yeah, she's she's hidden everyone. Yeah, recent acquaintances, people who've been with her her whole life. Yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Um late March, so Margaret dies. Mary Ann becomes two things. Number one, carer for Fred. Number two, pregnant. She's on form. This one, we know this pregnancy is Fred's because right now Joseph Natras is married to somebody else and he's not doing anything, he's just not getting. We're sure of that. We're sure of that.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Honourable man.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

We are sure of this. Okay, he doesn't piss about those while he is married. But again, Fred's not gonna be working anytime soon. She's gonna be back on Paris relief, poor money. That's not gonna happen. So what was and and this is the thing, it's like depression is not gonna take get taken seriously as a mental illness in the Victorian period. No, okay. You have not got they've not got the money to be checking themselves into kind of asylums and things like that and keep that going. She's got to be looking at Fred Cotton as somebody who is absolutely not going to be able to take her out of poverty at all while he's alive. This one I think is absolutely premeditated right from the word go. I think she moves in with him with the express idea of killing him.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

You don't think the others were the same?

SPEAKER_01 34:09

You think that uh even the I mean the ship the shipwright, yeah, I can get that, but the fellas before you don't think she was I think George Ward was a bit of kind of opportunity because again, he he had a job.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Potential to have a job, he just couldn't keep it. Yeah. And so he would be in, out of work. It was and I think I I think the murder of George Ward was definitely premeditated, but I don't think she actually married him with a view to killing him for the insurance money. Okay. I think she marries Fred Cotton exactly to kill him for the insurance money. She looked at him and she just needs to get £35, basically. I mean, yeah, yeah, it's more than he's gonna earn. Um, so so she marries him in September 1870. Uh they have a son. Uh who was born early 1871. Uh late 1871, who's back on the scene? Joseph Nattrus, recently widowed. She does like a recently widowed.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

Did uh anything anything sus there? Is he is he doing murders now?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Uh not quite yet. Not quite yet, but I'm fairly certain that he's he's completely oblivious to this. I mean, I don't think Joseph Nattrus is dumb, but I don't also think that he is the sharpest tool that is being dealt with uh at this stage. Um But Fred Fred Cotton dies 1871 of a gastrointestinal complication. Of course he does. And then this is where you're going to swing the words, Joseph Nattrus, what the hell are you doing? Because Nattrus then kind of rekindles this affair and moves in with her as a lodger.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

He's not aware of this trail of death and destruction behind her.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

I'd probably come to this when we get into the how the hell did she get away with it kind of section. But I have to say that if I'm if I'm, I mean, we're we're 1872 here, so she's 39. We've got a 39-year-old woman who has been widowed three times, uh, and is like I would be starting to ask questions. As well as dead, dead mother, friends, children. And so forth. Yeah, I'd be starting to ask questions. Um, Natris does have one thing going in his favour, which is he's not gonna marry her. Okay. It's a defence mechanism, I will grant you, but it's not a very good one because what he does is instead of marrying her, what he does is he amends her his will into her benefit, which pretty much signs his death warrant. Uh, because he dies. Well, the son dies in March 1872, along with one of Fred Cotton's surviving sons, Fred Jr. Ums doesn't marry her but gets the will amended, and then about a month later, he dies of Defenstration. Gastric fever. Yeah. So let's just recap for a moment here. She's at least got rid of three husbands, one lover, one childhood friend, God knows how many children, and uh and and one lover.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

There's a lot going on. Yeah, the children we can't count. I think there's just so many effects.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

