Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: latest episode of Criminalia, where this season we're exploring the
Speaker 1: lives and motivations of some of the most notorious lady
Speaker 1: poisoners throughout history. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Maria Tremarquie.
Speaker 1: And the poisoner that we're talking about today is Mary
Speaker 1: Anne Cotton, who is best known for lethally poisoning as
Speaker 1: many as twenty one people, and she used this season's
Speaker 1: most popular poison. That's right, you're getting more arsenic talk today. Arsenic.
Speaker 1: It's my it's my favorite. We always talk about I
Speaker 1: Heart Arsenic shirts coming soon, right exactly, I'm going to
Speaker 1: open a store. But with those kinds of numbers, she
Speaker 1: became known as Britain's first serial killer. So let's look
Speaker 1: first at how Mariann grew up. She was born on Halloween,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if everyone knows, this is Holly's
Speaker 1: favorite day of the year. Every day is in my heart. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she was born in eighteen thirty two to um
Speaker 1: Michael and Margaret Robson, and their family was working class
Speaker 1: and they were very strict Methodists. So that's that's her
Speaker 1: scene as a kid. And during her childhood, mary Anne
Speaker 1: was described as and we quote exemplary and distinguished for
Speaker 1: her particularly clean and tidy appearance. She regularly attended Wesleyan
Speaker 1: Sunday School, and it was also said of her, and
Speaker 1: again we're quoting here, she was regarded as a girl
Speaker 1: of innocent disposition and average intellect. All pretty good things
Speaker 1: right right right up to that average intellect, right, I
Speaker 1: like my life to the heart, right, things like complimentary, complementary.
Speaker 1: So outside of that clean and tidy appearance and average intellect,
Speaker 1: mary Anne's childhood doesn't actually sound very much like a
Speaker 1: happy one. Her father when she was young, he was
Speaker 1: a strict disciplinarian and he worked as a coal miner,
Speaker 1: and as a coal miner, one day tragedy struck um,
Speaker 1: which you can imagine what tragedy and coal mining could be.
Speaker 1: So in February of eighteen forty two, he fell to
Speaker 1: his death down a narrow three hundred foot mine shaft.
Speaker 1: So at a very young age, she was probably only
Speaker 1: about ten when this happened, mary Ann was forced to
Speaker 1: go to work and within a year or just a
Speaker 1: few years, depending on what you're reading. Mary Anne's mother
Speaker 1: married another miner. This was a man named George Stott
Speaker 1: with a T or his name was George Scott with
Speaker 1: a C. Or it might have even been Robert Scott
Speaker 1: there a pentence. Sorry. It happens a lot when you're
Speaker 1: looking at at historical records, particularly when you're going by
Speaker 1: people's recollected a counts, right, You'll find some interesting variations
Speaker 1: and handwriting could be very difficult as well to read.
Speaker 1: And it's just Scott or Scott or maybe Robert. And
Speaker 1: there are references to all three of these names, and uh,
Speaker 1: the Robert is kind of a surprise among the George's.
Speaker 1: But I think so these things happen, but we feel
Speaker 1: pretty confident that her stepfather's name was, in fact George
Speaker 1: stopped with a T, and so we're sticking with that, right. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether or not he was a George or Robert,
Speaker 1: Mary Ann did not like her new stepfather, and she
Speaker 1: didn't like how strict he was, so she left home
Speaker 1: at the age of sixteen to pursue nursing, which she
Speaker 1: did for about three years before she returned back to
Speaker 1: her child home. So that she could train as a dressmaker.
