Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Yorkshire Killer Witch Pt. 2

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Mary Bateman had been playing people for fools for years. The problem was, too many of her dissatisfied customers stuck around to complain about her trickery. Her solution? Murder. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the nature of this case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. By the time her story ended, Mary Bateman was known by another name, the Yorkshire Witch. And though many women throughout history were persecuted for being witches, we now know that it was unlikely any of them were actually practicing witchcraft. But what about Mary Bateman? If she wasn't a real witch, she certainly wasn't innocent by any stretch of the imagination.

She lured her victims in, bled them dry, then cast them aside without a second thought. And before long, her schemes became deadly. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. If you're listening on the Spotify app,

swipe up and give us your thoughts. This week, we're concluding our story on Mary Bateman, also known as the Yorkshire Witch. We'll dive into Mary's dabble into poison and the doomsday plot that angered an entire city. Stay with us. This episode is brought to

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stretched fabric for all over smoothing, soft lightly lined cups for a natural shape, and no wire comfort that last all day. All over smooth, all-day comfort, vanity fair lingerie. Find yours at Target today. In 1803, England was plagued by a major societal shift, the Industrial Revolution. Cities boomed before housing could accommodate rising populations. Factories went largely unregulated,

and workers' rights were practically non-existent. Not that many people were paying attention to their rights as employees. Most people were grateful for any job they could get. The lower classes were hard hit by growing gaps in the social caste, which kept them from living truly comfortable existences. Many accepted their grim lot in life,

sometimes reduced to scouring trash bins for extra food when times were especially tough. Still, others saw petty crime as a way to deal with scarcity. Among them was 35-year-old Mary Bateman. Her husband John did his best to support their family as a wheelwright, making and repairing wheels for wagons and carriages. But even he struggled to bring in a consistent income at times, not to mention Mary and John had several children to feed as well. so it's hardly surprising that Mary resorted to cons for extra cash. It's unclear whether Mary's thievery ever truly benefited her loved ones, but their financial burdens may in part explain her penchant for pilfering.

By 1803, she'd already swindled a handful of people with her ominous fortunes, promising that her magical charms would help people evade tragedy. To legitimize her preposterous claims, she invented a character named Mrs. Moore, who had the gift of divine insight. She'd fooled at least five people with this lie, and one of her schemes even led to an innocent woman's death. Anyone else might have felt something resembling guilt after killing someone, even if it was an accident. Not Mary. She didn't seem the slightest bit remorseful in the wake of the tragedy. It's possible she told herself that the killing had merely been accidental,

But even if that was the case, it couldn't have escaped her notice that the death had been somewhat convenient. All of a sudden, Mary had stumbled upon a new method for shaking off her hapless victims. If the people she stole from were dead, there would be no one around to protest as she picked over and profited from every single one of their belongings. Emboldened by this thought, Mary set out in search of her next target. There was money to be had. In early September 1803, 35-year-old Mary befriended the kitchen family. There were three of them, a mother who will call Dorothy and her two maiden daughters, who will refer to as Eleanor and Isabel.

The sisters ran a draper's shop where people came to get fabrics for their homes, tanned and dyed. It's unclear how the women first met Mary, but she took to them like a leaf. to blood, frequenting the shop, and soon helping them out with their business. For all intents and purposes, the time that Mary spent building a rapport with the kitchens increased their likelihood of trusting her down the line. This may have been her plan all along. If so, it worked perfectly, because when Eleanor got sick that fall, she didn't question Mary's offer to nurse her back to health.

If anything, the young woman was grateful she had such a tender companion, so when Mary told her that she knew a woman who could prescribe special treatments to make her healthy, Eleanor gratefully accepted. Unlike her past cons, Mary didn't make mention of her made-up helper Mrs. Moore. Perhaps worried that the name had garnered a poor reputation in Leeds, Mary invented an entirely new character. This one was Miss Blythe. She wasn't the sacred seventh child of a seventh child, as Mrs. Moore had been, but she did have a convenient knack for miracle treatments.

