Cut Family Trees
History has produced some truly ruthless women, including mothers who were willing to take out the very life they created. It wasn’t all about succession disputes or religious disagreements, either. Some women targeted their very own children for reasons that have left investigators scratching their heads for decades. Either way, the circumstances surrounding these 20 deaths show a particularly disturbing side of history.
Hans Ludwig Graf von Kuefstein? on Wikimedia
1. Cleopatra Thea
Cleopatra Thea ruled the Seleucid Empire during a time when her kids were quickly becoming dangerous political rivals. Around 125 BC, she reportedly had her eldest son, Seleucus V, killed after he claimed the throne without her approval, and she later attempted to poison another son, Antiochus VIII. But accounts say that Antiochus caught on to the act and forced her to drink the poisoned beverage herself.
Classical Numismatic Group; [1] on Wikimedia
2. Empress Dowager Hu
During China's Northern Wei dynasty, Empress Dowager Hu enjoyed considerable political authority while governing on behalf of her son, Emperor Xiaoming. When he tried to break free and assert his independence in 528, he conveniently died. People immediately assumed that Hu was responsible, and her subsequent attempt to control the succession failed spectacularly.
3. Empress Wu Zetian
China's only woman to formally rule as emperor, Wu Zetian, faced accusations that she murdered her infant daughter in 654 to discredit Empress Wang and advance her own position at court. If that wasn’t bad enough, historians also wondered if she played a role in the suspicious death of her eldest son in 675 as well. It’s all up in the air, though; modern scholars blamed the allegations on hostile chroniclers.
4. Kösem Sultan
Few women exercised as much influence over the Ottoman Empire as Kösem Sultan, whose son Ibrahim became sultan in 1640. But just eight years later, Ibrahim's erratic government sparked a political crisis, and Kösem was reportedly compelled to consent to his execution. Historians debate how willingly she complied, but Ibrahim was still strangled in 1648.
5. Margaret Vincent
Margaret Vincent made a devastating choice in 1616, all thanks to a religious dispute with her husband Jarvis. He refused to abandon Protestantism for Catholicism, so she strangled their two young sons in an attempt to protect their souls. People are on the fence about whether that was, in fact, the reason, but it was a tragedy nonetheless.
6. Mary Cook
Mary Cook became notorious in England in 1670 after murdering her daughter, Elizabeth. Her husband reportedly tried to explain it away through mental illness, but Cook rejected that explanation. She was then executed, and the case generated an entire pamphlet titled Blood for Blood, which described the whole thing in detail to the public.
7. Anne Mackie
Anne Mackie was just a widow raising four kids when she started dating a younger man named James Gray. After getting pregnant, she hoped Gray would marry her, but he refused—so she strangled their newborn after she had it. It was a devastating crime that led to her conviction and execution in 1776.
8. Agnes McCallum
Agnes McCallum had already arranged for the care of one illegitimate child when she got tangled up with a married man and birthed another. When the second child's father refused to give her any money to raise them, she poisoned their five-month-old. It was particularly disturbing because she previously behaved affectionately toward her child.
9. Agnes Dugald
Agnes Dugald was a widow whose hopes of remarriage depended on getting rid of her eight-year-old, Joanna. The man she was living with had promised to wed her if Joanna was no longer in the picture, prompting Dugald to bring her to a wooded area and murder her. She never got remarried, though; she was convicted and executed in 1767.
10. Margaret Gillespie
In 1749, Margaret Gillespie was convicted of murdering her newborn—but another crime was the reason behind it. She claimed that a married man had assaulted and subsequently abandoned her, leaving her to deal with the pregnancy alone. She was hanged in 1749, and her case raised uncomfortable questions about how women were punished for infanticide.
11. Barbara Malcolm
Barbara Malcolm was an unmarried servant who murdered her 18-month-old daughter, Margaret, after the child's father repeatedly refused to provide financial assistance. In 1807, she poisoned the girl after losing the childcare arrangement that had allowed her to continue working. Malcolm was then hanged in 1808, with contemporary accounts describing how she was so distraught with grief that she needed help climbing the scaffold.
12. Margaret Garner
Margaret Garner escaped enslavement with her family in 1856, hoping to build a new life in the free state of Ohio. But when slave catchers surrounded the house where they had taken refuge, she killed her two-year-old daughter before turning her attention to the others, refusing to let them live in chains. Garner was then brutally returned to slavery and died of typhoid fever on a plantation in 1858.
13. Mary Ann Brough
Mary Ann Brough had once served as wet nurse to Queen Victoria's eldest son, but her own marriage collapsed amid serious domestic problems. In 1854, after her husband threatened to leave her and take their kids, she killed six of them. Brough survived a subsequent attempt to take her own life and was found not guilty by reason of insanity, leading to her confinement in an institution.
14. Ellen Harper
In 1877, a young English woman named Ellen Harper strangled her newborn daughter just 12 hours after giving birth. She initially tried to say the death was accidental, but eight days later, she confessed. Harper was arrested and charged with murder, but her fate remains unclear—historians haven't found records confirming whether her trial ever took place.
Boston Public Library on Unsplash
15. Selina Wadge
Selina Wadge was an unmarried mother of two in Victorian England. She claimed that a man named James Westwood had promised to marry her if she got rid of her younger son, Harry, who had a disability. So, in 1878, she drowned the two-year-old before blaming Westwood for the killing. She was only caught because her older son exposed what happened, and Wadge was hanged that same year.
16. Elizabeth Berry
In 1886, Victorian nurse Elizabeth Berry poisoned her 11-year-old daughter, Edith. Investigators discovered that Berry had insured her daughter's life for £10 and had also attempted to arrange another policy worth £100, leading to obvious suspicions of financial gain. She was convicted and hanged in 1887.
17. Sarah Jane Whiteling
Sarah Jane Whiteling poisoned her husband and two kids in 1888, with prosecutors arguing that she only wanted their life insurance payments. She was clever about it, too; the deaths initially looked like nothing more than illnesses, but Whiteling was eventually found out and convicted. Physician Alice Bennett tried to persuade authorities that Whiteling’s mental health warranted a less severe punishment, but she was still executed in 1889.
Pretzelpaws at English Wikipedia on Wikimedia
18. Francisca Rojas
Francisca Rojas murdered her two young sons in 1892, initially blaming a man who had been courting her. Once investigators started digging around, though, they found a fingerprint which was eventually matched to Rojas. She confessed only after being confronted, and her case actually became a milestone in the history of criminal fingerprint identification. She was sentenced to jail in 1894.
19. Louise Masset
Louise Masset's poor son, Manfred, seemingly became an obstacle in her personal life. Sure enough, in 1899, the boy's body was discovered in a London railway station restroom, and investigators quickly learned that Masset traveled to Brighton. But her account of leaving Manfred didn’t convince the jury, and she was executed in 1900.
20. Marie Noe
Marie Noe lost eight children between 1949 and 1968, with their deaths initially attributed to natural causes. That didn’t sit right with investigators, though, who reopened the cases decades later. In 1999, they found all they needed, and Noe pleaded guilty to eight counts of second-degree murder. Her motive remained unclear, but that wasn’t the only controversy; she only got 20 years of probation.
Dragon White Munthe on Unsplash
KEEP ON READING