Speaker 1: So this will obviously sound sexist, uh to listeners today,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly very true at the time that
Speaker 1: it was hard for a working class woman to make
Speaker 1: her way in the world in the midnight teenth century
Speaker 1: without the financial security that marriage offered. Certainly happened on occasion,
Speaker 1: but those were the outliers. So mary Anne went the
Speaker 1: traditional route sort of. And as we're about to get into,
Speaker 1: she was actually married four times in her life, although
Speaker 1: one of those times big amous Lee, Yeah, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into in a little bit, but it's a little early.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna take a quick break for a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and when we returned, we're going to
Speaker 1: go into detail about each of these four marriages. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Criminalia. All right, let's dig into the wedded
Speaker 1: bliss of mary Anne Cotton. Yeah, call it that. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about her first husband. So in eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: mary Anne married William Mowbray and William worked as a
Speaker 1: foreman and then later he was a fireman on a
Speaker 1: steam vessel. He was a working class man. They had
Speaker 1: five children together quickly while they were married, but four
Speaker 1: of them died of typhoid fever. The couple then went
Speaker 1: on to have and also lose three more children during
Speaker 1: their marriage and later, And I really feel this is
Speaker 1: just sad statement of her mental health that this statement
Speaker 1: gives us. Marianne would struggle to remember just how many
Speaker 1: children she had and had lost during that marriage to
Speaker 1: William just a few years into the marriage, so again
Speaker 1: she was having children at a pretty quick pace. William
Speaker 1: unexpectedly died of an intestinal disorder, another suspected case of
Speaker 1: typhoid fever, just as what had taken the lives of
Speaker 1: his children. The newly widowed mary Anne was left with
Speaker 1: one child and an insurance pay out equivalent to half
Speaker 1: a year of William's salary. So we always mentioned that
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get you know, exact at all
Speaker 1: when you're trying to calculate what, for example, thirty five
Speaker 1: pounds at this time would be equivalent to in today's money.
Speaker 1: But our estimation is that mary Anne's payout was about
Speaker 1: forty pounds. For Americans, that's currently just shy of about
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars, not a huge amount, but not unsubstantial either.
Speaker 1: Still pretty significant, I think in mary Anne's time shortly thereafter.
Speaker 1: They're actually turning out to me that many of the
Speaker 1: loved ones in mary Anne's life began dying under some
Speaker 1: mysterious circumstances. So not long after William's death, mary Anne
Speaker 1: began a relationship with Joseph Natris. She also was involved
Speaker 1: at the time with a man named John quick Manning.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to John, there's something a bit strange, Dear,
Speaker 1: don't appear to be any records of any kind. We're
Speaker 1: turning like sensus birthday mentions, anything to prove John quick
Speaker 1: Manning's existence. So we talked about this Alton all the time,
Speaker 1: that records were not perfectly kept. They weren't perfectly kept
Speaker 1: in the eight hundreds, you know, they were trouble with
Speaker 1: them in the before that, there might have not even
Speaker 1: been any um But there have also been a lot
Speaker 1: of records lost over the years, whether it's fires or
Speaker 1: wars or even just you know, something boring like organizational failure.
Speaker 1: But it's difficult to know exactly what was going on
Speaker 1: with her relationships at this time. However, there was also
Speaker 1: a man named Richard Quickman and Richard does appear to
Speaker 1: have in fact existed. He can be found in some records,
Speaker 1: and many believe that this may be the real name
Speaker 1: of her lover. You may notice that Richard Quickman and
Speaker 1: John quick manning some similarities there. This could have been
Speaker 1: another one of those cases where there's a whoopsie in
Speaker 1: the communication. So soon Mary Ann became pregnant by this
Speaker 1: man Richard. That is not Joseph, who she is on
Speaker 1: record as having been involved with. Right, she got married
Speaker 1: at this time as well, But she didn't marry Joseph
Speaker 1: or John or Robert or whatever names we can come