According to Mary, Miss Blythe could interpret the stars and fully predict the future as well. With these fibs, Mary convinced Eleanor that her health would soon improve. In the days that followed, Mary brought powders to the sick woman, claiming Miss Blythe had prescribed them. She administered the mystery medicines, but they were, They didn't work. Instead of getting better, Eleanor felt a burning in her throat, nausea, and abdominal pain. And less than a week after accepting Mary's help, Eleanor Kitchen was dead. Naturally, Dorothy and Isabel were grief-stricken. Mary insisted on taking care of them while

they mourned. Despite Eleanor's sudden and unexplained death, they didn't seem to suspect a thing. They trusted Mary completely. It was a grave mistake. Over the course of the next week, Dorothy and Isabel fell sick with the same symptoms Eleanor had suffered. As neighbors heard the news, they whispered how odd it was that both women had been in great health mere days earlier, and now they were desperately ill. No one seemed to guess that Mary was behind it all. The mother, Dorothy, was the next to die.

Then, not more than 10 days after Eleanor had passed, her sister Isabel did too. The entire family had been wiped out in less than a fortnight, and no one could work out how. Doctors attributed their tragic ends to cholera morbus, a gastrointestinal disease that wasn't widely understood at the time. But Mary herself insisted that the kitchens had done. died of the plague. Though the last major outbreak had occurred in the mid-17th century, people still lived with fear that it might return at any time. However, one doctor didn't buy Mary's explanation and decided to investigate. He reasoned that the only logical explanation for the kitchen family's sudden passing was poisoning. He told authorities that they needed to perform an autopsy to get to the

bottom of things. If only he'd gone through with his plan, Mary surely would have been caught, but there was just one problem. Since no family member was alive to consent to the procedure, the bodies were buried without inspection, and any evidence of Mary's crimes along with them. So with nothing to prove otherwise, Mary's claims that the kitchens had died of the plague spread across town like wildfire. This worked to her benefit. In the days after the kitchen family deaths, locals didn't dare come near their abandoned drapery shop.

They feared that the fine linens may be riddled with disease-carrying germs, but Mary felt perfectly safe. She knew she wouldn't get sick, and she hauled out their belongings, one by one. Then, as she'd done to each of her surviving victims in the past, Mary likely pawned off every last possession for a quick profit. By late fall 1803, 35-year-old Mary Bateman had extracted all she could from the late kitchens. She knew it was time for her next scheme, but she didn't yet know what it would be.

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In 1806, England's population felt the lasting effects of the Napoleonic Wars. Taxes skyrocketed, unemployment increased, and families were torn apart as men left to serve their country. Hopeless times created hordes of people looking for comfort, setting the stage for con artists like Mary Bateman to profit off the fearful. Still, beyond the street-scavenging soothsayer, there were others whose schemes took on more orthodox themes. Enter Joanna Southcott, the self-proclaimed religious prophetess. Like many preaching zealots who came before her,

Joanna made a name predicting the second coming of Christ. It wasn't a hard stretch of the imagination. A multitude of English civilians subscribed to the theory, that Napoleon himself was the beast written about in the Bible's book of Revelation. Joanna Southcott took that idea one step further. She prophesied that she was destined to give birth to the Messiah through a miraculous virgin birth in 1814. Proposterous as her claims were,

given that she'd be 64 years old by the time the baby came, Joanna was able to amass a large following. Faithful Christians clung to her. her promises. And here's how she capitalized on it. Southcott told her followers that she had the power to seal them as one of the 144,000 people who would be saved at the end of time. Once they'd paid her in loyalty and cash, Southcott would hand them a token, marking them as one of the chosen. Her believers would, in turn, feel they'd squared away their fates. By 1806, thousands of of people had paid up, and that's likely when 38-year-old Mary Bateman noticed Joanna's sizable,

profitable flock. Mary was baffled by the power Joanna wielded over her followers and decided that those might be easier to swindle than most. The wheels in her head turned as she pondered how to get a piece of the pie. She decided that she could manipulate the community by making her own prophecies about the Second Coming, which she hoped would bring in plenty of coin. By subscribing to the idea that they would be saved by God during the Second Coming, Southcott's followers were undoubtedly managing their terror about their own mortality. Their willingness to subscribe to a modern, unconventional concept to sustain these beliefs convinced Mary that they would be easier to con. But she knew that Joanna's followers would be easier marks if they believed she would.