You know, and one of one of the ways that we're finding out about births that are not registered and things like that is a census, which only happens once every 10 years and only takes the people that are alive then.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Yeah. Not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Yeah. So yeah. Fortunately for Marianne, Fred, Fred Jr. and their infant son Robert were all insured. Thank God. I was worried about her for a second there. Yeah, I know. Um finally, she's she then takes employment as a nurse to a customs and excise officer uh who is recovering from smallpox. Now, if you try and search records for this guy, according to like according to things that we said in the trial and stuff like that, there's a guy called John Quick Manning. We can't actually find much record of John Quick Manning.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Um we can find a Richard Quickman. Maybe we don't know. What we do know is that whoever this guy is, he is the father of Mary's 13th child. Um, who is going on to be born. It's a girl, uh, and she's referred to, and you can actually find records of her as being um Margaret Quick Manning. Now the trouble was is that she's he eventually gets tired of sleeping with his housekeeper, uh, a nurse, uh, so he basically just bins her off, which has probably saved his life. And also, he kept the daughter. She didn't particularly want the daughter, so that was fine. That probably saved Margaret Quickman's life, but she still has to wander off with Charles Cotton because John or Richard Quickmannon is not going to be dealing with the younger son of Fred Cotton. So she's still got this one in tow, and this is where it all, this is where the house of cards is about to collapse.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

She is offered a job nursing another woman who was recovering from smallpox, or she was actually ill with smallpox at the time. And she couldn't take, she she couldn't go into that house with five-year-old Charles Cotton because the risk of his health was too great. So she's having to decline this job, which is therefore seeing he is a roadblock. Yeah, he is a roadblock to the money. He is insured. Uh, yeah. Five-year-old Charles Cotton. So she goes to the parish kind of official, uh, guy called Thomas Riley, and asks if Charles Cotton can be taken into the workhouse. And Riley says, No. He's not an orphan, so the only way he's going into the workhouse is if you go with him. Which is not gonna happen. And then she she says this line, and I've got the quote I won't be troubled with him long. He'll go like all the rest of the cottons.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

That is that is not a criminal genius speaking, right there.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

No, we are not talking, we are not talking Moriata here. No. Uh the choice Thomas Riley is not only like the parish official that is dealing with workhouse admissions and that sort of thing, he's also the West Auckland district assistant coroner. Bad choice to make that. Five days after she says this, the boy is dead.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

And this triggers a memory in his head about oh, that's the game to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Um not only does it trigger that memory in his head, but rather than go, rather than the first place that she's going to being the doctor, is the first place that she's going is the offices of the Prudential Life Insurance Company. And now they tell her that they're not paying anything out without a death certificate, so she's got to try and then get the death certificate from the doctor. But Riley beats her to it. Yeah. And he basically begs the doctor to not issue a death certificate. Because he knows there's something up. He knows there's something up, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, they've all died in the same way, and she's essentially pre-declared it. Uh doctor in question's actually quite prepared to certify this death as being gastric flu. Riley just begs in a way that no Victorian gentleman should. Um, but he's he basically he gets his way and they perform what's known as the Rheinch test, which is one of the tests that you can use for arsenic in the body. There's the Marsh test as well, but this is the Rhinch test that's used, and this shows up arsenic. Not just arsenic, quite a lot of arsenic.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Okay, well, I was gonna ask about that because it's it's worth stepping back a bit here and just sort of thinking about where we are and how she's come this far. You know, she is this runaway train of death that no one has seemed to have paid much attention to. We've we've noted the pattern of gastric illness, gastric flu, gastric whatever. That is that gastric fever that is acute in all these cases. And arsenic is the thing that she's uh when it when it goes to trial, they look at it and go, yeah, it's is arsenic poisoning based on these tests. But the here's the thing about arsenic is that it's everywhere at this time, right? This is this is, I mean, it's in soap, it's in cleaning products, it's in the fucking wallpaper of some. People's houses. I tell you the one place it usually isn't.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Your stomach. Okay. And that's what the Reush test is doing. It is testing stomach linings.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

I see.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

And so you find quite a lot of arsenic in there. So we the doctor then certifies that child as been having died of arsenic poisoning. They then go to exhume Joseph Natras, Fred Cotton, and Fred Cotton Jr. And find them all to have died from arsenic poisoning as well. And that's that that's where she's then arrested. Cut to a trial, it takes a jury 90 minutes to convict her. Shit. She is uh she's judge wasted absolutely no time in passing a death sentence. And she is hanged, I forget the date. Uh but she's hanged in Jo uh Durham Jail. And if you do want to have a go and wander around the like grounds of Durham Jail, she she is under there still.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