Speaker 1: up with. She married George. George Ward was an engineer,
Speaker 1: and I am sad to say that he actually plays
Speaker 1: a very small role in this story. They had no
Speaker 1: children um and just a little more than one year
Speaker 1: after they had wed, George died after an illness and
Speaker 1: his primary symptoms which by now we can all guess
Speaker 1: we're intestinal problems. Once again. Marianne collected insurance money from
Speaker 1: his death. Yeah, if you're putting together a Criminalia Bingo card,
Speaker 1: they should probably make sure arsenic and intestinal issues are
Speaker 1: on there to make sure you're a winner. Arsenic and
Speaker 1: vomiting after on there. Somebody. Uh, mary Anne did get
Speaker 1: married again. Her third husband was a man named James Robinson,
Speaker 1: a widower whose wife had died and left him with
Speaker 1: young children to care for. James is a really interesting
Speaker 1: part of mary Anne's story, and we're going to get
Speaker 1: into that in just a little bit. It started though
Speaker 1: their relationship when he hired her as a housekeeper. That
Speaker 1: was in November of eighteen sixty six, and shortly after
Speaker 1: she was hired, one of his children, who was still
Speaker 1: just an infant, died in her care. Devastated by the
Speaker 1: loss of his child, James turned to mary Anne for
Speaker 1: comfort and the pair quickly became a couple. So their
Speaker 1: romance was blossoming. But mary Anne's mother became ill, and
Speaker 1: it was probably with a hepatitis flare up. Although it
Speaker 1: changed a little bit, most of the records suggests that
Speaker 1: that's what it could be, and so mary Anne traveled
Speaker 1: to be with her to be her caregiver, and despite
Speaker 1: having been on the mend for a few days before
Speaker 1: her daughter's arrival, just nine days after Maryanne arrived, her
Speaker 1: mother died. When Marianne returned home, things were pretty quiet
Speaker 1: for not very long at all. In fact, by the
Speaker 1: end of April eighteen sixty seven, three of James's children
Speaker 1: had died. Despite all of that bad luck, though, mary
Speaker 1: Anne and James got married that summer and their first child,
Speaker 1: a daughter named Margaret Isabella, was born that November, so
Speaker 1: she was a healthy baby. Margaret Isabella became ill and
Speaker 1: by March, she too had died. Mary Anne and James
Speaker 1: had a second child, named George, and George was born
Speaker 1: in June of eighteen sixty nine, So unlike her former husband's,
Speaker 1: James actually, and this is what we when we said
Speaker 1: he's an interesting character in her life, and this is
Speaker 1: why he began to grow suspicious of Marianne, and not
Speaker 1: just because of the number of deaths that seemed to
Speaker 1: surround her. Marianne was adamant and we say that with
Speaker 1: all caps, that her husband take out a life insurance
Speaker 1: policy on himself, but James pretty much Fratto refused the request.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just that she harped on him about that.
Speaker 1: He had also found out that she had been forcing
Speaker 1: her stepchildren to pawn items from their home for cash.
Speaker 1: So James wasn't having any of this, and he asked
Speaker 1: Marianne to leave. Um he did, and a surprisingly great
Speaker 1: move for his son, retained custody of George, and of
Speaker 1: the four husbands that she had, James is the only
Speaker 1: one who survived being married to mary Anne. And we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about all of her husbands, so we've gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where she moves to a fourth marriage.
Speaker 1: This was to a man named Frederick Cotton. Desperate without
Speaker 1: a husband, mary Anne's friend Margaret Cotton, introduced Marianne to
Speaker 1: her brother, Frederick. Frederick was a recent widower as well.
Speaker 1: He had two children who were named Frederick Jr. And
Speaker 1: Charles Edward, and it was not long before Marianne and
Speaker 1: Frederick Cotton were married. But there was a small, big
Speaker 1: problem with mary Anne's marriage to Frederick though. Um she
Speaker 1: was still actually legally married to her third husband, James,
Speaker 1: which makes this fourth marriage to Frederick an active bigamy, which,
Speaker 1: as we all know, not legal. Definitely. I always find
Speaker 1: this to be an interesting aspect of her story because
Speaker 1: she is known publicly as mary Anne Cotton. But that
Speaker 1: was the one last name that never legally was hers.
Speaker 1: I know it's it's it's sort of cookie, but it's
Speaker 1: the last name she took, so I understand why it stuck.