was one of them. So Mary got her hands on one of the precious tokens that promised her a place in heaven and slid into character. Then when she felt ready, she made her move. She used a vinegar solution to etch the words Christ is coming onto an egg that her hen had laid. Then she ran it to the first person she could find, eager to show off the supposedly miraculous inscription. It was a neat parlor trick, but one that drew an outsized reaction. Upon seeing the egg, people grew hysterical. As word spread of the message from God, Mary decided she'd make a spectacle of her magic hen. She hosted daily viewings around town, promising visitors that for just a penny, they too could be saved when Christ returned. The swindle worked like a charm for a while, but Mary certainly

had her skeptics. Several people questioned why Christ was spelled C-R-I-S-T without an H. Mary might have been more educated than some women of the time, but the simple spelling error was a big mistake to make. But what really shattered public illusion was when one man set out to prove Mary was a fraud. He spied on her early in the morning, watching until the magic hen laid its egg. Then he watched as Mary picked up the clean egg, added the message, and then forced the thing back into the bird. He was disgusted, but not surprised. He promptly exposed the scam to the public who scorned Mary for her trickery. While they were relieved to learn that the second coming wasn't as near as they thought,

they hated Mary for deceiving them. Following her exposure, Mary sold the hen for a meager profit, no doubt still insisting that it was divine. But of course, the hen never laid another doomsday egg again. Having disgraced her family's name once again, Mary moved with her husband and children to a different area of the city. But even a new neighborhood wouldn't be enough for a completely fresh start. For a while, it was important that Mary keep a low profile.

Public skepticism from her prophetic hen scheme made it harder for her to get her. away with her regular soothsaying plots. But that didn't mean she couldn't target other victims. Sometime after the Hen incident, Mary's brother deserted the Royal Navy and rushed to the Bateman residence with his wife. His departure was a significant crime. In fact, if caught, he could face the death penalty, so he was happy to have somewhere to stay while he decided on his next move. Mary didn't care about her brother's legal woes, however. She was more concerned with how she could profit off him. So she got to plotting.

One day, Mary pulled a repeat of a trick she'd used on her husband about a decade prior. She told her sister-in-law that she'd received word that the woman's father was on his deathbed. Of course, this was a complete lie, but Mary feigned sorrow before rushing her brother's wife out of the house. Alone with her brother, Mary was able to carry out the next part of her con. She told him that his wife had been disloyal to him and was spending his money recklessly. Shoving a pen and paper into his hands, she urged him to write to his wife, explaining that their marriage was finished. So he did. Then, as he set out to send the letter, Mary zeroed in on what had motivated her from the start, the couple's traveling trunk.

She pulled out anything of value and likely pawned it off. As far as plans go, it wasn't foolproof. Mary's brother was sure to ask questions when he saw the ransacked trunks. As for her sister-in-law, well, Mary suspected that woman would be gone for good once she received the letter. Unfortunately for Mary, that wasn't the case. The besmirched wife returned to the Bateman House, now fully aware that Mary had tricked them both. It was only once she told her husband all about the scheme

that they realized Mary had raided their luggage. They were outraged and confronted her, but Mary had no interest in writing her wrongs. Instead, she sought to get her latest victims out of her hair for good. She went to the town magistrate and told them her brother was a deserter. she did so likely knowing full well that his crime could be punishable by death. Luckily for him, it seems he didn't face the noose. Even then, Mary wasn't done exploiting her brother.

She wrote to their mother, claiming he'd been jailed, and she'd need 10 pounds to get him out. Her mother obliged, and Mary pocketed the cash. And after that, she went right back to planning her next scheme. Thinking back to her older tactics, Mary decided that for her next con, she would bring back her imaginary advisor, Miss Blythe. She just had to find a willing target. It was the spring of 1806 when 38-year-old Mary met the paragos. For some reason, Rebecca, wife to William, suspected that someone had cast an evil charm upon her.

