THE North-East holds a false view of Mary Ann Cotton and needs to accept she was a cold, calculating, psychotic serial killer. So says a TV criminologist. Mark Tallentire reports.

“PEOPLE in the North-East genuinely believe she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

“They think I’m wrong to suggest she was a serial killer – or even killed the one person she was convicted of killing.

“People have a false view of who she was and what she did.”

Those are the words of David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, and presenter of Channel 5’s Killers Behind Bars.

His new book, Mary Ann Cotton: Britain’s First Female Serial Killer, argues that even 140 years after the Black Widow killer was hanged at Durham jail, the North-East public is fooling itself.

The region believes she was wronged – poorly represented in court and convicted on flimsy grounds, Prof Wilson insists.

I caught up with the former prison governor and TV regular ahead of a public lecture in Alnwick, Northumberland.

A County Durham lad myself, I had never heard anyone suggest Cotton was innocent.

So who is?, I ask him.

“Virtually every single person I encountered,” he replies.

“They think she wasn’t well defended at court and that arsenic was common in Victorian England.

“Everybody I talked to had a view about Mary Ann Cotton and that was usually she was innocent.

“We should remember her as a cold, calculating, psychotic serial killer.”

Cotton was born in Low Moorsley, near Durham, in October 1832.

She was hanged on March 24, 1873, for the murder of her seven-year-old stepson, Charles Edward.

Three other murder charges and an accusation of bigamy were left on file.

But she widely regarded to have murdered up to 21 husbands, lovers and children.

Prof Wilson believes the number is 17, making her Britain’s third most prolific serial killer of all time.

She killed mainly by arsenic poisoning, a favourite of murderers down the centuries because it dissolves in hot liquid, and so is easily administered, and was previously readily available.

Cotton’s technique was said to be to add arsenic to tea.

The tea pot said to have contained the lethal additive now lies in Beamish Museum, although Prof Wilson refuses to believe it belonged to the killer.

His book focuses on notes he uncovered during his research written by Dr Thomas Scattergood, the first dean of Leeds University’s medical school, who gave evidence at Cotton’s trial.

The volumes, titled “The West Auckland Poisoning Cases” and previously left forgotten in the university’s library, reveal the doctor not only carried out tests on Charles Edward Cotton but also three other victims, whose bodies contained even higher levels of arsenic.

They are, the professor claims, proof that Cotton is a serial killer – and it’s time we woke up to that.

Mary Ann Cotton: Britain’s First Female Serial Killer, published by Waterside Press, is available now, priced £19.95.

Prof Wilson was speaking at Blackshaws garage in aid of Hospice Care North Northumberland.