Anna Zwanziger, the earlier `monster' of Bavaria, arrested in
1809, was an amateur compared with those three.

Mrs Susannah Holroyd, of Ashton-under-Lyne, charged in September
of 1816 at the Lancashire Assizes with the murder by poison of
her husband, her own son, and the infant child of Anna Newton, a
lodger of hers, was nurse to illegitimate children. She was
generally suspected of having murdered several of her charges,
but no evidence, as far as I can learn, was brought forward to
give weight to the suspicion at her trial. Then there were
Mesdames Flanagan and Higgins, found guilty, at Liverpool Assizes
in February 1884, of poisoning Thomas Higgins, husband of the
latter of the accused, by the administration of arsenic. The
ladies were sisters, living together in Liverpool. With them in
the house in Skirvington Street were Flanagan's son John, Thomas
Higgins and his daughter Mary, Patrick Jennings and his daughter
Margaret.

John Flanagan died in December 1880. His mother drew the
insurance money. Next year Thomas Higgins married the younger of
the sisters, and in the year following Mary Higgins, his
daughter, died. Her stepmother drew the insurance money. The
year after that Margaret Jennings, daughter of the lodger, died.
Once again insurance money was drawn, this time by both sisters.

Thomas Higgins passed away that same year in a house to which
what remained of the menage had removed. He was on the point of
being buried, as having died of dysentery due to alcoholism, when
the suspicions of his brother led the coroner to stop the
funeral. The brother had heard word of insurance on the life of