Black Widows of Liverpool

Catherine Flannagan & Margaret Higgins

A remarkable cooperative was run by a group of women in Liverpool, England, in the 1880s. Everyone has probably heard of women banding together in difficult times, but you usually assume that this will be done in a friendly manner. Former police prosecutor Angela Preben fought crime in English courts for her entire career, but her favourite case was one that occurred before she was even born. A group of women who live together are creating a network, a murder syndicate. It's an investment in death. It was an easy plan:  take out an ensurance policy on everyone in their immediate circle, then kill them, one by one. In reality, there were four women who were killing. Then there were five or six more people whose only worry is about their insurance. Their little fortune was made possible by the woman's shrewdness, which also completely upended the British insurance sector.

In a strange way, I admire them. They calculated insurance rates, figuring out how to get the best deals for various customers. They were fully aware of all the insurance and burial clubs' policies and procedures. They established a pack of predators, a behaviour more typical of male offenders. The female pack is capable of being equally strong. When multiple offenders have the same objective—obtaining money—the pack mentality can undoubtedly take hold. Nobody was spared—husbands, siblings, strangers like young Maggie Jennings, or even acquaintances—because money has the power to make people do terrible things. Within the group, there's probably one person who's the alpha female, the one who comes up with the idea, plans the strategy, gives the orders, and everyone else essentially follows suit.

Catherine Flannagan led the pack in Liverpool, with her sister Margaret Higgins in second place. They used arsenic derived from fly papers as their poison. It was extremely easily accessible. They could easily be added to the food after being soaked in water to produce a liquid. Since women are the ones who serve the food, they were free to combine whatever they wanted. Very uncommon symptoms can arise from a chronic ingestion of small amounts of arsenic. It could be the start of sporadic diarrhoea, tingling and numbness in the extremities, or stomach pain. Not only were members of the Liverpool sisterhood in easy access to arsenic. Its symptoms were very similar to those of Victorian England's common illnesses. At that time, the slums of Liverpool would have been abhorrent; there would have been no running water, no public sanitation system, and people would have been packed into cramped quarters, all of which were conducive to disease.

When victims such as Maggie Jennings passed away in their prime, no questions were asked. The doctors anticipated discovering malnutrition, the disease of poverty. Therefore, the women made sure that the doctors found something that would match their expectations while maintaining hygienic conditions. Every death resulted in an insurance payout to one member of the group, which was then divided. For instance, Maggie Jennings had insurance covering over 112 pounds, and the policies were initiated about a year and a half prior to her passing. That was, therefore, a very respectable rate of return on investment. when a worker's weekly pay was not even a few dollars, but less than a pound. Unscrupulous citizens could use England's life insurance companies for murderous gain for monthly premiums of just a few pennies. The insurance salesman would visit each home, taking pennies here and tuppence there, and ultimately, it is reasonable to believe that the insurance companies turned a profit.

However, I believe that they most likely suffered a loss in his specific neighbourhood of Liverpool. Despite the illiteracy of the women in the Liverpool syndicate, business continued as usual. Back then, insurance brokers were keen to get clients for their own commissions. Since their commission would be equal to one year's worth of premiums, it would make sense to encourage as many people as possible to get insurance. Some would make up the answers as they went along if they were unsure of the correct responses. Poison, shoddy hygiene, and flamboyant sales pitches combined to create the ideal storm for murder.

The victims were selected based on a number of factors, including age, illness, the possibility of hastened death, the availability of insurance, and the amount of coverage. Every year, they would pick out two or three victims and execute them. One of the hardest things in the world to control is greed, as it has the potential to spiral into an insatiable monster. For a minimum of four years, the Liverpool syndicate functioned without detection. The nation would be shocked by their final total. Thomas Higgins was undoubtedly killed by the two sisters. That's one husband dead. John Flanagan, the other spouse, was most likely also killed by them. They undoubtedly killed anyone they could get their hands on, including neighbours, friends, a mother, a stepdaughter, a son, and other daughter-in-laws. The syndicate is thought to have killed at least 17 people in order to make money. If there's regret, it seems to have been swallowed up by a web of shared responsibility, a gang or pack committing a crime.

The sense of guilt, if any, is undoubtedly shared and can be absorbed by a single member of the group, regardless of the number of ongoing crimes. A certain level of solace and awareness that I wasn't truly acting alone—rather, I was the group. The group has the potential to be extremely powerful. Four years later, in 1883, the group's influence was finally destroyed. Authorities were persuaded to test the body of Norbit's husband by a suspicious relative. After assembling a lengthy trail of deaths using the evidence of the arsenic they discovered, the police were able to convict Kathryn Flanagan and her sister Margaret Higgins. They were hung side by side from the gallows, according to newspaper accounts. The others managed to avoid being charged. The government took a sharp turn against the practices of insurance. The government's reaction was explosive when they realised this was not a small-scale murder that was limited to a single area of a single city, and they began to fear the Liverpool syndicate was simply a part of a poison epidemic. They came to the conclusion that it was most likely occurring in comparable areas across the nation.