Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised.

This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13.

A woman's work, it said, is never finished.

You'll remember the old rhyming couplet.

Man may work from sun to sun, but woman's work is never done.

This couldn't be more true than in Victorian England,

where freedoms like owning property and managing finances

were legally out of a woman's control.

Their fates were defined by the men they married and then served.

Mary Ann Cotton despised this wily servitude.

She soon found that she valued her husbands

far less than the insurance policies on their lives.

Time and time again, she found widowed life suited her but she didn't stop there.

Eventually everyone proved more valuable dead.

Mary Ann Cotton may have murdered as many as 21 victims over two decades, including

stepchildren, lovers, friends, even her own daughters.

Almost no one in her life it seemed was safe from death at

Marianne's hands. Hi, I'm Greg Polson.

From the Parcast Network, this is Serial Killers.

Today we're going to examine the life of Mary Ann Cotton,

Britain's forgotten first female serial killer.

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