A frightful accusation is brought against a woman now lodged
in Durham Gaol, commonly called Mary Anne Cotton, of having poisoned some twenty persons ;—the children of four families (two of them her own, and two families of step-children besides), as well as her mother, two husbands, and another man to whom she was not legally married, (her third husband being .alive at the time of her marriage, though without the knowledge of thiaman, who believed himself her husband) and, finally, a lodger in her last house. The only one who, &wording to -this supposition, escaped was her third husband, Robinson, all but one of whose children (step-children to the accused woman) fell -victims, but who seems to have suspected and accused her, so causing her to take to flight, though be made no formal charge against her. The accused women's real name, therefore, seems to be Robinson, her marriage with Cotton, who is dead, being void. All the nmrders—if murders they-be—are said to have been effected by poison,—of course at very different places,--but too many at the same place and under the eye of the same surgeon to admit -of much excuse for the various practitioners, who are said to have cer- tified the deaths as resulting from gastric fever,' if indeed, they were wrong. Of course, there is nothing proved against the prisoner as yet, but guilty or innocent, it is very alarming to find that -death af ter death can follovrfrom the same strange causes in a family, —all apparently accompanied with sickness and all the illnesses short,—and excite no suspicion. The most accomplished forger would scarcely get a chance of forging twenty cheques before detection,—but then in England property is guarded much more jealously than life.
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