In the era where we find Mary Ann Cotton, arsenic was everywhere. One could find it in rat poison, candles, face powders, candies, clothing, lace, cards, food, wallpaper and much more. Arsenic was cheap and accessible. It seems inevitable that it would become favoured as poison for murder.
Image by VictorianLady from Pixabay
"Scheele's green" (the shade similar to the image on the left) was an arsenic-based pigment used commonly in Victorian wallpaper. Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish chemist, invented the green pigment in 1775. After his success, arsenic was used in other colours, like canary yellow. Arsenic was considered safe in small doses. The problem was, being used in small doses in so many every day objects caused prolonged exposure to larger amounts.
Ink from the wallpaper often flaked off, dusting over other objects and the home's habitants, who could inhale it from the air or absorb it into their skin. Moisture, abrasion or heat also released the toxic vapours. Deaths of children or entire families were widely reported. A book from 1874, "Shadows From the Walls of Death" by Dr. Robert C. Kedzie, holds real wallpaper specimens from the Victorian era. However, a digital edition can be found online. (I'll add a link at the end of this post - really cool to look at!)
Arsenic-filled wallpaper became a focal point in Mary Ann Cotton's trial in 1872/73. Her defense claimed that the victims she was charged with murdering (Joseph Nattrass, Charles Edward Cotton and one of Charles's siblings), could have easily inhaled arsenic flakes from the home's green wallpaper.
The hole in this defense is that Mary Ann didn't get sick, and doesn't account for the other deaths which happened when she was present.
In his book, Dr. Kedzie explained a situation where a Dr. I.H.B. shared a home with his two sons. His bedroom had been papered with gray and green floral wallpaper. The boys' bedroom neighboured his. The doctor suffered "pain in the bones, symptoms of chronic rheumatism, and constant cough." The boys suffered similar symptoms. According to Dr. Kedzie, the wallpaper "was found to contain 5.47 grains of arsenic to each square foot, or six ounces of arsenic in the walls of a single room." Estimates claim about an ounce of arsenic was shed from the wallpaper, which was missing half the colouring by the time it was removed. The doctor and his sons recovered after the removal.
Image by VictorianLady from Pixabay
In simple math, six ounces works out to approximately 170 grams. It takes only a fraction of a gram to kill a human adult with arsenic. For perspective, it works out to less than an eighth of a teaspoon.
Arsenic lacks colour, odour and flavour. It was often found undissolved in victims' stomachs. Arsenic actually delays decomposition. This was discovered when Dr. Klank poisoned dogs and left their bodies in various places to see what would happen. Some were left in his cellar, others outside exposed to air, and some some buried. Three years later, the bodies remained dry and undecayed, the stench of decomp replaced with a garlicky smell that became associated with finding arsenic in dead victims. Stomachs were boiled to extract arsenic from tissues. Then along came the Marsh test.
In 1775, chemist James Marsh mixed zinc and arsenic in a solution of nitric acid, producing liquid zinc nitrate and arsine as a gas. Upon oxidizing, arsine produces a garlicky smell. The zinc and acid produce arsine if arsenic is present in the liquid.
Finding arsenic in victims became easier, but what didn't was proving motive and opportunity.
Poison murders often lack witnesses, since these killers target victims in homes or hospitals. Many victims in the nineteenth century were murdered in their own homes, leaving little to find for evidence or witnesses if the killer was careful.
According to the book "The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder" by Linda Stratmann, between 1750 and 1914, 237 out of 504 criminal cases involved arsenic. So, does Mary Ann's defense stand on its own? Only until we once again hit the part where she wasn't impacted by wallpaper or anything else that contained arsenic by chance, and that she had arsenic for rat poison in the home at the time. If we look at motive and opportunity, it's there. She was married to Joseph Nattrass. As we explored in her psychology in part 2, marriage and children were never a keen interest for Mary Ann. She craved independence and a life where she didn't have to rely on men for income. Not only that, she was pregnant with the child of another lover's, a man she wanted to marry. But being bound at home with Charles Edward Cotton (her stepson from former husband Frederick) prevented her from doing so.
