And two more questions: Who am I, and what are you doing here?
OK, let’s start with the first one. Mary Ann Britland was the first woman executed at Manchester’s Strangeways Prison. In July 1886, she was convicted of the poisoning murder of her best friend and neighbour, Mary Dixon, although it was believed she poisoned her daughter, Elizabeth Hannah Britland, and husband, Thomas Britland, as well. Just three weeks later, she was dragged – sobbing, half-starved, and perhaps completely mad – to the gallows. Her last words, screamed up to the heavens, were: “Lord, forgive me! I must have been mad.”
Mary Ann Britland was a convicted murderer and a suspected serial poisoner. But she was also my distant relative. And that brings us to question number two.
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