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Mary-Ann Cotton

Mary-Ann Cotton
AKAMary-Ann Robson
DOB31 Oct 1832
(Libra)
Occupation
Kill Total21 +
Kill Place
Kill Date1852 - 1872
M.O.Poisoning
Victim

15

Projects

124

Employees

49

Skills
Born Mary Ann Robson, One of the UK's most prolific serial killers.
Cotton Killed husbands, and possibly even her own children, she was hanged in Durham prison on 29th Match 1873, aged 40. She stood to gain from insurance policies, and killed using arsenic in cups of tea.

Born in the small English village of Low Moorsley in October of 1832, Mary Ann Robson did not have a happy childhood. Her parents were both younger than aged-20 when they married, her father barely managed to keep his family fed by working as a miner. 

1840, When Mary was eight the family moved, Mary and her brother Robert went to a new school, where shy Mary found it difficult to make friends. Not long after the move the father fell down a mine shaft to an early death. Life in Victorian England was never easy, but especially so for a widow and her young children. the shadow of the workhouse and separation from her mother must have left dark shadows on Mary, indeed it is reported that she suffered bad nightmares. The workhouse and probably homelessness was avoided when Mary's moth re-married. 
Mary did not like her new step-father, but she liked the things his good salary could buy. finally at the age of sixteen she could stand the hard discipline of her step father no more, she moved out to become a serving girl at a nearby house.

After three years service, and many a scandal in the local village about the many male visitor Mary took, she left to train as a dressmaker. It was not long before she married, already being pregnant. 
Her first husband was William Mowbray, a miner. During the first few years of their marriage, they travelled all around the country in search of work, William taking work as a miner and sometimes on the railroad. During the first five years together Mary had five children, four of them dying as infants. Even though infant mortality was high in Victorian England, this was unusually high, but, was probably viewed as just "Bad luck".
Cotton was eventually caught when a post mortem examination on one of her children revealed arsenic poisoning as the cause of death.
Convicted of only the murder of her step-son, she was suspected of killing at least six people, and it is believed that she actually took the lives of more than 20 victims over a 20 year period,
Cotton was pregnant with her seventh child at the time of arrest and trial and the execution had to be delayed until after she had given birth,. However, because of her pregnancy, there was a petition for her reprieve. 

29th Match 1873, the reprieve was denied and she was hanged in the prison yard at Durham prison.
She was hanged by William Calcroft, it is rumoured that her body struggled for at least three minutes after the trap was released.  

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