I've got the date here. It's the 24th of March 1873.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

She was 40 years old. And yeah, after a very brief trial. And and something interesting about the trial, um, I did some reading up on the trial and just the newspaper reportage around it. I mean, they already kind of dammer in the newspapers beforehand. She's referred to as a wretched woman, the poisoner of West Auckland, this sort of thing. It's it's it's all kind of there already. Her performance of the trial is interesting. Because she uh she is is nursing someone's baby, Christ knows whose, but uh I I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

We think I think that is Margaret Quick Manning that is born in prison.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

That one. Oh, right, born in prison. So so she's kind of presenting herself as this eternal figure in the dock, you know, nursing this kid. And that that actually makes it in the press. Obviously, it doesn't help her case, but it is interesting. It's it's the it's you know w uh uh Harvey Weinstein turning up with the Zimmer frame. It's that it's that sort of thing, I think, where it's like, you know, please pity me. Uh doesn't work for her. She writes letters, doesn't she? Like she protests her innocence quite vigorously and writes letters begging for clemency. But at the same time, you get this sense, she kind of feels like she might get away with it. It's it's weird. I can't quite read her behaviour in the trial at all.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

She's convinced she's gonna get royal clemency. She she is convinced as a single mother of that the uh that baby that basically the the the queen is going to intervene. Apparently, this happens. Um but she's absolutely convinced that this is gonna get like commuted or or something like that. And yeah, she's writing an awful lot of letters to an awful lot of people, um, all of which have very different tones. Uh I've read a few of them because they've got they've got some of them at um Beamish Museum.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Along with Scarily, uh, one of her teapots, which I'm going nowhere near, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Well, so this is the thing, just to uh speak on that. So the the prevailing theory is that she's poisoning these people with tea. That's because arsenic, you you can't dissolve that in cold water, it needs to be dissolved in hot water. So tea would make the most viable method.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Uh, unless you're gonna mix it in food. Uh but if you're gonna mix it in food, then you've got to take care that you don't poison yourself.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Yeah, much easier in tea. So so they've still got one of her teapots. Damn, that's cool. That's very cool. I know. I I am the world's biggest tea drinker.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

I've got nowhere near that shit. But one of the letters that she writes has a very and I paraphrase this slightly. But she actually writes to James Robinson of all people, and includes the phrase, if you had a speck of human decency, you would let me see the children. It's like, no, I bloody well wouldn't, bitch.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Why is it why why would she be asking to see the children? She can't get life insurance off them now. This isn't gonna help her. There's no she hasn't got a teapot in prison. What's what's the who knows? Was this for well, let's play devil's advocate here for a sec, or devil's sympathy, whatever it is. What if this is legit? What if she is the unluckiest woman in Victorian England, and she just death just follows her everywhere? Gastric fever, it's just everywhere. The arsenic levels that are higher because of all kinds of environmental circumstances, nothing to do with her. And at the end of the day, she has this woman on trial who is who is innocent, she's despairing, and she's she's nursing the child, and she says, you know what? What about what about these other children? I need to see them, and that's why she writes them. You convinced? No, not remotely. No, but I'd give it a shot.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

The only reason I think death is following her around is because then he doesn't need to swing the scythe that far. I wouldn't book another appointment.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Because they're great mates.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

Yeah, you know, the general level of arsenic that's all over Victorian England, fine, but you've got four recent deaths that have all got it in their stomach, so it's ingested arsenic. That's that's quite hard to do. Yeah. Uh environmentally. I mean, we're not talking people who have died where their lungs are lined with arsenic, where they've inhaled it so you know out of wallpaper and things like that. They've they've actually had to ingest this.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

So no, I'm I I'm bang on. She is I I will I'm gonna put her as guilty of all of them.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

