ON March 3, 1873, 150 years ago to the day, the Durham Spring Assizes opened, and Mary Ann Cotton was in the dock, facing four counts of murder – two of murdering her own sons, one of murdering her young stepson and another charge of murdering her lover, Joseph Nattrass.

On the first day of the hearing, Mary Ann may well have been accompanied by her baby, Margaret, to whom she had given birth in Durham jail on January 7. Margaret may well have been Joseph’s daughter, although Mary Ann had put the name of another, wealthier man on the birth certificate, perhaps in the hope that he would help her in her hour of need.

READ MORE: MARY ANN COTTON GIVES BIRTH 150 YEARS AGO

She needed all the help she could get.

The Attorney-General of England had taken charge of the case against her, and rather allow the Durham Attorney-General to prosecute her, he had sent up from London Charles Russell, the greatest legal mind of the day, to prove the case against her. Russell was ruthless and loud, and such were his talents that he earned £10,000-a-year (nearly £900,000 in today’s values).

The lawyers in Durham were outraged at this slight on their abilities, and questions were asked in the House of Commons, but it shows how seriously the authorities were taking the case and how Mrs Cotton was already a figure of national interest.

At the start of the hearing, the judge, Sir Thomas Dickson Archibald, asked Russell: “No one appears for the prisoner?”

To which Russell replied: “No, sir.”

Mary Ann was fighting for her life with no one in her corner. When arrested, she had instructed solicitor George Smith, of Gibbon Street, Bishop Auckland, to help her, but he advised her to say nothing, took her money and disappeared because he felt her case was hopeless.

Consequently, the local mood seems to have softened slightly towards her. Previously, people had been outraged by her alleged appalling crimes of poisoning her close family members to cash in their life insurance policies.

The Northern Echo: From The Northern Echo of February 28, 1873

From The Northern Echo of February 28, 1873

But as the day of the trial had drawn near, both The Northern Echo and the Darlington & Stockton Times reported how “a widespread sympathy was felt for the poor woman for having to meet the dreadful charges against her alone, helpless and undefended, while she was being prosecuted by most able counsel, and it seems to be the subject of general remark that she appears not to have a friend in the world to take her part”.

The D&S Times said: “A few influential gentlemen and tradespeople in Bishop Auckland, anxious that she should have a fair trial, be she innocent or guilty, are organising a fund for her defence.”

Still, there was no one representing her when the hearing started, so the judge appointed Thomas Campbell Foster, a 60-year-old barrister from Leeds. The judge wanted the trial to begin the following day, but Campbell Foster managed to gain another 24 hours in which to whistle up Mary Ann’s de-fence.

While waiting for the main act, the judge turned to the other cases before. A couple of bigamists got six months while Alice Lewis got 18 months hard labour for stealing £2 10d’s worth of pork from a Bishopwearmouth butcher. Hatter Thomas Johnson, 59, was given five years hard labour as he was caught with 35 counterfeit coins at Seaham Harbour.

The most remarkable case concerned chimneysweep Thomas Clark, of Washington, who was accused of the manslaughter of eight-year-old Christopher Drummond by sending him up a chimney at Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell’s mansion, Washington Hall (below).

The Northern Echo: Echo Memories - A postcard showing Washington New Hall on Wearside

Sir Isaac – the Tyneside chemical magnate whose most lucrative business was his ironworks on Teesside – was away at the time of the incident and expected the chimney to be cleaned out using rakes.

But the boy was sent up the 12 inch flue, in Sir Isaac’s fernery, three or four times until he stopped moving. Clark believed he fallen asleep and tried to use sticks “to stir him”.

“That did not do any good, and another small boy was sent for, and when he arrived, he was sent up the flue with a rope, which he attached to the deceased’s legs, by which he was pulled out of the flue,” said The Northern Echo. “He was then dead, having been suffocated.”

Clark was sentenced to six months hard labour, and then attention switched once again to Mary Ann Cotton’s case, as we shall see next week.

READ MORE: SENSATION AS MARY ANN COTTON ARRESTED 150 YEARS AGO

The Northern Echo: Echo Memories - Isaac Lowthian Bell.

Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell: the boy died in his fernery chimney

NEWSPAPERS are a wonderful way of transporting yourself back in time to a place whose names you recognise but whose goings-on you don’t.

For example, 150 years ago this week, the Darlington & Stockton Times was reporting how the attraction drawing a large crowd to Darlington’s Central Hall was “Professor Jefferson, the man-fish, and Wondrous Willie, the boy-frog”. Disappointingly, the D&S doesn’t describe the brilliance of this act, but it says that “from the wonders they have displayed, there is little doubt that tonight, on their last night, they will be extensively patronised”.

Meanwhile, up at Bishop Auckland, there was a “novel match” between two butchers, Thomas Barnes and Thomas Scott who competed in Joseph Jewitt’s shop for a prize of £2 to see which of them “could kill three sheep and get them ready for market in the least time”.

Joseph Gibson was the judge and William Frost the timekeeper and, said the D&S, “Barnes killed his three sheep in 24 minutes, while Scott occupied 27 minutes over his task. The judge also gave his decision as regarded quality of workmanship in favour of Barnes, who accordingly won the wager”.