A TEAPOT and stool belonging to one of the country's most prolific killers form part of a fascinating and sometimes macabre exhibition to be staged at a North-East museum at the weekend.

The items, once owned by Mary Ann Cotton, of West Auckland, County Durham, will be part of a Policing Through the Ages display, at Beamish Museum, near Stanley.

The Victorian poisoner married three times, and in 20 years killed husbands, children, step-children, friends and relatives with arsenic.

Her motives were either insurance money, re-marriage or sheer spite, and each time she was able to move on to a place where no one knew her.

She was hanged in Durham Prison in 1873 for poisoning a child, but is believed to have killed up to 21 people.

The exhibition includes artefacts from the collections of the museum and Durham Police, as well as personal items belonging to members of the North-Eastern Police History Society.

Included in the display in the Cookson Room will be Victorian leg irons and manacles used on prisoners in police cells and police uniforms, helmets and truncheons through the ages.

There will also be archive photographs and documentation of convicts and police forces from the mid-19th and early 20th Centuries.

The exhibition will be opened at 10.30am on Saturday by Lord MacKenzie of Framwellgate, the spokesman on police matters in the House of Lords.

The exhibition will be open from 10am to 4.30pm on Saturday and Sunday, with members of the North-Eastern Police History Society available to share their knowledge, expertise and memories with visitors.

Published: 29/06/2004