Wholesale Victorian Murderesses

The Victorian belief that women were the ‘weaker sex’ expected to devote themselves to family life made it inconceivable that they could commit murder. What drove a woman to murder her husband, lover, or child? Were they tragic, mad, or evil? This book explores notorious murder cases by seven women in nineteenth century Britain and America using court records, newspaper accounts, and letters. It delves into their lives, circumstances leading to their crimes, trials, and reasons for murder: Mary Ann Brough murdered her children out of fear of destitution; Sarah Drake's desperation to keep her job drove her crime. Money motivated Mary Ann Cotton, believed to have poisoned twenty-one people. Kate Bender lured victims to their deaths in ‘The Slaughter Pen’; Kate Webster brutally murdered and decapitated her employer; nurse Jane Toppan derived pleasure from watching victims die; Lizzie Borden was suspected of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe to live in affluent Fall River.