Speaker 1: But yes, so bigamy, though was not the only thing
Speaker 1: that was complicating this, this marriage. We're going to use
Speaker 1: air quotes when we say marriage to Frederick. You'll recall
Speaker 1: earlier we mentioned a man named Joseph Natraz who was
Speaker 1: one of mary Anne's lovers. She was in a relationship
Speaker 1: with him women you know earlier in this episode. Um So,
Speaker 1: shortly after she married Frederick, mary Anne learned that Joseph
Speaker 1: had become single again, and hearing about this, she convinced
Speaker 1: Frederick to move closer to where Joseph lived. But the
Speaker 1: why of the move was most definitely not known to Frederick.
Speaker 1: But they packed up and they went, and then she
Speaker 1: secretly rekindled her old romance. She stayed married to Frederick,
Speaker 1: but spoiler alert, not for a whole lot longer. Frederick,
Speaker 1: their infant son, Robert, Frederick's child from a previous marriage,
Speaker 1: Frederick Jr. And Frederick's sister Margaret, who had introduced them,
Speaker 1: all died very quickly, and all from undetermined stomach ailments.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, right Joseph then became ill with
Speaker 1: suspected typhoid fever, and he also died not long after
Speaker 1: Frederick had passed a way and conveniently from mary Anne
Speaker 1: his death happened just after he revised his will in
Speaker 1: her favor. Yeah, even though they were not married, right,
Speaker 1: but she got everything. She still got everything. By eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, mary Anne had lost an astonishing number of
Speaker 1: family members and close friends sixteen sixteen, but there was
Speaker 1: one left, her seven year old stepson, Charles Edward, who,
Speaker 1: just to help everybody keep track, was the son of
Speaker 1: her fourth husband, who she wasn't legally married to, Frederick.
Speaker 1: If it feels like this is the time for a
Speaker 1: flow chart, we concur. I completely agreed. There needs to
Speaker 1: be columns and colors right the branches that is there,
Speaker 1: more than one Charles is there. I have to just
Speaker 1: have to keep it all together. So Um, things get
Speaker 1: a little bit odd and suspicious at this part of
Speaker 1: this story. And I'm not suggesting that they weren't suspicious
Speaker 1: before now. But then this happened. Marianne went to a
Speaker 1: local workhouse and tried to give Charles this is Charles
Speaker 1: Edward to them. Yes, she did try to give away
Speaker 1: her stepchild, um, but they refused to take him a workhouse.
Speaker 1: If you happen to be wondering what that is um.
Speaker 1: In Victorian England, workhouses were primarily where poor and homeless
Speaker 1: people worked for food and accommodation. Women usually had domestic
Speaker 1: jobs like sewing, mended hard laborers such as stone breaking. Uh.
Speaker 1: They there's the people who live there were also It
Speaker 1: could include people who were physically and mentally ill, those
Speaker 1: who were disabled, elderly people who would now where to go. Um.
Speaker 1: And additionally, unmarried mothers also lived in the workhouses and
Speaker 1: so in general though, these were not places that you
Speaker 1: really wanted to be, and there were also orphaned and
Speaker 1: abandoned children who lived there. If you kind of look
Speaker 1: around in history for very long, you'll find instances of
Speaker 1: families who were simply too poor to provide for their
Speaker 1: kids and would give them to a workhouse. But no
Speaker 1: one ever wants to do that. Uh. Maryanne did not
Speaker 1: come under suspicion until she showed up at a workhouse
Speaker 1: looking to be done with her stepson. But there are
Speaker 1: actually two versions of the workhouse story that we want
Speaker 1: to get into here, right. So the first one was
Speaker 1: like this um when asked if she a recent widow,
Speaker 1: was planning to marry the man she was having a
Speaker 1: relationship with, Richard quick Man, she had gone back to him,
Speaker 1: if you recall he was one of her lovers we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, and she allegedly replied, and we quote this reply,
Speaker 1: it might be so, but the boy is in the way.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it won't matter, as I won't be troubled long.
Speaker 1: It's an aluminous a little bit, a little bit suspicious
Speaker 1: little bit is that could be long, like uneasy making.
Speaker 1: I'll figure this out with your help or without it. Um.
