William Mowbray: 'The Woman Who Kill'

During the course of the book, Women Who Kill, it tells the tales of women who as the name suggests kill. Some of the true stories were more gruesome or horrifying than others. Some the women were not convicted at all or were just accomplices of a man who killed. Some women were truly guilty of the crime they were accused with and a few could have been wrongly indicted. There were many different cases some similar to each other. The reason given for why each woman did what they did is almost similar in each story. For either money, power, necessity or unrequited love these women proved just what they were capable of doing in order to get just what they wanted. Out of the many stories included in this book of different murderesses there are …show more content…
Her life of a murderess did not start until she married her first husband. Before then she grew up in a religious environment and attached herself greatly to the church after her father was killed in a work accident. When she married her first husband they moved around so that William Mowbray, the first husband, could better himself but soon returned to their original home in South Hetton. During those years Mary gave birth to four children and each soon met their demise through an illness at that time said to be gastric fever. Mowbray was said to have gone on sea voyages and when he came back from his last one he grew violently ill until he died. Mary went into mourning, moved away and took a job as a nurse in Sunderland where she met George Ward. He fell in love with her, much to his misfortune, and they had not been married long when the same illness that took her children and first husband took him too. She went on the move again until she married James Robinson but to his luck he had caught her stealing and threw her out of the house. She left for Northumberland where she met Frederick Cotton. He asked her to marry him soon after they met not realizing she was already married, a fact that did not bother her, which she accepted the proposal. Cotton had two children of his own and Mary soon bore him another when she made them move to a different town. There she met again Joseph Nattrass which spelt disaster for her newest husband and family. Shortly after Mary’s meeting with Nattrass Mr. Cotton grew violently ill and died. When Nattrass went to stay with Mary she quickly made work of Cotton’s eldest child, her own child and Nattrass himself. Surprisingly she did not kill Mr. Cotton’s youngest child but tried to get him admitted to a workhouse where she was told children would not be admitted unless it was also with their parent. She cryptically