How Mary Ann Cotton's grandsons died as war heroes

The Edwardses moved from West Auckland to Leasingthorne and adopted Margaret, so she began using their surname.

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Aged 17 in late 1890, Margaret married Joseph Fletcher, a south Durham miner, and in 1892, they had a daughter, Clara, who was born at Windlestone. In May 1893, they sailed on RMS Umbria from Liverpool to New York. They were bound for mining territory in Pennsylvania, according to the ship’s manifest, but when their son, William, was born, they were in Boston where, when Margaret was pregnant for a third time, Joseph was killed crossing a railway track.

In October 1894, she sailed with her two infants back to south Durham and lived in Spennymoor where her third child, John Joseph, was born in 1895.

In 1897, her adoptive father, William, died aged 54 and so Margaret and her three children moved in with her adoptive mother, Sarah, was running the Greyhound Inn in Ferryhill Market Place. In 1901, Margaret married Ferryhill miner Robinson Kell and had his son, Robinson, and soon began to suffer eye problems.

The Greyhound Inn in Ferryhill Market Place, which was run by Margaret and her adoptive mother, Sarah. Picture: Google StreetView

When the First World War broke out, Margaret’s two older sons went off to fight.

John joined the Yorkshire Regiment, rose to be a lance corporal, and was killed, on June 11, 1917, at the Battle of Messines, near Ypres, when a mortar shell exploded over his head. His body was not recovered and so his name is on the Menin Gate at Ypres. He was 22.

William joined the Durham Light Infantry and ended up in the London Rifles. He was seriously injured in 1918 on the Somme, but refused to be sent home. He died, aged 24, in a field hospital on November 4 - a week before the armistice. He is buried in Cambrai cemetery.

Both of Mary Ann Cotton's grandsons have their names engraved on Ferryhill War Memorial.

Ferryhill war memorial

Margaret, their mother, remained in Ferryhill. She lost her sight and when she died, aged 81, on August 19, 1954, her family described her as an "immensely private, intelligent, warm and kind-hearted, and a devoted wife, mother and grandmother".

Two of her children, Clara and Robinson, outlived her, and we understand they still have descendants in south Durham.

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EVEN in a Mary Ann Cotton story there is an old car angle.
“There are some interesting cars, including two built in Bradford, in your picture of Durham court in the 1940s,” says Phil Hunt in Barningham.
“The nearest to the camera looks like a Rover 12, but the next is a Bradford Van by Jowett, then a fastback Standard Vanguard and the fastback Jowett Javelin.” A “fastback” – a very 1950s word – was a rear of a car which sloped gradually from the end of the roof to the back bumper.
“I’m not sure about the next, but it is obviously UK built,” continues Phil, “and further along is another Vanguard and a Ford Anglia.
“Seeing two from Jowett is quite surprising. Their factory at Idle in Bradford ran from before the First World War until 1954, when it was sold to International Harvester for building tractors.
“The Bradford van was typical of their pre-war designs. A flat twin engine powered a rugged vehicle well suited for steep Pennine roads. 
“The Javelin, and its sports-car variant the Jupiter, was a more adventurous design, easily capable of 80mph, which was better than most mass-production vehicles at the time. The Javelin and van bodies were built by Briggs Motor Bodies, who also made bodies for Ford. Jowett came to an end when Briggs withdrew from the contract.”

READ MORE: THE FULL STORY OF MARY ANN COTTON: HER CRIMES AND HER EXECUTION