Mary Elizabeth Wilson
English murderer
Mary Elizabeth Wilson (née Cassidy; 11 June 1889 – 5 December 1962), known in media as The Merry Widow of Windy Nook, was an English serial killer and the last woman to be sentenced to death in Britain. She was convicted of capital murder in Durham in 1958. However, the sentence was commuted to a prison sentence due to her advanced age.
Biography
Wilson was born Mary Elizabeth Cassidy on 11 June 1889, in Catchgate, Stanley, County Durham, and christened on 30 June 1889 at Our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph, Brooms, Co. Durham.
She married her first husband John Knowles around November 1914. They settled at a house in Windy Nook, Gateshead. Her lover John Russell eventually moved in with them. In 1955, Knowles died.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Elizabeth Wilson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.