Britain’s First Female Serial Killer: The Mary Ann Cotton Story

·10 min·1 clip

The community processed their horror by creating a grim rhyme: 'Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten.'

This episode explores the chilling story of Mary Ann Cotton, Britain's first documented female serial killer who poisoned up to 21 family members in Victorian England. It examines both her calculated murders using arsenic and the societal conditions of poverty, high mortality rates, and limited women's rights that created the environment where such crimes could go undetected for years.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Crime, Murder, Mystery