So let's talk a little bit, or or let's wax lyrical a bit, because neither of us are psychologists, but her mental state, you know, is she a sociopath, or is this just you you've laid out a pretty convincing case that this is circumstance and opportunism, and I'd I'd I'd say that it's it's laced with this almost I dare I say, this sort of Victorian aspirational thing of you know, moving up in the world by whatever means necessary. Is that what's going on here where she just happens to fall into this circumstance with Mowbray and goes, Oh yeah, 35 quid I can get that? And then the the appetite for this grows with the eating, basically. With each new husband, she gets new app opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

I think so. I think so. I mean, whether or not William Mowbray is murdered, who knows? We we certainly don't know. The only one that we categorically know was murdered by Marianne Cotton was Charles Cotton.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

And that's to you, you made this point at the start, she's only convicted for one murder.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

You only need to be, you know, there's no point sentencing somebody to 13 death sentences, is there?

SPEAKER_02 50:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

And there's no court of appeal. We don't have a court of appeal until well into the 20th century. So once that black hat goes on in the courtroom, that's it, it's done. We don't need to do trials for the others.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah, tie the slip nod, it's done.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

Yeah, exactly. But no, I think I I think there is there is an initial 35 quid. Then I think in husband number two, she sees where the loan's going, but knows that there's a route out there. Um I think I don't actually think she was planning on killing James Robinson, but was probably going to be offering a few of the children to deal with those debts.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

In the hopes he wouldn't notice.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Yeah. I mean, again, we're we're pre-married Women's Property Act here. Yeah. You know, so if she kills Robinson, she's not going to inherit the shipwright business and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Yeah, yeah, he's he's more valuable alive, isn't he?

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Yeah. However, the I hate to say this, but the children are eminently disposable. Spoken like a true Victorian. Yes, exactly. And then then Fred Cotton, I think, was right from the start. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

She pegged him.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

That she was that she was gonna kill him.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

So she's not killing for fun, she's killing for profit. That seems to be the the thing. Opportunistic in many ways, targeting at some times. In terms of how this affects insurance laws, like specifically, what what does this lead to in terms of where we are now?

SPEAKER_01 52:22

So what what this does is it shines a light on the burial clubs. And there is oh god, there is I mean, it takes forever for for this actually to to become a thing. Um, but this is kind of one of those moments of moral outrage that spark everybody to start looking at this because in the profit you can make from insurance is it is the motive for this. So it's absolutely categorically is the motive for all of these murders. So the insurance companies start then to look at things like insurable interest and so forth. There is whole loads of debates um in Parliament which lead up to what's known as the Children's Insurance Act. Now, bearing in mind, I've got some I've got some quotes from the second reading in the Lords, which just to give you an idea of just how slowly the legal system works, uh, that's the 16th of June 1890. So we are 17 years further down the line, and we we still haven't actually got this outlawed yet.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Not a lot changes.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yeah, a few of the quotes that I've got here that are that give you an idea of the thinking. You know, Mr. Carter is a witness in this, the coroner for Gloucestershire, he says, the longer I live, the more occasions I have to look with suspicion on deaths of young children that are insured. Insurance encourages a greater interest in their deaths than in their survival, and I shall do all I can to put it down. Um there's another, even kind of like darker thought that comes from the Registrar General of Ireland, Thomas Grimshaw. And he says, and I quote, an extraordinary thing to be observed in connection with it was the number of children who died not having been seen by medical men, and no exertion having been made to save their lives. The way in which children were allowed to die so that insurance money might be had for them was a disgrace to the whole nation. Yeah. Um wraps off with uh uh at the the end of one of the trials, not Marianne Collins' trials, a later trial for a similar thing, uh the jury are of the opinion that the facilities given by the loose system of life insurance practiced by some of the companies is an incentive to willful murder for the sake of the insurance money.