Speaker 1: The second version of this workhouse story goes like this,
Speaker 1: that the coroner in town asked Marianne to help care
Speaker 1: for a woman who was ill with smallpox. She was,
Speaker 1: as you'll recall, trained as a nurse after all, at
Speaker 1: least for a while, but her response probably was not
Speaker 1: as he might have expected. Instead of a yes or
Speaker 1: a no, she replied that if he wanted her to
Speaker 1: do this, she was going to have to commit her
Speaker 1: stepson to a workhouse first. When the workhouse thing didn't
Speaker 1: work out either whichever story you know, it's true or not.
Speaker 1: It didn't work out, and poor Charles ended up staying
Speaker 1: with Marianne, and he died when in five days um So.
Speaker 1: Unlike the dozen or so deaths before him, Charles's death
Speaker 1: didn't go unnoticed. We were looking at multiple versions of
Speaker 1: what went down here, and there are two versions of
Speaker 1: this story about the death. Yeah, it's the dovetail of
Speaker 1: like splitting realities. There are two versions of the workhouse
Speaker 1: part and two versions of what actually happened when Charles died.
Speaker 1: So in the first version, Charles's death seemed suspicious to
Speaker 1: the manager of the workhouse that Marianne had spoken with,
Speaker 1: and he contacted the police. This is probably not the
Speaker 1: real version that happened though, right, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: difficult to think that, and it's it's hard to find
Speaker 1: sources that would suggest that five to you know, even
Speaker 1: a week later, the manager of the workhouse would even
Speaker 1: know that that happened. Um, but it is out there,
Speaker 1: so we want to address it. The second version is
Speaker 1: where the coroner, who was also a parish official, was
Speaker 1: suspicious of the child's death after Marianne's comment, and he's
Speaker 1: the one who went to the police. He also convinced
Speaker 1: the attending physician to delay writing a death certificate until
Speaker 1: the circumstances of the boy's death could be investigated. And
Speaker 1: it's this version where we hear that Marianne also went
Speaker 1: to the insurance office and discovered that no money would
Speaker 1: be paid out to her for Charles's death until the
Speaker 1: death certificate was actually issued. But regardless of which of
Speaker 1: these stories is the real deal, the story ends with
Speaker 1: the authorities concluding that Marianne had poisoned the boy, and
Speaker 1: they also suspected that they knew how she had done it,
Speaker 1: with that magical star of the season, arsenic arsenic. So finally,
Speaker 1: after twenty years of mysterious deaths and probable poisonings, it
Speaker 1: was only after the death of her one stepson that
Speaker 1: finally the suspicion fell upon mary Anne and the authorities
Speaker 1: were totally right. We're going to take a quick break
Speaker 1: from Marianne's story, uh, and we will hear from one
Speaker 1: of our sponsors. But when we return, we're going to
Speaker 1: dive into mary Anne's trial. Welcome back to from Analia.
Speaker 1: So let's get to talking about mary Anne's trial and
Speaker 1: her boxed execution. Arsenic was mary Anne's weapon of choice,
Speaker 1: as it was for a lot of people who poisoned
Speaker 1: in Victorian England. As we have talked about throughout this
Speaker 1: entire season, Arsenic was a very popular poison because it
Speaker 1: was both easy to administer and easily accessible. It's believed
Speaker 1: that mary Anne's method was to brew poisoned tea and
Speaker 1: serve it to her victims. She was suspected of all
Speaker 1: of these poisonings, but at this point in her story,
Speaker 1: no one had actually performed any tests, taken any samples.
Speaker 1: Nothing had happened yet. And in the meantime, a local
Speaker 1: newspaper became interested in the story and they started their
Speaker 1: own investigation into mary Anne, and their stories inspired a
Speaker 1: doctor by the name of William Kilburn to do his
Speaker 1: own scientific investigation. He had actually attended to Charles when
Speaker 1: the boy was ill, and he had taken and kept
Speaker 1: samples from his time with him, and when put to
Speaker 1: the test, doctor Kilburn confirmed that the samples from Charles's
Speaker 1: body contained arsenic He took his results to the police
Speaker 1: and Marianne was arrested and charged with murder. So we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about women who have murdered many people, adults, children,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, friends, family, So there is this world where
Speaker 1: husbands and children can be poisoned without the attention of authorities.
Speaker 1: But there are there are reasons. This was a time
Speaker 1: when there was a problem with substandard nutrition among working poor.
Speaker 1: There was a high infant mortality rate, which was just
Speaker 1: a fact of life at the time. And as we
Speaker 1: talked about before, let's not forget that the record keeping
Speaker 1: well sketchy at this time as well. Right, the life
Speaker 1: expectancy was a little different. So when people died it
Speaker 1: was tragic, but kind of a shrugger in many ways. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a part of sort of daily life.
Speaker 1: In March eighteen seventy three, Marianne Cotton was put on trial.
Speaker 1: The prosecution was led by Charles Russell. His team called
Speaker 1: several of mary Anne's neighbors as witnesses. According to two
Speaker 1: local newspapers, The hailes Worth Times in the East Suffolk Advertiser,
Speaker 1: these witnesses did not paint a flattering picture of mary Anne.
Speaker 1: Little Foster and his team were responsible. From mary Anne's defense,
Speaker 1: Dr Kilburn testified that he had found arsenic in Charles's body,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, the defense team then asked the doctor about
Speaker 1: wallpaper in the boy's room. And this actually isn't as
Speaker 1: weird as it sounds, because during this time arsenic was
Speaker 1: used to make a lot of things green clothing, you know,
Speaker 1: he's sort of fabrics, wallpaper, lots of things turned green
Speaker 1: because of arsenic, and it was suggested by the defense
Speaker 1: that Charles had been poisoned by fumes from the wallpaper,
Speaker 1: but not by mary Anne. And Dr kil Warren discounted
Speaker 1: this whole proposition, and he replied that not only were
Speaker 1: the walls in the boy's room not green, he thought
Speaker 1: that the idea of death by inhaling arsenic from your
Speaker 1: wallpaper was dubious at best. Yeah, it's such an odd
Speaker 1: defense because it would bring up so many other questions, Well,
Speaker 1: why isn't anybody else sick? That was, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting way to try to defend her. But
Speaker 1: going back to scientific evidence, it was not only doctor
Speaker 1: Kilburn who found arsenic in Charles's body. A doctor at
Speaker 1: Leeds College of Medicine also tested samples and also concluded
Speaker 1: that the boy had died after being small but repeated
Speaker 1: doses of arsenic. He too suggested that death by green
Speaker 1: wallpaper was highly unlikely. Additionally, both doctors also reported that
Speaker 1: they noticed similar symptoms were reported in three other people
Speaker 1: who Maryanne was accused of murdering. So let's get back
Speaker 1: to Marianne for a second. So how was she holding
Speaker 1: up through all of this, I mean this is she's
Speaker 1: on trial for murder. The local papers reported that she
Speaker 1: paid very close attention to the evidence, that she occasionally
Speaker 1: smiled during her trial, but mostly she held a demeanor
Speaker 1: that you could expect from someone who's on trial for murder.
