Mary Ann Cotton's prison letters sold for twice estimate

The latest letters to be sold give an insight into the final days of Mary Ann Cotton's life

Letters to a Victorian serial killer have been sold after a campaign to keep a previous set publicly owned failed.

Mary Ann Cotton, from West Auckland, County Durham, was hanged in Durham Prison in 1873 for poisoning her stepson with arsenic.

She is widely believed to have also killed three husbands, 10 children, a lover and her mother, collecting life insurance for each.

The batch of letters found in her prison cell have sold for £1,050.

They had been estimated to fetch £500-700.

For more stories on Victorian England visit our Pinterest page

'Awful monster'

Eight other letters, written to a lodger at Cotton's home, were sold to a private collector in 2013.

Victoria House, originally from Hartlepool, failed to raise enough to buy them and donate them to the Durham County Records Office.

She had been "very upset" and said it was a case of "here we go again" with this latest sale.

"If I could save them, I would, but I haven't got the money and it's too short notice to ask people to help," she said.

Mary Ann Cotton was hanged in March 1873

As she was pregnant during her trial, Cotton's execution was delayed until after the birth of her 11th child.

The latest of her letters to be sold include one from William and Sarah Edwards, saying this daughter was being cared for.

Others relate to selling her possessions to pay for legal costs and instructing lawyers to defend her.

They were sold by a descendent of the matron at Durham Jail, who is believed to have cleared out Cotton's cell.

Tennants Auctioneers valuer Steven Stockton said there had been "a lot of interest from around the globe".

"There's a lot of beautiful things in this sale and the one thing that everyone's asking about is these letters to this awful monster," he said.

"I suppose it's something in human nature," he added.