She heard about Mary's skills as a witch and reached out to ask her. her. Of course, Mary was all too eager to help the distressed woman. As a first order of business, Mary requested one of Rebecca's belongings, namely a garment worn next to the skin. Mary assured her this would help break the curse. So William delivered one of his wife's petticoats to the witch. According to Mary, Miss Blythe would perform magic on the clothing and prescribe other remedies for Rebecca. Sure enough, a few days later, Mary produced a letter from Ms. Blythe with special instructions. The document said that Mary was to place four guineas into the corners of Rebecca's bed, where they should be left for 18 months.

There was also one other condition. The paragos were to tell no one about the magical assistance they were receiving. Though it was an odd request, Rebecca was desperate to relieve herself of the dark charge. She gladly gave Mary the guinea notes to complete the ritual. Per the letter, Mary had sewn each guinea into a silk bag first. Once the job was done, Mary went on her way. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of her business with the Perigos. She soon brought them another letter from Miss Blythe,

claiming that more items were needed in order to reverse the evil spell that had been cast on her. Rebecca told her husband to fulfill any request Mary made. Over the next year, Mary requested a large variety of goods from William Perigo, insisting that having them was the only way he could save his wife. They included various food items, silk clothing, linens, spirits, and even a bed frame. It's not clear what the Perigos believed Miss Blythe would do with the things they gave to her, but it seems they never questioned her requests, and the items were keeping Mary well-fed.

She had found her golden goose. To ensure that the details of the arrangement didn't make their way to nosy neighbors who might have better judgment than her victims, Mary always insisted that the letters from Miss Blythe must be burned. The perigots were being taken for all they were worth, and there was no paper trail

to prove it. But like every con Mary committed, enough was never enough. It's possible she felt she was running out of ways to convince Rebecca she could remove her evil charm. To extort more money from the family, she decided to up the ante. So in April of 1807, one year after the Perigos first came to Mary seeking magical guidance, the scammer hatched her darkest scheme yet. She was about to inflict a world of suffering the poor Perigos couldn't foresee. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks and see if you feel a difference. With billions of probiotics and 20 years of scientific expertise,

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The Perigos couldn't believe their luck. They'd spent the last year trying to remove the evil charm that had been placed on Rebecca. Now they were going to get sick? They couldn't catch a break. Worried, they turned to Mary, who assured them that Miss Blythe would have just the remedy. If they followed her instructions, they'd be just fine. So that's just what they did, and the first thing they had to do was bring half a pound of honey to Mary. Mary assured Rebecca that she would add special ingredients from Miss Blythe.

She then gave the paragos a magic pudding-like concoction made with various powders for six days straight. If they felt sick, Mary advised them to take a teaspoon of the specially prepared honey. The task seemed easy enough. There was just one stipulation. The paragos were forbidden from summoning a doctor or sharing their food with anyone else. Mary warned them that doing so would only make things worse. The paragos were terrified of ruining the magic,

so they kept quiet, never suspecting that they were walking right into a trap. They began taking the special pudding on May 11th, By the 13th, both had fallen violently ill. They felt heat in their sore mouths. Their lips were black. They had headaches and prolonged episodes of vomiting. The pudding was evidently laced with poison, but Mary had played her part so well

that neither William nor Rebecca ever suspected their witch wasn't so friendly. Even still, William found himself unable to keep eating the pudding she'd given them. Rebecca, on the other hand, was determined to finish her portion, which Mary wholeheartedly encouraged. When she was too sick to do anything else, Rebecca licked up generous portions of the honey, as Mary had advised, but of course it only sped up her decline. On May 24, 1807, just 13 days after they'd started Mary's regimen, Rebecca Perigo died. Wrapped with grief in the wake of his wife's passing, William grappled with what to do next. He knew his wife had trusted Mary until the end, but now he was feeling skeptical about the witch.

So against both of Mary's orders, William decided to seek real medical advice the day after his wife passed from a surgeon named Mr. Chorley. And as soon as William shared his symptoms with the doctor, Chorley knew William had been poisoned. Though William didn't want to believe the doctor, he did feel compelled to confront Mary, and as always, the self-proclaimed witch tried to weasel her way out of it. She blamed Rebecca for disobeying orders, saying that Rebecca's death was her own fault.

