A carved souvenir reputed to be of serial killer Mary Ann Cotton... and how many teapots did she actually possess?

THIS is a macabre memento of Mary Ann Cotton, carved out of her own Bible box or jewellery box.

The Northern Echo:

It is so macabre that some people we have shown it to have refused to touch it for fear that the evil of Britain’s greatest mass murderess might rub off on to them.

ITV has nicknamed Mary Ann Cotton “the Dark Angel”, and her story has been told with Joanne Froggatt playing the one-time nurse who poisoned 21 of her husbands, lovers, children, stepsons and possibly even her own mother.

Mrs Cotton was arrested in West Auckland, the scene of her last murder, and hanged in Durham Jail on March 24, 1873.

This 9cm, or 3ins, high wooden curio is said to have been carved out of one of the close personal possessions that she left in her house on The Green after the police took her away on July 18, 1872. With a scarf tied around its head and fastened at the neck in a bow, the carving certainly looks like the only known photograph of Mrs Cotton, which was taken when she was in custody by a Durham City photographer.

The trinket remained in West Auckland until about 30 years ago when it came into the possession of a Darlington couple, who have kindly lent it to us.

OF COURSE, apart from the story of its provenance, we have no proof that our model is connected to Mary Ann Cotton. Such was the lurid interest in her case, there were probably all sorts of grisly souvenirs of dubious authenticity produced around the time of her execution – Memories 303 reproduced the lyrics of a “penny dreadful” which was sold, setting her terrible deeds to a popular tune.

Memories 303 also included a picture of Mrs Cotton’s weapon of choice – her black teapot – which is in Beamish Museum. Mrs Cotton would make a hot brew in the teapot, sprinkle in some arsenic and whoever drank a cuppa from it would die soon after of symptoms which a doctor would diagnose as gastroenteritis.

But Christine Theakston writes from Barton. She remembers back in 2011 that we told a similar story about a different teapot, and then she noticed that in the concluding episode of Dark Angel, Mrs Cotton deliberately threw the black teapot away to hide the evidence of her crimes.

“Was this poetic licence?” asks Christine.

Beamish Museum’s teapot was in West Auckland until the 1930s when an old lady gave it to her local doctor. He died in 1972 and his widow disliked the murderous connection and so had it passed onto the museum, along with a rickety three-legged stool on which Mrs Cotton reputedly perched while doing her poisoning.

But in 2011, Memories told of a two-tone teapot which photographer Ernie Bishop had acquired in the mid-1950s, again from a source in West Auckland. He made a splash with the teapot in photographs. Although the two-tone teapot has since disappeared from public view, an anonymous caller tells Memories that it is still in use in Front Street, West Auckland (in use for tea-making rather than poisoning, of course).

So which one is the real Cotton teapot, or did Mary Ann dispose of it altogether when she feared exposure? We shall probably never know.

If you have the two-tone teapot, or any other Mary Ann Cotton connections, we’d love to hear from you.

The Northern Echo: STREET SCENE: Front Street, West Auckland, today. The three storey building on the left is Mary Ann Cotton's last home where her last victim died and where she was arrested on July 18, 1872. Next door is a double-fronted pinkish building which used to

STREET SCENE: Front Street, West Auckland, today. The three storey building on the left is Mary Ann Cotton's last home where her last victim died and where she was arrested on July 18, 1872. Next door is a double-fronted pinkish building which used to be the Rose and Crown. It was here that the inquest into Mary Ann's last victim was held on July 13, 1872. Moving right again, the three-storey building behind the tree has a door in its middle which used to lead through to Lockey's Yard behind. On the site of the first two storey building there used to be a pub, which is believed to have been John Lockey's Turf Inn early in the 19th Century. On the right of the picture are a three storey pink house and a two storey green one. These used to be the Golden Fleece Hotel, run by Edward Lockey. The green building contains a distinctive round window which was the trademark of the Teesdale builder who inserted it around 1800 – he also put similar windows into buildings in Barnard Castle and Bowes (please let us know which ones!). The roof of the pink building fell in on Edward Lockey in 1875 when he was adding the top storey.

HOW’S this for a claim to fame: Mary Ann Cotton knew my great-grandfather.

In Memories 303, we mentioned that a yard behind Mrs Cotton’s last address on Front Street, West Auckland, was called Lockeys Terrace. There were six or seven early 19th Century houses in the terrace, which was cleared in the mid-1970s.

Peter Lockey writes from Bishop Auckland to say that this yard was named after his great-great-grandfather, John Lockey, who was a cartwright, butcher, horsedealer and innkeeper. When John died in 1835 – “deeply lamented by a large family”, according to a contemporary newspaper – John was running the Turf Hotel, which was a couple of doors from where Mrs Cotton would come to live.

His son, Edward, also had many business interests. Among them was running the Fleece Inn on Front Street in the 1870s.

He would have become aware of Mrs Cotton almost immediately she moved into the village with her new husband, Fred, in July 1871, if only because she encountered such a desperately bad run of luck.

Fred died within two months of coming to West, so she took in a lodger, Joseph Nattrass (who was also her lover). Then, in the spring of 1872, three of her sons died in quick succession followed by the lodger, all from the same intestinal complaint.

In May 1872, she moved into 13, Front Street, a few doors from the Fleece and close to Lockeys Yard. There, her bad fortune continued because she fell pregnant by another lover and her last surviving stepson, Charles, aged seven, died on July 12. He’d been right as rain one minute and dead the next from tummy troubles.

Edward Lockey’s doctor, Dr Archibald Chalmers, was among the local medics who were worried about this run of bad luck and called in the police.

Mrs Cotton was arrested at 13, Front Street on July 18 and taken to Bishop Auckland police station in Bondgate – and Mr Lockey’s claim to fame is that he provided the transport that carried her away.

Mary Ann never returned to the village, and some of her possessions were spirited away from her home and were apparently turned, as we’ve seen, into macabre mementos.

Mr Cotton’s other claim to fame is that, on February 19, 1875, when he was having work done on The Fleece, the roof fell in. This almost ruined him, but he rebuilt, adding a third storey, which can still be seen today.