Yorkshire Serial Killer Witch’s Chicken Lays Doomsday Egg

The bizarre story of Mary Bateman, witch, serial killer and psychopath and how she made a fortune from a chicken who laid eggs that predicted the end of the world...

Sources

Arthur Vincent, Lives of twelve bad women; illustrations and reviews of feminine turpitude set forth by impartial hands, (London: T.F. Unwin,1897); E. Baines, Extraordinary Life and Character of Mary Bateman, the Yorkshire Witch: Traced from the Earliest Thefts of Her Infancy, Etc Till Her Execution on the 20th of March, 1809 (leeds: Davis and co, 1811

Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History, (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007)

Globe 27 March 1809

William Knipe, Criminal chronology of York castle; with a register of criminals capitally convicted and executed at the County assizes, commencing March 1st, 1379, to the present time, (York: C.L. Burdekin, 1867)

Summer Strevans, The Yorkshire Witch, (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2017)