SPEAKER_00 54:44

You know, it's being pretty straight up there with what it is, but as you say, it takes a while.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Even to this day, it is remarkably difficult to insure children. Life insure children. It is possible. It is possible, but most financial institutions are not going to do it. And those that do are not gonna be issuing money. So you need an insurable interest in order to insure your life. So I can't insure your life because I'm not going to be financially worse off if you die.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

You'll be pleased to know I'm not all going to be financially better off if you die either. Bearing in mind my knowledge of Victorian poisonings. Good to know. Um, but uh, I can I, you know, I can insure the delightful lady rage for however much I like and no insurable interest uh limit between spouses. Uh I can insure myself. Uh I could, you know, when I was 18 and living at home, I could insure my parents. Yeah. But I couldn't insure, I couldn't insure the children for really anything more than funeral expenses. And the places that will insure a child's life will not give you the money, they will pay for the funeral.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Yeah, it's not, it's not really worth worth killing them for, is it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

But that's I mean, that don't didn't just come around. Marianne Cotton shone the light into that.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

It didn't get called the it wasn't called the cotton law, the cotton rule. No.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Mr. Trick. It didn't start it off. Where I think it really kicked off was that when they found that the baby farms were insuring all of the babies that were living in there.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

And things like that. And they were they were racking in some profits, and that's why I think finally puts an end to it. But without Marianne Cotton, no, none of the insurance companies would have gone looking.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

So there is a silver lining here. We do get we do get something out of it, but in terms of terms of her, I just want to end up by reflecting a little bit on her legacy and where this gets to. We talked to the top about how she gets buried under your rippers, your crippins, and and things, people of that nature. What's behind that, do you think, considering the because there is there is some there are some people who doubt the numbers that she killed, and there's there's plenty of room for argument. Because I mean we can't decide, you know, on the children uh at least how many of them fall from her hands. Is that part of what obscures it? Is is it that she's a woman? Like what's what's going on here that that makes her less of a household name than some of these others?

SPEAKER_01 57:26

I didn't I don't think it's that she's a woman. I will definitely throw that out there because that in terms of like Victorian press is quite sensational.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

You know, it's good uh and it goes to that heart of like Victorian moral panic and fear. It's like the poisoner could be anybody.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

Even the even the gentler sex.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

Yeah. Heaven forbid. If I was to get my conspiracy head on, I would probably say that the insurance companies do quite a lot to make sure that this story goes away.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

Excellent. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

And and of course, bear in mind as well that you do while you've got the press outrage at the uh at the actual trial and the actual thing, there's no real kind of hunt for Marianne Cotton. Nobody spots this pattern. Yeah. You know, it goes on all over the capital. But I I actually noted down, I'm gonna read you some symptoms of Victorian diseases. Do we? Okay. So let's start up at the top with typhus, okay, which manifests with stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, high temperature, and skin discoloration.

SPEAKER_00 58:40

Yeah, the skin the only thing about typhus is the skin discoloration that's quite.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

There we go. Then we go to gastric fever. Yeah, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and high temperature.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Well, I don't feel like I'm reading the NHS website. Yeah. Cholera.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Cholera, another Victorian classic. Stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and thirst. Arsenic poisoning, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, high temperature, and skin discoloration. Almost identical to typhus, it's just a different rash. Now, you know, typhus and cholera alone are responsible for a stack ton of Victorian deaths amongst children, amongst adults. You know, it takes the range test to actually show arsenic poisoning. It's really easy to cover this death up as another typhus, typhoid fever, gastric flu death. They look identical, they happen all the time. Secondly, she can just move to a different village. She doesn't even need to, yeah, you know, she's not gonna be turning up uh having to prove her ID. You know, you try and claim claim social security now, you are you are having to prove ID. You've got to prove your national insurance number, you're gonna have proof of address. Like, I'll get that. You can rock up in the next town across, turn up your parish money.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

None of these coroners, I mean, no, none of these people are talking to each other, obviously, over the over the time when when these murders are happening, because she's able to get away with it for years. No one's going, no, hang on a minute, this should be like there's no there's no central database.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

