She Stands Accused | Page 5

lovers inconvenient, and
who thus at second hand murdered some six hundred persons, has her
attractions for the criminological writer. The bother is that so many of
them have found it out. The scanty material regarding her has been
turned over so often that it has become somewhat tattered, and has
worn rather thin for refashioning. The same may be said for Hieronyma
Spara, a direct poisoner and Toffana's contemporary.
The fashion they set passed to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, and she,
with La Vigoureux and La Voisin, has been written up so often that the
task of finding something new to say of her and her associates looks far
too formidable for a man as lethargic as myself.
In the abundance of material that criminal history provides about
women choice becomes difficult. There is, for example, a plethora of
women poisoners. Wherever a woman alone turns to murder it is a
hundred to one that she will select poison as a medium. This at first
sight may seem a curious fact, but there is for it a perfectly logical
explanation, upon which I hope later to touch briefly. The concern of
this book, however, is not purely with murder by women, though
murder will bulk largely. Swindling will be dealt with, and casual
allusion made to other crimes.
But take for the moment the women accused or convicted of poisoning.
What an array they make! What monsters of iniquity many of them
appear! Perhaps the record, apart from those set up by Toffana and the
Brinvilliers contingent, is held by the Van der Linden woman of
Leyden, who between 1869 and 1885 attempted to dispose of 102
persons, succeeded with no less than twenty-seven, and rendered at
least forty-five seriously ill. Then comes Helene Jegado, of France,
who, according to one account, with two more working years (eighteen
instead of sixteen), contrived to envenom twenty-six people, and
attempted the lives of twelve more. On this calculation she fails by one
to reach the der Linden record, but, even reckoning the two extra years
she had to work in, since she made only a third of the other's essays,
her bowling average may be said to be incomparably better.

Our own Mary Ann Cotton, at work between 1852 and 1873, comes in
third, with twenty-four deaths, at least known, as her bag. Mary Ann
operated on a system of her own, and many of her victims were her
own children. She is well worth the lengthier consideration which will
be given her in later pages.
Anna Zwanziger, the earlier `monster' of Bavaria, arrested in 1809, was
an amateur compared with those three.
Mrs Susannah Holroyd, of Ashton-under-Lyne, charged in September
of 1816 at the Lancashire Assizes with the murder by poison of her
husband, her own son, and the infant child of Anna Newton, a lodger of
hers, was nurse to illegitimate children. She was generally suspected of
having murdered several of her charges, but no evidence, as far as I can
learn, was brought forward to give weight to the suspicion at her trial.
Then there were Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins, found guilty, at
Liverpool Assizes in February 1884, of poisoning Thomas Higgins,
husband of the latter of the accused, by the administration of arsenic.
The ladies were sisters, living together in Liverpool. With them in the
house in Skirvington Street were Flanagan's son John, Thomas Higgins
and his daughter Mary, Patrick Jennings and his daughter Margaret.
John Flanagan died in December 1880. His mother drew the insurance
money. Next year Thomas Higgins married the younger of the sisters,
and in the year following Mary Higgins, his daughter, died. Her
stepmother drew the insurance money. The year after that Margaret
Jennings, daughter of the lodger, died. Once again insurance money
was drawn, this time by both sisters.
Thomas Higgins passed away that same year in a house to which what
remained of the menage had removed. He was on the point of being
buried, as having died of dysentery due to alcoholism, when the
suspicions of his brother led the coroner to stop the funeral. The brother
had heard word of insurance on the life of Thomas. A post-mortem
revealed the fact that Thomas had actually died of arsenic poisoning;
upon which discovery the bodies of John Flanagan, Mary Higgins, and
Margaret Jennings were exhumed for autopsy, which revealed arsenic
poisoning in each case. The prisoners alone had attended the deceased
in the last illnesses. Theory went that the poison had been obtained by
soaking fly-papers. Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins were executed at
Kirkdale Gaol in March of 1884.

Now, these are two cases which, if only minor in the wholesale
poisoning line when compared with the Van der Linden, Jegado, and
Cotton envenomings, yet have their points of interest. In