NANNIE DOSS: LONELY HEARTS LADY LOVED HER MAN TO DEATH
Mrs. Cotton
After weeks of desperate living, the year 1870 began well for Mary Ann. Her friend Margaret Cotton introduced her to her brother Frederick. Like James Robinson, Frederick was a recent widower and had lost two of his four children to early deaths. His sons Frederick Jr. and Charles were all that was left of his family. His sister acted as mother substitute for the family, although in late March she died from an undetermined stomach ailment — which left the opportunity wide open for Mary Ann to console the grieving Frederick and, in an echo of her relationship with James Robinson, she was soon pregnant with Frederick's child.
The couple were married in September of 1870, Mary Ann again signing the register as “Mary Ann Mowbray,” ignoring the fact that her surname was legally Robinson and that she was not divorced from James, who was very much alive. Mary Ann added bigamy to her growing list of crimes.
Mary Ann quickly set up housekeeping in Cotton’s house and just as quickly insured the lives of Frederick Cotton and his two sons.
After giving birth to a son, Robert, in early 1871, Mary Ann learned that her former paramour Joseph Nattrass was not married and was living in nearby West Aukland. Under some pretense Mary Ann moved the family there, and she quickly rekindled the relationship with Nattrass and became less interested in Frederick Cotton.
In December of 1871, Frederick died of gastric fever and Joseph Nattrass soon became a lodger in the three-time widow Mary Ann’s house. To keep her fears at bay and to keep money coming in, Mary Ann worked as a nurse to John Quick-Manning, an excise officer recovering from smallpox. Mary Ann apparently saw Quick-Manning as a better match than Nattrass, and soon became pregnant by him.
A marriage to Quick-Manning was hindered by the presence of the remaining Cotton household, so Mary Ann apparently went to work quickly and Frederick Jr. died in March of 1872 and the infant Robert soon after. Upon the death of her infant, Mary Ann stated that she did not want to bury the baby immediately, because Joseph Nattrass had also become ill with gastric fever, and she would wait and handle both burials at once. Nattrass obligingly passed away soon after Robert, but not before revising his will to leave everything to Mary Ann.
Only one of her husbands, James Robinson, had escaped a relationship with Mary Ann with his life. Other husbands, children, and most stepchildren had succumbed to gastric fever or stomach ailments — except for young Charles Cotton and Robinson’s children. The Robinson children were safely away from Mary Ann’s motherly care, but the insurance policy Mary Ann had taken out on Charles's life still waited to be collected.