And somehow, despite his better judgment, William accepted this, though he believed his wife had done all she could to follow the witch's, his orders, Mary was the one with magic insight. So he carried on with life as it had been, meaning he continued to take directions from Mary for the next year. She had him wrapped around her finger, keeping him terrified with warnings that without her protection, Rebecca would rise from the grave to haunt him. So William gave Mary whatever she asked for, which was mostly food, though he also handed over some of his wife's clothes, too. This carried on until the fall of

1808. That was when the spell was finally broken. That October, it seems William was running out of money. That might be why he decided to reopen the silken bags that Mary had sewn into his mattress two years earlier. He ripped them open, only to find scrap paper and half pennies where there should have been guinea notes and gold. He felt delirious with a mix of anger and shock. She'd told them the guineas were important for the spell. She'd promised they would give them protection. She'd sworn it. She'd lied. William decided to confront Mary immediately, but she didn't seem phased. She convinced him to return the following day for another meeting. Surprised at Mary's willingness to resolve the issue, William agreed. The next day, he set off to meet her

and brought the Chief Constable of Leeds with him. It was then that 40-year-old Mary tried one last con. She faked a vomiting fit and was subsequently taken to the local magistrate, where she announced that William was trying to poison her. By this stage, she was a well-practiced performer, but the chief constable wasn't buying her act. He took Mary into custody and ordered that her home be searched. There authorities found many of the items that the Perigos had given to Mary over the years. It was enough to support William's story, but not enough to hold up in court, so investigators got to work building a case while Mary was kept in custody. It took nearly three months, but in January of 1809, police finally charged Mary with murder. Her court date was set for that March,

and in the interim, the story of the Yorkshire Witch started spreading through Leeds. Before long, it seemed everyone in town knew about Mary Bateman's crimes, and they all wanted to see what happened next. So on March 17th, a large crowd gathered to watch her trial. The proceedings lasted a 11 hours and included many witnesses who came forward to share what they knew about Mary's dealings with the Perigos. There was no question that she'd been conning the couple, but what the authorities wanted to prove was that she'd set out to kill Rebecca. Of course, there was a reasonable case for her guilt, even just circumstantially. But the most damning evidence came from Dr. Chorley, who attended to William just a day after his wife had passed. he'd known immediately that William had been poisoned.

Wanting to confirm his suspicions, he'd fed Mary's special honey for Rebecca to a dog. The canine vomited immediately and died four days later. When Dr. Chorley opened the dog's body, he found a high degree of inflammation, as well as what he called a corrosive sublimate of mercury. In other words, the honey was poisoned.

Still, it's likely that even without this evidence, the court had made up its mind about Mary before the trial even started. Female criminals were treated especially harshly in those times, and the gossip about her had already damaged her reputation beyond repair. At the end of the day, the jury announced their verdict. Mary was found guilty of murdering Rebecca with poison and sentenced to death by hanging.

Just three days later, 41-year-old Mary was led to the gallows. Thousands of people had gathered to watch her die. Some still believed she was magic and that she would vanish before the noose took hold. They were in for a less enchanting sight. When asked if she had any final words, Mary claimed she was innocent and allowed the rope to be placed around her neck.

Then, in one fell swoop, Mary Bateman was dead. The following day, even more people came to see her corpse. Everyone wanted to get a look at the witch for themselves. Eventually, Mary's body was removed from display and was dissected in the name of science. What happened next was less scientific. Strips of her skin were sold to some, unsavory people who believed the flesh would ward off evil. The rest was used to bind books. Then, when there was nothing else left, her skeleton was donated to the Leeds Medical School,

where it remained for almost 200 years. So was Mary Bateman a witch? Maybe not in the way you're thinking. Time and time again, she manipulated her marks with ease. She convinced them of her abilities using nothing more than her words and their own superstitions. And by the end of her story, the entire town of Leeds was put under her spell. They were hypnotized, unable to look away. She might not have cast enchantments, but she did have the power of persuasion. Thanks for tuning in to serial killers, a Spotify podcast. We'll be back Monday with another episode.

For more information on Mary Bateman, amongst the many sources we used, we found the book The Yorkshire Witch, the life and trial of Mary Bateman by Summer Strevens, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there. This episode was written by Lauren DeLille, edited by Joel Callan, fact-checked by Bennett Logan, researched by Mickey Taylor and Chelsea Wood, sound designed by Alex Button, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich.

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