Wednesday 18 April 2012

DEATH CLUB - Poison In Victorian Britain.


In the early 19th century, the rise of the insurance industry gave murderers a new motivation - a quick profit! At the time it was said of life insurance that although it gave peace of mind, it also provided a path to easy wealth; "by insuring a life and destroying it."
For those Victorian's with a mind to 'get rich quick', poison was the perfect tool since many of the victim's symptoms could be passed off a natural disease. Added to that arsenic, strychnine and other toxins easily available, for use as rat bait and the like, and could be bought from the local chemist.  The Victorians became paranoid about poison because of a deadly combination of ease of purchase, poor regulation and newspapers reporting on murder trials.

Arsenic was widely available as rat bait.

"To take heed against poison [was now] one of the waking thoughts common to all."
Journalist writing in 1850.

Whilst the upper classes took out life insurance, the lower classes joined 'Death Clubs' to avoid the disgrace of a pauper's funeral. Run by Friendly Societies (where tradesmen paid in a weekly amount, in return for financial support if they couldn't work), the idea behind a Death Club was to contribute to a fund that paid out on death, to cover funeral costs.


The average cost of a funeral was one to two pounds, and some Manchester clubs paid out four or even five pounds. Because of the tidy profit to be made by disposing of an unwanted spouse, parent or child, the membership lists soon became known as "The catalogue of the doomed," and amongst the women who inhabited the Manchester tenements there was a saying:

"Aye, that child will not live, it is in the burial club." 

Some poor children were enrolled in multiple clubs, so that when each of which paid out on death, the parents reaped twenty pounds or more. A clergyman's wife visiting a bereaved mother to comfort her for the loss of a daughter, was shocked to overhear a neighbour saying:

"A fine thing [for the mother] as the child's in two clubs."

Later in the Victorian era Death Clubs were widely regarded as: 'the prolific mother of arsenical murders" and in response to the problem, in 1850 Parliament enacted a statue prohibiting the insuring of children under 10 for more than three pounds.

Mary Ann Cotton - or "The Black Widow Poisoner."

An example of such fearful ruthlessness was Mary Ann Cotton, a candidate for the title of being the most prolific serial killer prior to Doctor Harold Shipman in the 1990's. Cotton, a woman of 'comely' appearance and a former Sunday school teacher used arsenic to murder her mother, three husbands, fifteen children and step-children, and a lodger. In each case the cause of death was 'gastric complaints' and Mary benefited from insurance payments. It took twelve years for people to become suspicious, for Mary to be put on trial and sentenced to death.

The yard at Durham Prison where Mary was executed.

But finally, what really unsettled the Victorian's was that the killer, Mary, was female. Poisoning was a cowardly, secretive, skulking act and that a female murderer was convicted only confirmed a growing male suspicion that women were sinister, deceitful beings in an almost hysterical way.

"It is the softer sex who are everywhere addicted to this propensity.[to poison]"

The ultimate rat killer!

Next week: Sweet Temptation - the hidden danger of poisoned sweets.

12 comments:

  1. Every time I see that picture of Mary Ann Cotton I shudder! Poison as a plot in sensation fiction is interesting, though I get the feeling it lost the attached sensationalism as people read about fictional and real-life cases on a regular basis.

    Completely random also but I love that rat picture.

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    1. He's a very expressive rat, isnt he!
      thanks for taking the time to comment.
      Grace x

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  2. I was just thinking about the dawn of life insurance policies the other day - what a coincidence I tripped up on your blog. Now I see the value in them for all ranges of society, but was it something reserved to the nobility or was the merchant class also purchasing them? And yes, the rat is pretty adorable - still don't want them scurrying around my house.

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    1. I think cost was the limiting factor - only the wealthy could afford them but there was a big explosion of companies offering insurance between about 1810 and 1840 - that's when the industry took off.
      The Death Clubs were more like a Christmas club, the less well off just paying in small amounts to cover funeral expenses, rather than have the shame of a pauper's funeral.
      Definately agree about the rat! Cute, but no thanks.
      G x

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    2. In Germany there still are funeral insurances similar to the Victorian death clubs. Buying funeral insurance was very common for working class families until well into the 1960s, then it fell somewhat out of favour, though the service is still available. My Mom has had a funeral insurance since she was a teenager (she got the insurance as a really creepy birthday present from her mother), which is why I know about this. The payout no longer covers funeral costs though.

      Even creepier, the local provider of funeral insurances uses the acronym GeBeIn, which means "bones" in German. I don't think that these funeral insurances furthered murders, though we did have a very busy arsenic poisoner on the scale of Mary Ann Cotton in my town in the 1820s. Gesche Gottfried poisoned 15 people, mostly family members, over a period of 17 years before she was captured and publicly beheaded on the market square. The place where her head rolled is still marked with a cross and some locals spit on it, more than 180 years after her execution.

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    3. Cora, that's exactly the sort of history I love. Do the locals who spit on that spot know the full story?
      Wonderful - in a gruesome sort of way.
      G x

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    4. The spot is not exactly easy to find, if you don't know where it is and there is no label or anything, just a cross etched into a paving stone, so the people who make the effort to seek it out know the full story. Nonetheless, there's always fresh spit on the stone when I go to visit it. Mostly it's schoolkids who love the opportunity to spit in public without any admonitions.

      I haven't spat on the stone since I played Gesche Gottfried in a schoolplay based on life, though I probably did spit as a child.

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  3. Fascinating post. Female serial killers are rare, and given the view of Victorians on women, ie placing them on a pedestal, I can only imagine how shocking this would have been. I had never heard of these death clubs, and as a historical research nut, I know a lot about the Victoria era. I think the idea of poison for profit is one that still intrigues people, and would make a fabulous plot for a book.

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  4. Melissa, I must admit I'm researching poison at the moment as a subplot for my next book. It's making my husband quite nervous (winks)
    G x

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  6. Wow, I did not know about the Death Clubs. Thought I would have heard something about that in history. Very fascinating stuff. And that picture of Mart is scary.....

    Thank you for the lesson. Loved it!

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    1. Thank you for the comment, Lyssa. I love how truth can be stranger than fiction!
      G x

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