Speaker 1: She appeared fearful. The trial lasted three days before the
Speaker 1: jury went out to deliberate, and it only took them
Speaker 1: about an hour before they returned. She was found guilty
Speaker 1: for the lethal poisoning of her fourth husband's son, Charles
Speaker 1: Edward Cotton, in the court of public opinion, though she
Speaker 1: was convicted of many, many more killings, many so though
Speaker 1: she was never put to trial for any of these murders,
Speaker 1: she was held responsible for the lethal poisonings of and
Speaker 1: this is a list eleven of her children, three of
Speaker 1: her four husbands, one lover, one friend, and her mother
Speaker 1: and in almost every instance, in fact, I think it's
Speaker 1: the I think it's only Frederick's sister Margaret that this
Speaker 1: doesn't hold true for mary Anne collected life insurance on
Speaker 1: every single one of them. An interesting note about the
Speaker 1: man mary Anne did not poison. She didn't kill her
Speaker 1: third husband, James Robinson, who seems to have survived because,
Speaker 1: if you recall from earlier, he refused to take out
Speaker 1: a life insurance policy on himself and in regard to
Speaker 1: her children to survive. Her daughter, Margaret Edith Quickmanning, who
Speaker 1: was born while Marianne was in jail awaiting trial, survived,
Speaker 1: although we don't actually really know what became of her
Speaker 1: after her birth. And her son George from her marriage
Speaker 1: to James Robinson survived almost certainly because James kept custody
Speaker 1: of him. While waiting for her execution, Marianne did give
Speaker 1: a final statement, and included in that statement she claimed
Speaker 1: something very interesting. She claimed that although she had indeed
Speaker 1: administered the arsenic, she had not done so intentionally. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's innocent until the very end. Was she like,
Speaker 1: I just kept accidentally putting it in everybody's drinks. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I thought I was doing. I honestly
Speaker 1: had trouble with that. I was like, how could she
Speaker 1: not know? I didn't do it on purpose. I just
Speaker 1: mixed it in because I thought it was sugar. I
Speaker 1: don't did it, Yeah, I just did it. So on
Speaker 1: on March three, at the age of forty, Marianne was
Speaker 1: hanged at Durham County Jail. Her execution was really well
Speaker 1: publicized and there were as many as fifty people who
Speaker 1: came as spectators just to watch it happen. It's an
Speaker 1: afternoon for him. So her execution, however, did not go
Speaker 1: as planned. And this is really grim, so bear bear
Speaker 1: with us on this um it's sure, I promise. The
Speaker 1: hangman is the person who calculates the drop distance required
Speaker 1: to break the prisoner's neck, so it's based on the
Speaker 1: prisoners weight, their height, just sort of their general build.
Speaker 1: But this day and this hangman misjudged the drop distance
Speaker 1: and instead of breaking the prisoner's neck, Mary actually died
Speaker 1: of a slow choking death instead. And Mary Anne, it seems,
Speaker 1: has a bit of a legacy. It did not take
Speaker 1: long for Madame Tussaut's to decide to include Mary Anne
Speaker 1: and the Chamber of Horrors area of the Wax Museum
Speaker 1: where the wax figures of other prominent murderers from history
Speaker 1: we're on display. And this is what the exhibition catalog
Speaker 1: stated about Mary An. This is a quote this series
Speaker 1: of cold blooded murders for which this wretch was hanged
Speaker 1: on the morning of Monday, March seventy three are crimes
Speaker 1: against which no punishment in history can atone for the
Speaker 1: child she rocked on her knee today was poisoned tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Most of her murders were committed for petty gains, and
Speaker 1: she killed husbands and children with the unconcern of a
Speaker 1: farm girl killing poultry. The story of her crimes is
Speaker 1: still fresh in the public mind and that's the end
Speaker 1: of the quote. And today, and actually this has been
Speaker 1: the case since ninety two, you can see Mary Anne's
Speaker 1: small black wedgwood teapots, said to be the one in
Speaker 1: which she brewed her arsenic placed teas, and that is
Speaker 1: at the Beamish Museum in the United Kingdom. So we're
Speaker 1: going to the Beamish Museum, yes, as soon as possible, right,
Speaker 1: as soon as we don't have to wear masks anymore.
Speaker 1: Where I totally want to do a poison tour. The
Speaker 1: good stories absolutely, Like early on in the season we
Speaker 1: had a woman named Tilly Clinic and you can still
Speaker 1: go to her house. I want to go to her house,
Speaker 1: but I gotta get to Chicago. So let's end mary
Speaker 1: Anne's story with a little bit of curiously a nursery rhyme.
