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AS Downton Abbey neared its conclusion, Joanne Froggatt, known to fans as the compassionate lady’s maid Anna Bates, was often asked what role she would like to play next. “I jokingly said a murderer,” reveals the actress. “And then the script for Dark Angel came through.”
The two-part drama for ITV tells the tale of Mary Ann Cotton, who was hanged in 1873 for the murder of her seven-year-old stepson, though it’s believed she actually killed many more, including three of her four husbands (biographer David Wilson believes her total victim tally to be 16 or 17). Yet remarkably, no one really knows her name.
“She was from the North-east (Cotton was born in Sunderland in 1832) and I’m from Whitby, which isn’t that far away, and I hadn’t heard of her,” admits Joanne, 36.
“It’s quite a fascinating story in
BUBLÉ AT THE BBC
that respect, because she’s the first recorded female serial killer in Britain that we know of.”
“I learned that female serial killers tend to poison or smother people, clean and tidy ways,” adds the actress, who is married to James Cannon.
“Men like to make a mess and it’s often a sexually driven crime. For women, it’s more to move up, in either social or financial status.”
This was the case for Cotton, who moved from town to town, marrying, then doing away with husbands and children before claiming money from their life insurance policies.
“Had she stayed in one place, people may have become suspicious that all these people around her had died,” notes Joanne, who’s appeared in TV series Bad Girls, Life On Mars and See No Evil: The Moors Murders.
Then there’s the simple fact she was a woman.
“People didn’t really think a woman was capable of it,” the actress points out.
“Even when she was imprisoned, there were high-profile people who wrote letters on her behalf saying she can’t possibly be capable of it.”
In Dark Angel, we meet Cotton when she’s 25, and has already suffered the natural loss of four children.
“She was more or less constantly pregnant. It’s a monotonous hell and she always felt that it was a life that wasn’t right.
“She always wanted more than that,” comments Joanne, who credits screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes for the nuanced script.
“At the beginning, you do feel for this woman and the tragedy she’s been through. You understand this need she has for more than what she’s allowed to have as a woman at that time.”
When her first husband, Bill, is injured and can no longer work, they have no way of paying the rent or feeding the family. But he does have life insurance, which was a new concept at the time.
“It wasn’t her idea to insure her first husband’s life, it was her stepfather’s (George Stott, played by Alun Armstrong),” reveals Joanne.
Cotton poisons Bill with arsenic, which was readily available to buy and left no visible scars.
“Once she’s done that, she’s not able to stop,” Joanne adds.
“And yes, by the end of it, she’s a very different person than when she started. She certainly chooses a path that most people wouldn’t and there’s obviously a reason for that, and it has to do with the way she’s wired.”
Cotton must have been quite an actress to feign emotion and keep her crimes hidden for so long. It’s something Joanne found fascinating to learn about.
“I did a lot of research, and serial killers are often extremely charming; that’s how they gain trust and connect with people,” she