A History of British Serial Killing
By Martin Fido
Mary Ann Cotton
- Three times married 40-year-old former nurse, Mary Ann Cotton, is regarded as Britain’s greatest mass murderer.
- In 1873, in County Durham, Mrs Mary Ann Cotton was accused of poisoning her step-son, Charles Edward. A doctor looked at the contents of the stomach and said, 'The boy died of gastric fever'. Mary Ann Cotton was free to go. But the next day, a local newspaper pointed out that a lot of Mary Ann's children and husbands had died of 'gastric fever'. The body of Charles Edward was dug up and tested for arsenic poison. It was full of it. So were some of her previous victims. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged and it was believed she had murdered three husbands and 15 of her children.
A History of British Serial Killings
- Beverley Allitt, "The Angel of Death" as she became to be known, was a famous New England female serial killer. She went on a killing spree that claimed four young lives and attempted the murder of nine other victims.
- One of the most famous serial killers from England is Jack the Ripper just because he has never been unmasked. He killed and mutilated five prostitutes and was never caught to date.
Leslie Bailey
- Leslie Bailey was a convicted pedophile and murderer who was involved in murders along with Sidney Cooke and Robert Oliver.
- The three men sexual abused at least three young boys in and around the London area in the 1980's. Leslie Bailey was the only one to confess to his crimes.
Robert Black
- Robert Black is a pedophile serial killer who is convicted of the kidnap and murder of four girls between 1981 and 1986 in the United Kingdom. He sexually assaulted one of the girls and raped the other three. Black was also convicted of the kidnap of a fifth girl and the attempted kidnap of a sixth.
- Robert Black is also suspected of many unsolved child murders in the UK dating back to 1969 and others in the 1970s throughout Europe.
Moor Murders
- Ian Brady and Myra Hindley killed five children as a couple. They murdered Lesley Ann Downey, John Kilbride, Pauline Reade, Keith Bennett, and Edward Evans. The children were aged between 10 and 17.
- According to Ian Brady, the Moors Murders were merely an existential exercises to express frustration towards "reliables" that were causing delay in mercenary objectives. The couple mainly just wanted to rob banks.
John Reginald Haliday Christie
- John Reginald Haliday Christie was a sex killer and psychopath. He gained his sexual gratification through rape, murder, and necrophilia. In the 1940s and 1950s, he killed at least five prostitutes, his wife, a female lodger and her baby daughter.
- When John Christie killed his wife, he buried her under the floorboards of his ground floor flat. He killed three more prostitutes before leaving the new tenant to find the reason for the awful smell in the flat. After an investigation, the kitchen cupboard was found to contain the human remain of three women. Under the floor was Mrs. Christie, and in the garden two further bodies.
A website that will explain England's history and how the murders affected society is:
Another website that has a database and more information on all murderers is:
Another website that has a database and more information on all murderers is: