At this point, in steps Dr James Moxon of Brigg, clearly an enterprising and clever doctor. He traced the remnants of the pancake from hearing that the dead woman had been vomiting in particular places. Mary had tried to clean it all up and dispose of it on a nearby ash-heap, but Moxon followed the trail, did a simple test and found arsenic in the food. Twelve grains can kill an adult: Jickels had been given thirty. A local shoemaker, William Booth, had also joined in, and had found some pancake on a dung-hill.

There is no surprise that her dying was violent and shocking, a long and agonising torture before her eventual painful death. Jickels had actually told a friend that she had been poisoned by Mary Milner. Moxon had been suspicious of a possible poisoning case at first, when he had been present to attend the dying woman. Unbelievably, Mary had been in the room to watch the symptoms develop with Jickels, and had coolly said ‘These are the same thing my mother died of …’

Mary Milner was charged and convicted this time: she was sentenced to hang at the Cobb Hall drop, Lincoln Castle, but it was not to be. An unusually large crowd gathered (several thousands) and it was to be a public spectacle, but young Mary had hanged herself in her cell with a handkerchief. All through her trial, as the contemporary account said, she remained ‘firm and collected … nor did her demeanour alter when the jury returned their verdict.’

Mary Ann Milner never got to spend and enjoy the burial club money; her astoundingly stupid and clumsy attempts to follow up the first murder with a second that had no obvious motive led to her downfall.