Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story And Trial
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Victorian England harboured few monsters as chilling as Mary Ann Cotton — a soft-spoken widow who buried husband after husband, child after child, collecting insurance payouts while leaving a trail of arsenic-laced corpses across County Durham. Arthur Appleton's Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story and Trial reconstructs in meticulous detail the life of Britain's first recognised female serial killer, chronicling her impoverished origins, her calculated marriages, and the slow unravelling of her crimes that ultimately led her to the gallows in 1873. Appleton writes with the measured authority of a true crime historian, balancing forensic rigour with narrative drive to present a portrait of calculated evil that is as psychologically unsettling as it is historically significant. The work illuminates the broader social conditions of Victorian working-class life — poverty, high mortality, and the ease with which a determined woman could exploit the era's blind spots — leaving the reader to wrestle with the disturbing question of just how many deaths went unquestioned before justice finally caught up with Mary Ann Cotton.
Author: Arthur Appleton
Format: Hardback
Published: 1973, Michael Joseph
Genre: True crime
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Victorian England harboured few monsters as chilling as Mary Ann Cotton — a soft-spoken widow who buried husband after husband, child after child, collecting insurance payouts while leaving a trail of arsenic-laced corpses across County Durham. Arthur Appleton's Mary Ann Cotton: Her Story and Trial reconstructs in meticulous detail the life of Britain's first recognised female serial killer, chronicling her impoverished origins, her calculated marriages, and the slow unravelling of her crimes that ultimately led her to the gallows in 1873. Appleton writes with the measured authority of a true crime historian, balancing forensic rigour with narrative drive to present a portrait of calculated evil that is as psychologically unsettling as it is historically significant. The work illuminates the broader social conditions of Victorian working-class life — poverty, high mortality, and the ease with which a determined woman could exploit the era's blind spots — leaving the reader to wrestle with the disturbing question of just how many deaths went unquestioned before justice finally caught up with Mary Ann Cotton.