Free Female Executions: Martyrs, Murderesses and Madwomen by Geoffrey Abbott

dispensed arsenic instead, gastric fever again being diagnosed as the cause of death. But news of the child’s demise reached the ears of the workhouse master and, remembering the woman’s ominous rejoinder, he notified the authorities of his suspicions. The child’s body was exhumed and the amount of arsenic found within the viscera was unmistakable. And when the corpses of her other victims were disinterred and their post-mortems produced similar results, the game was up.
    In March 1873 Mary Ann Cotton was charged at Durham with one murder, that of the young Charles Edward; so overwhelming was the evidence in that particular case that one charge was considered sufficient, and so it proved. Throughout the trial the woman in the dock remained composed and utterly self-assured; having borne a charmed life so far, she probably saw no reason why it should not continue. She pleaded not guilty and coolly explained that the arsenic in her possession was used to kill bedbugs in the house, but when the judge pronounced her guilty and sentenced her to be hanged, she fainted in the dock and had to be carried down to the cells.
    If she had thought that because she was pregnant – she had wasted no time in taking a new lover, a local customs officer, following James’ funeral – she would escape the gallows, she was sadly mistaken: there was, of course, no question of executing her while heavy with child, but once the child was born, the law would take its course. After giving birth in gaol, she was deprived of her baby and arrangements were made for her to be deprived of her life in five days’ time.
    The night before her execution she was heard by her warders to pray for salvation, a prayer which included James Robinson, her third husband and the only one to escape her homicidal proclivities. The customs man might also have congratulated himself on his lucky escape!
    Feminine fashion at that time dictated that women wore dresses with long sleeves, plus a veil and gloves, and Mary Ann Cotton’s apparel on her execution day reflected this, for her veil was the white cap William Calcraft slipped over her head – nor did he omit the matching accessory, a hempen necklace. None of the watching officials saw him hesitate as he prepared his victim, nor did he waste a moment in operating the bolt. However, as usual, nearly three minutes elapsed before the twitching figure ceased rotating and finally hung deathly still.
    Following removal from the scaffold, Mary’s body was taken back into the prison building where, in order to take a cast of her head to be studied by members of the West Hartlepool Phrenological Society, all her luxurious tresses were cut off close to her skull. It was later stated that, far from being kept as gruesome souvenirs, every severed strand of hair was deposited in the coffin with her body.
    Such was the publicity surrounding the case that shock waves of disbelief and horror spread across the country when the prosecuting lawyer described the ghastly deaths of her other victims, and with the minimum of delay a wax model of her joined the macabre company already occupying Mme Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, the museum publishing an updated catalogue which endorsed her execution as expiation ‘for crimes for which no punishment in history could atone. The child she rocked on her knee today was poisoned tomorrow. Most of her murders were committed for petty gains; and she killed off husbands and children with the unconcern of a farm-girl killing poultry’.

Murderous though eternally feminine, Mary Ann was determined to look her best even for William Calcraft. When the wardresses went to escort her from the condemned cell to the scaffold, they found her brushing her long black hair in front of the mirror. As they approached her she turned and said brightly, ‘Right – now I am ready!’
    Creighton, Mary Frances (USA)
    Mary’s problem was that she just could not accept that having got away with murder twice,