CHAPTER 13

Murderous Sisters

1884

This horrible story must be investigated with the greatest speed …

here has been life insurance in Britain since 1762 when the Equitable Society started the first business. But there were always problems for the early companies, such as the fraud experienced by the Albion, founded in 1805, and the Eagle, started in 1807. It was only when the actuaries came along, and Milne’s Mortality tables were printed in 1815 the way was open for smaller, working class companies to start business in the new rabbit-warren streets of the new industrial towns. The Institute of Actuaries was formed in 1848, and from that point there was always going to be the possibility that persons with a vested interest in a relative’s death would break both the law and the moral code.

With that in mind, it is unbelievable how easy two Liverpool sisters found it to take out insurance on their family victims: they were killers, with a fondness for using poison. This murderous habit was to lead them both to the Kirkdale gallows. Their story was a huge media sensation, with a high-profile trial, and even to the creation of their effigies at Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.

Horrible is the correct adjective to use for what Margaret Higgins and Catherine Flanagan did in 1883. That period was a busy one for the Liverpool police. In 1884 there were almost 7,000 people arrested in the city for being drunk and disorderly. In the Catholic slums of the north of the city, around Blenheim Street where the sisters lived, the labouring men lived a tough life, and for many it was a short life. That bare fact opens up the potential for types such as these sisters to exploit the life insurance system. So many people died of such illnesses as dysentery or fever that anyone who had been poisoned with arsenic could only really be spotted by a very astute doctor, and the medical men working in those streets would be working long hours and suffering from the stresses and strains of that work.