Genealogy Chat

Hi Jax,

Same here...........think we would have better things to watch.......it must be in my blood........Grandad, Brother and Father all police officers.....brother still serving.

Ann

I remember watching it not that long ago then reading up on her.

I think I must know about most serial killers by now with the amount of time I spend watching Investigation channel late at night

jax

Ugh I just checked out the wikipedia stuff...makes you wonder how she fitted it all in before the age of 40!

Just as well that they eventually caught up with her, otherwise she might have gone on for a lot longer. All those poor adults and children :-(

Hi Janet,

Yes I read that in this weeks paper.........how awful, I would have thought both incidents........fraud & non reporting of a death.

"The new penalty for not reporting a death was prison"
This has answered a thought I had tonight when I read the local paper. A man had lived with his deceased father for several months and claimed his fathers benefits. He is being sent to jail. It was described as an unusual case but I wondered if the jail sentence was for claiming his father's benefit payment or not reporting his death. Obviously both. -jl

Did anyone else see http://www.itv.com/PressCentre/MartinaColesLadyKillers/Ep5MaryAnnCottonWk46/default.html or read about it?

Just took a peek on Wiki.........not a pretty picture! :-(

Wow! Very interesting Ann...........Thankyou.

Morning Ladies,

Take a look on Wiki she was quite a character........got rid of all her OH's for the insurance money.........all children died with stomach problems presumed poisoned think she had about 13/14 some which were step children last one born in Durham prison prior to her hanging there

Annx

Thank you. She was included in this series:

http://www.itv.com/PressCentre/MartinaColesLadyKillers/Ep5MaryAnnCottonWk46/default.html

very interesting. I seem to remember having read about her before ... but not the effect she had on bmds!

Thanks

Interesting...thanks Ann! :-)

Thanks for sharing that, Ann.

Mary Ann Cotton and her importance to the civil death registration system.


Most of us have ancestors whose deaths cannot be found in the GRO indexes. We have Mary Ann Cotton to thank for the system changing in 1874.

Civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was introduced in England and Wales on July 1, 1837. It was meant to be compulsory, but a small fee was charged for each registration and the law specified no penalty for failure to register. There was no way round paying for a marriage licence if a union was to have any legal validity (although we do find cases of unregistered marriages), but many people, particularly the poor who lived some distance from the registrar's office, did not bother to register births and deaths. Why bother making a long journey to purchase a piece of paper which told you what you already knew? It was not necessary to obtain a death certificate before a corpse was disposed of - in fact the only reason to bother with a death certificate at all was if the deceased was insured and the insurance company demanded to see a death certificate before paying out. For the first few decades of the registration system, many births and deaths, possibly running into the millions, missed the official net. Then, in the autumn of 1872, a serial killer was uncovered almost by accident at West Auckland in County Durham, which obliged the authorities to have a rethink. This killer was a middle-aged woman who, in a rampage across the northeast between 1860 and 1872, may have poisoned as many as 21 people, mostly her own blood relatives, for their insurance money,

The ease with which Mary Ann Cotton (nee Robson; formerly Mowbray, Ward and Robinson) flouted the existing registration and insurance systems by constantly remarrying and changing her name and murdering with apparent impunity sufficiently disturbed the authorities such that nine months after her execution at Durham in March 1873, the fee for the registration of births and deaths was abolished (the marriage licence fee remained) and a substantial fine or imprisonment was introduced for failure to record a birth. The new penalty for not reporting a death was prison. From January 1, 1874 it also became necessary to obtain a death certificate, signed by a medic, before a funeral could proceed.

The genealogical world therefore owes a debt of gratitude to Mary Ann Cotton and her perversity. Before Mary Ann, many births and deaths went unrecorded. After Mary Ann, very few were.