Last week, we covered the life and crimes of Mary Ann Cotton, also known as the West Auckland Poisoner. This week, I'll delve into her psychology. I'm making this a three-part series instead of a two part. I am still researching arsenic (finishing a fascinating book I found last minute! More details when I am done that!) and made more notes on her psychology than anticipated - but nothing new there!
A brief overview from last week:
Our female killer of interest was born Mary Ann Robson in Durham County, England on October 31, 1832. In the span of her life, it is believed she killed 21 people, poisoning them with arsenic. These alleged victims include husbands, children, her own mother and a sister-in-law. If you missed the details on her crimes, visit the first post here.
Mary Ann's perspective of the world would have rooted in her childhood.
It's where we develop our earliest beliefs and thoughts we often carry into adulthood. There was no real way to challenge world views or beliefs. The internet was far from being a thing. Women had few educational opportunities. Back in the 1800s, a woman's greatest value was in marriage and child rearing. But I don't think Mary Ann wanted that life. She watched her mother lose a child, baby Margaret, and the grief that caused. When Mary Ann was ten, her father, Michael, died working in a coal mine. This event, I believe, was a turning point. She watched her entire world crumble. The coal mine owners evicted the widow and her kids. A year later, probably out of a need for survival, Mary Ann's mother, Margaret, married another coal miner, George. This would have instilled a harrowing realization: men were in charge, men held the money, and women relied on them for basic survival. I believe this shaped how Mary Ann later viewed marriage and motherhood. Serial killers usually have that one event early in their lives that becomes a stressor; be it a death, a traumatic incident, or prolonged abuse. Somewhere in that, their brain and mental mindset changes. It alters their view of the world and how they interact.
Typically, with female serial killers, it is the loss of a mother or vital female figure that hinders their mental and emotional development. In this case, it was the loss of a father that changed Mary Ann's mindset. According to Martin Connolly's book, "Mary Ann Cotton, Dark Angel", she never got along with her stepfather. This second male figure, to Mary Ann, never lived up to what her father was. It's common for kids to reject their stepparents. According to Childfun.com, girls seem to take the adjustment of a new stepfather the hardest. This would make sense, especially if Mary Ann was close with her biological father.
Perhaps Mary Ann's resentment towards George came from the knowledge that her mother married him out of convenience. Having been evicted from the family home and losing the only source of income, Margaret would have had few options. She couldn't work with two small kids at home due to the lack of childcare. Her one option, really, was to remarry to establish some stability for her and the kids. It's easy to see how a young girl would come to resent both the circumstance and George, since he symbolized the man who was in charge, the one Margaret relied on for survival. Perhaps this was when Mary Ann began dreaming of her own independence, never wanting to become solely reliant on a man. After all, Mary Ann left home at 16 to work as a nurse, only returning to George's home when her post was complete. It seems like she sought independence from a young age.
Her first marriage in 1852 happened because she was pregnant, out of a need to legitimize the child. She was 19. This took her reliance off of George and set it upon her new husband, William. Perhaps she accepted her role as a wife and mother for the time being, hiding her resentment for the way society operated. However, out of the eight or nine children she had with William, only three survived before William's death in 1864. Two of the children died following this, all supposedly from gastric fever. The remaining child was left with Margaret and George while Mary Ann left.
This is the start of another behaviour pattern: abandoning her surviving children.
Early on, we see a pattern of rejection towards marriage and her own kids. Mary Ann didn't seem to emotionally connect with her children. She disposed of them so easily. To be fair, according to statista.com, the mortality rate in the United Kingdom in the 1800s for children under the age of five was 329 deaths for every 1000 births. One in three kids died before their fifth birthdays. Many died of various infections and issues in a time before medical science advanced. As of 2020, the mortality rate for this age range was four deaths per 1000 births. It's entirely plausible that some of Mary Ann's children died of infections or other causes, and that she didn't necessarily murder them. The deaths of these kids is pretty spot on for the statistics. If she did murder them, gastric fever (of which symptoms are similar to arsenic poisoning) would have been a convenient cover. However, it's important to note that William only took out life insurance policies on himself and the three surviving children before he died. Mary Ann had no clear motive to kill any of her children prior.
I do find it believable for her to have poisoned William and two of the children. Perhaps she didn't get the opportunity to poison the survivor, Isabella, or she spared her daughter to seem innocent. Whatever it was that saved Isabella's life, Mary Ann promptly left Isabella with Margaret and George and left with the insurance payouts.
Mary Ann's life after this becomes a line of husbands and kids that either died or were abandoned. In March 1867, Mary Ann visited her mother, who died within a week. As we recall, Margaret was doomed for death with hepatitis. Mary Ann was apparently close with her mother, and had no motive to kill her. There was no life insurance payout to receive from her death - so I don't think Mary Ann killed her mother.
She did, however, take Isabella back to the home of her then-husband, James Robinson. When Isabella and two of the Robinson kids died in April, Mary Ann only received the life insurance payout from Isabella. Her motives for murder were mostly for financial reasons. Unless the Robinson kids were problematic for her, she had no other reason to kill them. Yet after they married she did persist in asking James to take out a life insurance policy. Isabella already had one from her father, William.
As it had been with William, this was a marriage of convenience. Mary Ann was pregnant again. This baby, Margaret, died, and the doctor couldn't confirm a cause of death. Mary Ann had baby George in 1868, who would be one of the only two kids to outlive her. James caught her stealing, kicked her out, then she returned to leave George with a friend and disappeared. Here again is the abandonment of a child. It's curious that she returned George instead of killing him. Perhaps she knew James would suspect her and it was too close to being busted. Or, there was no life insurance policy.
Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay
Then came her love triangle after the death of her next husband, Frederick Cotton. His demise followed that of his sister and youngest child. I highly doubt Mary Ann killed his sister - again, no motive. But it's plausible she could have killed the child.
She became involved with John Quick-Manning and Joseph Nattrass. She became pregnant with John's child. This was where her life became even more complicated. Nattrass died and left her his seven-year old son, Charles. Now both options were off the table. Mary Ann couldn't work with a child at home, nor could she marry John, as he likely didn't want to raise someone else's kid.
We know for sure these last deaths were from arsenic poisoning. It was found in the stomach of Charles. Upon exhumation, arsenic was found in the bodies of Nattrass and two of the Cotton children.
Here comes the question her defense posed at her trial: did she truly murder Nattrass and the three kids? Or was there truly enough arsenic present in the wallpaper of the homes to kill them? And if so, why was Mary never ill? James Robinson also never fell ill, despite Mary Ann asking him to take out a life insurance policy. Not doing so likely saved his life. Mary Ann seemed to reject the expectations placed upon women of that time. Marriage was convenient for money and short-term stability, and the children served as life insurance payouts. When she couldn't kill them, she abandoned them. Serial killers have behavioural patterns. Mary Ann repeated a pattern of abandonment and death. She chose her victims carefully, not on impulse. This is telling - she was a psychopath, a black widow who killed husbands and children for financial profit. She took Isabella back only when Margaret died, which is telling. Isabella, like Charles, became an inconvenience. Mary Ann wouldn't have received any payouts from Charles's death. He was simply in the way of her marrying the next man who impregnated her, from another marriage of convenience.
Isabella was worth a pay cheque, whereas the reward from killing Charles would have been freedom.
That was all Mary Ann ever really wanted.
Join me - next time - as we delve into the history of arsenic, Victorian wallpaper and how plausible Mary Ann's defense really was. Thanks for reading! Feel free to subscribe for all things serial killers and my random writerly ramblings!
Sources:
"Mary Ann Cotton, Dark Angel" by Martin Connolly
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