To touch on motive here, specifically for Frederick Cotton's death - did Mary Ann know she was going to be left with the seven-year-old boy, or was that an unpleasant surprise in the aftermath of her husband's death? If she knew she was going to be burdened with someone else's kid, she might not have killed Frederick, but merely fled and carried on to the next man. It wouldn't make sense for her to kill Frederick if she knew Charles would be left with her. Frederick's death would have provided another pay cheque, but Charles was an obstacle to her moving on. By this time, if Mary Ann killed as many people as speculated, she had 20 murders to her name she'd escaped suspicion on. What was one more?
We could also surmise as to why she murdered two other Cotton children before Frederick died. Perhaps she grew weary of the responsibility of being a stepmother. If she lacked the ability to emotionally bond with her biological children, she'd be even more detached from her stepchildren. She got no money from those murders, merely less responsibility.
Mary Ann was one of many poisoners from the nineteenth century haunting England. A media frenzy over the waves of arsenic deaths called poisoners the worst kind of criminal. Why was that?
Psychology of Poisoners
Stealth, secrecy and power are at the core of the psychology of these killers. Some were upper class, educated men, but we'll focus on the lower class women, like Mary Ann, who became killers. In the nineteenth century, women were at a massive disadvantage in society. Their only real worth was in marriage and having kids, the two things Mary Ann had little or no interest in, and only relied upon for financial survival, much like her mother did years before.
According to the UK Parliament website, divorce was rare before 1914 as it was expensive and accessible only to wealthy classes. Otherwise, solid proof had to be produced to claim adultery or cruelty - only if you were a man. In the first decade of the twentieth century, there was only one divorce for every 450 marriages. Women had no escape, which is way marriages lasted so long back then. They had no legal grounds or permission to file for divorce. They were married until one of them died, the husband disposed of her, or if she, like Mary Ann, simply fled.
Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay
The Matrimonial Act of 1923 finally allowed both partners to petition for a divorce on the basis of adultery. It wouldn't be until 1937 when this expanded to include cruelty, desertion and incurable insanity. The Divorce Act in 1969 finally allowed divorce after two years of separation with the other party's consent, or five years without that consent.
Birth control also didn't exist then. And while killing your own children is a horrific thought, and I in no way condone it, there is something to be said about a desperate woman who doesn't want to be pregnant, doesn't want to be a mother or knows she cannot provide for any kids she would have. The first latex condoms weren't made until 1855, and were still only available to upper classes due to a lack of education for the poor classes. The birth control pill wasn't approved for use until 1960.
So, it shows how much divorce reform and birth control freed and impacted women in a positive way. According to Stratmann's book, an analysis done for 1999 showed that poisonings accounted for only two or three percent of homicides (a simple Google search also shows these statistics to be similar to today - however I will note that domestic child killings have risen since the pandemic started). While some women may have been cold, callous and calculating, like Mary Ann, some were simply living in hellish marriages, having kids they didn't want or couldn't afford. Once abusive husbands lost their control and power, and once women had the choice to leave marriages and access birth control, these specific types of homicides decreased drastically. What we see today are the women who are psychopaths or sociopaths, who kill out of pure spite and greed. Mary Ann fits into the desperate woman category, but could also fall into the psychopath category.
Using poison to change their circumstances was the only form of power or control many women had in Victorian England, whether they were disposing of abusive or even inconvenient husbands, or were using some demented form of birth control. With how easy arsenic was to obtain, it gave women a convenient way to dispose of whoever they needed to. It gave them at least one thing they could use to get control over their lives.
That is, until they got caught.
Thank you once more joining me! This case has been truly fascinating to cover over the last three posts. Feel free to suggest other cases you'd like to see covered, or just some general feedback! Below are the sources I used, and a short list of reading suggestions for those of you down this rabbit hole with me. I'll post reviews for them as I read.
And if you missed them:
Part 1 - the life and crimes of Mary Ann Cotton.
Part 2 - the psychology of Mary Ann Cotton.
Sources/Reading List
Books:
"The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder" by Linda Stratmann
"Poisoned Lives: English Prisoners and their Victims" by Katherine Watson
"The Arsenic Century" by Dr. James C. Whorton
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