They
say poison is a woman’s choice of murder weapon. Mary Ann Cotton is a major
reason why. She perfected the practice more than just about anyone who wasn’t
Lucrezia Borgia. Criminologists and historians estimate she killed thirteen to
twenty-one people with her little tea pot. Maybe one or two died from accidents
or natural causes, but either way, death follows closely on Cotton’s heels in Dark Angel (promo here), which airs this
Sunday on PBS as part of the current season of Masterpiece.
Frankly,
Cotton found herself in the perfect time and place to get away with murder.
Common laborers died all the time during the Victorian era from Typhoid, Cholera,
or just plain misery and nobody much troubled themselves over it. Yet, Cotton
had ambitions to rise above her station. Thanks to her first husband, who
genuinely died to ill health (at least according to Gwyneth Hughes’
screenplay), she discovered the wonders of life insurance. After his death, she
collects thirty-five pounds. She’ll get used to that sort of transaction.
Generally,
the oft-married murderess is referred to as Cotton, but she is first a Mowbray,
and then a Ward. She believes she has finally arrived when she marries
Robinson, a middle-class widower, but his children rather complicate matters.
Then there is Cotton, plus several lovers. Not all of them die, but there is a
very low survivor’s rate for those who get close to her. That also includes
friends and family.
Joanne
Froggatt (Anna Bates in Downton Abbey)
is quietly ferocious playing against type as the sociopathic Cotton. She is
totally sinister, yet she also projects the fear and vulnerability of a (periodically)
single woman in a highly class-conscious society. It is her show, but Alun
Armstrong helps humanize it with his turn as her decent publican step-father.
As for the rest of the ensemble—don’t get too attached.