Speaker 1: It was written shortly after her execution and dedicated to her,
Speaker 1: Maryanne Cotton. She's dead and she's rotten, lying in bed
Speaker 1: with her eyes wide open, sing sing, oh what should
Speaker 1: I sing? It goes on, but I won't. Mary Anne's poison,
Speaker 1: Holly was arsenic. But let's please say that yours is
Speaker 1: not not today? Okay, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, So for this
Speaker 1: edition of What's Your Poison? I always when I'm trying
Speaker 1: to come up with something, I think about pieces of
Speaker 1: the story that, for some reason or another stick in
Speaker 1: my head. And in the instance of mary Anne, the
Speaker 1: things that really just stuck with me where James Robinson,
Speaker 1: who thankfully had the wisdom to get out of that situations, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that man and saving his child, right, he's
Speaker 1: the highlight of this whole story, he is. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot to be like giggly about this one at all.
Speaker 1: And also the teapot, and so I thought it would
Speaker 1: be nice to make a warm tea dedicated to James
Speaker 1: that we're going to call the one that Got Away.
Speaker 1: I love this and I don't even know what comes
Speaker 1: in it yet. Oh it's very simple and yummy. You
Speaker 1: can make it without the alcohol. It's another one of those,
Speaker 1: and you can you can switch up the nature of
Speaker 1: how you serve it if you want so. Uh, in
Speaker 1: a saucepan. First of all, make your cup of tea
Speaker 1: however you like, like a black tea. Um And then
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, should it be a black tea or could
Speaker 1: you use like an herbal? Would you prefer a black
Speaker 1: on this one? I think you're gonna want a black
Speaker 1: tea on this one. You could do a herbal, but
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be overwhelmed by other flavors.
Speaker 1: That's what I want, dirt. Yeah, So while you're brewing
Speaker 1: your tea in a small saucepan, you're also going to
Speaker 1: take a half cup of milk. I used oat milk,
Speaker 1: you can use whatever kind you like. A quarter cup
Speaker 1: of heavy cream, an ounce of maple syrup, and then
Speaker 1: just a dash of cinnamon, and you're just gonna let
Speaker 1: that start to bubble around the edges. You don't want
Speaker 1: it to boil over and get a skin. It's more
Speaker 1: very like the lowest low simmer, so that your ingredients
Speaker 1: are combining. You know, cinnamon is never going to dissolve completely,
Speaker 1: but you it will clump up for a while before
Speaker 1: it gets warm enough to really disperse through the whole
Speaker 1: thing pretty evenly. So once that is done and you've
Speaker 1: got your tea in this milk concoction, you're gonna put
Speaker 1: an ounce and a half of bourbon in your cup,
Speaker 1: pour in your tea, and then pour in this maple
Speaker 1: milk with cinnamon. You can sweeten it more if you like,
Speaker 1: and you can drink it as it is hot. But
Speaker 1: you can also put it over ice like. You can
Speaker 1: either it cool first, or you can do that thing
Speaker 1: where you transfer it back and forth in vessels with
Speaker 1: ice that it cools more quickly and it is very
Speaker 1: delicious cold. I must say, throw a cinnamon stick in that,
Speaker 1: and don't tell people it was inspired by poison, and
Speaker 1: tell them it's like you're you're yummy Thanksgiving, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: post dinner cocktail or. Um. Take the bourbon out and
Speaker 1: give it to your son George. Right without the bourbon,
Speaker 1: it's still super nice because it's a maple cinnamon latte
Speaker 1: made with tea basically. At that point, Um, and again,
Speaker 1: I also want to make sure I stress because you know,
Speaker 1: I like everybody to customize everything to the way they
Speaker 1: like it. You can use as much or as little
Speaker 1: of that milk mixture as you wish. I like, you know,
Speaker 1: one part tea, one part the milk mixture, because I
Speaker 1: do like things to be very much in that latte
Speaker 1: space um where there's a lot of dairy. But if
Speaker 1: you want to lean more heavily on the tea or
Speaker 1: the milk, you totally do it. It sounds delicious bourbon,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to need to make it because it
Speaker 1: sounds very holiday ish and I'm feeling very holiday ish,
Speaker 1: So maybe this one is going to have to happen. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you once again for joining us today and spending
Speaker 1: this time with us, and we cannot wait to meet
Speaker 1: you back here next week for another poison story. Criminalia
Speaker 1: is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
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