Introduction

The preceding chapters outlined the development of a new approach to understanding female serial killers, which would be used to analyse Mary Ann’s case. This chapter will present the findings of the analysis, organised into subheadings relating to the social roles that Mary Ann occupied, exploring the institutional domain of these roles (economy, education, family, polity and religion) and the nature of her engagement with these configurations through the institutional dimensions of structure, regulation and performance. The chapter will draw heavily on source material, not only for explication purposes, but also to enable the reader to have a connectedness to the richness and complexity encountered when exploring the documentary evidence.

Wife

Marriage was essential for the survival of women in working-class, north-east England. Given Victorian legal and social frameworks, single women and widows were considerably less able to support themselves let alone any children they might have had (Wilson, 2013). But while women could cement a degree of security and respectability through marriage, they lived in the shadows, inferior and subordinate to the men in their lives (Metcalfe, 2006). In relation to the wives of coal miners, Hall (2004, p 522) acknowledges that their subordination was particularly pronounced: ‘More than virtually all other working-class women, the vast majority of mining women were defined by, and defined themselves by, their home and family.’ Furthermore, ‘mining women were baby-makers and drudges, doubly oppressed by capitalism and by their husbands’ (Hall, 2004, p 525). Indeed, women were often described in legal proceedings by their husband’s occupation – as can be seen in the reporting of Mary Ann’s own murder trial. The reverse was not true for male witnesses, who were identified by name and occupation: