Over a century ago the case of Mary Ann Cotton shocked the nation. She is thought to have murdered as many as fifteen people and a number of these died while she was living in Sunderland Tyne & Wear. Born in Low Moorsley, Mary Ann arrived in Sunderland after living for a number of years in Somerset and Cornwall. She found work as a nurse at Sunderland Infirmary at the bottom of Chester Road (now part of Sunderland University). In August 1865 she married George Ward a former patient from the Infirmary.
Her first husband had died some months before of gastric fever, which had similar symptoms to arsenic poisoning. The following year Ward died in similar circumstances. In 1866 she went to work as a housekeeper to James Robinson, a widower, who she later married. She left three years later three of Robinson's children and one of her own had died from gastric fever.
The suspicious deaths of those close to Mary Ann continued until she was finally arrested in West Auckland after the death of a stepson. On the 25th March 1873 Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham Jail. After Mary Ann's execution children in Sunderland had a new rhyme.
Mary Ann Cotton She's dead and forgotten She lies in a grave With her bones all rotten Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing' Mary Ann Cotton is tied up wi'string Where, where' up in the air sellin' black puddens a penny a pair.