No, you know, and if she's moved from Sunderland to Bishop Auckland and has been widowed again, yeah, as far as the doctor's concerned, that's gastric flu. Nothing suspicious in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

And there you go. And then even if you have to show you know evidence of your widowhood, you turn up with a death certificate, you're going to have died of gastric flu. It's not like she's carrying a lever arch folder of death certificates around with her.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

No, and and it's it's also the fact that when you reflect on looking at her like that, really, she just gets sloppy at the end, doesn't she? Yeah. She gets sloppy, and that's that's her undoing. She could have kept this kept this racket going for a a while longer, I suspect.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Yeah, she was absolutely her own worst enemy. Although, you know, she was reaching the age of 40 and when starts to ask questions about how long you can keep the whole child racket going.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. But uh, well, maybe maybe it was inevitable in that sense that that she was gonna meet her end in this way at this time. Uh it's a kind of inglorious end as well, which I think is another part of it. I mean, there's a trial, it's a quick trial, it's not some big sensational trial necessarily. It's just like, well, you know, this poisoning woman, how outrageous they hang her, and that's kind of it. Yeah. Other than, as you say, the the the insurance legacy, which is the the sort of uh, you know, not the sort of thing that's gonna pique people's curiosity. It's not the same as, you know, the great unsolved mystery of this person who went around stabbing people. It it doesn't have that same cachet, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

There is a hunt for Jack the Ripper, and therefore that's in the they you know, that's in the press for months. Even though, let's be fair, Jack the Ripper is only active for six months.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

You know, Marianne Cotton is active for 21 years. Pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Pretty goddamn impressive.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

Uh, but you know, we know who Marianne Corton is, and therefore that can die down. You don't get this roller coaster of who is it, who is it, who is it, and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

And takes the shine off her as well. Yeah. Takes the allure away.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

You've got like the the Crip in Murders murder later on, you know. That's almost celebrity.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

You know, that that's the doctor that murdered his glamorous music hall wife and ran away with this secretary dressed as a boy. And that's gonna keep the newspapers going forever, is yeah, is that one.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:48

So more understated, but certainly more hefty in terms of fatalities. A serial killer with as many as 20 people, let's say, ballpark figure on her hands, maybe, who knows? A lot. Whether she killed one person or north of a dozen, she is now amongst the ranks of the history's devils. Her guilt, her innocence, her sanity or lack thereof, I'll leave to the uh discerning views of of the of the listener. But I think you've made a pretty good case here for for what what seems what seems pretty pretty evident as a as a spate of murders carried out over a long time by someone who is in it for the money. Pretty wretched. And on that, I will uh leave it up to uh those listening to uh pass a final judgment on Marianne Cotton. Maybe leave a comment if you're listening to this. What do you think about her? Also, make sure to like, subscribe, hit buttons, do all that kind of stuff. And do also listen to History Rage. Paul, what's coming up? History Rage Wise, what have we got on the pipeline for the next few months? Anything you can review?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:53

Coming up, what am I rages that I've got? Well, I've just uh recorded I've just recorded one with uh YouTuber Will Carver, Lord Hard Thrasher Fame, uh, who came on to annoy the American audience by saying that the B-17 bomber is a bit shit. That will be fun. Uh I've got um I've got Izzy Meekin from the uh What the Austin podcast to uh come on and explain just how much of a bitch Jane Austen can actually be. Uh and uh and since as we're going into the realms of the despicable shithels here on History's Devils, I've got episode coming out mid-June for my uh Patreon subscribers at least, that will be looking at the dark legacy of Elizabeth Bathory.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

Oh, she's good fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:45

Who doesn't love Tudor Vampire Woman? Drinking the blood of small children to keep her life essence going.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:52

Well, I shall be ex exploring the truth.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:55

No, that's that's that's mint. Great. That sounds wonderful. Well, yes, uh everyone listen to History Rage, keep listening to History's Devils, keep enjoying history, and we will see you next time on the show.