The Yorkshire Witch

On the morning of March 20, 1809, the woman who had earned herself the title of "The Yorkshire Witch" was hanged at York's New Drop gallows before an estimated crowd of twenty thousand people-many of them victims of her hoaxes and extortion. A consummate con artist, Mary Bateman was adept at identifying the psychological weaknesses of the desperate and poor who populated the growing industrial metropolis of Leeds. Exploiting their fears and terror of witchcraft, Mary was well placed to rob them of their worldly goods, yet she did much more than cause misery and penury. Though tried and convicted of only one murder, the contemporary belief that she was a serial killer is doubtlessly accurate. A meticulously researched retelling of Mary Bateman's life and death, and the macabre legacy of her mortal remains.