Mary Bell Mary Bell was a murderer, sadistic torturer of her victims, and a victim, more importantly she was a child. At the age of 10 Bell had killed two boys before the age of eleven. Growing up in the financially depressed town of Newcastle in England, in which Bell lived an impoverished life. Bell was born to her Betty Bell, a prostitute who suffered with mental illness and her father, presumed to be Billy Bell, a lifelong criminal who had a history of violence and was frequently unemployed. At the time of Mary’s birth, her parents were not married, and only married a few years after her birth. Mary’s mother, Betty, was a poor example of what a mother should be. A prostitute by profession often abandoned Mary to perform sex acts. Unfortunately, Mary was not always abandoned and was brought into the sex acts, abused sexually, and used as a prop for Betty’s customers. Mary reported that she was forced to perform sex acts starting at the age of five at the bequest of her mother. Mary’ mother was physically abusive to her, reportedly choking her and attempting to kill her on multiple occasions. Even as a baby, Mary was not nurtured by Betty, treating her as an object rather than a child. Actually, Betty attempted to give Mary up for adoption, which was thwarted by Betty’s sister. Furthermore, Mary’s father was abusive in the family home to both Mary and her mother. A lifelong criminal, who was known to commit violent armed robberies, was not a good influence for Mary. Billy was often out of work, depending on earnings form Betty to sustain the house. It must be noted that there is some question if Billy is actually Mary’s father, given Betty’s profession; chances are great that Billy was just another victimizer in Mary’s lif... ... middle of paper ... ...f destruction. Actually, the children whom with Mary associated often played within the abandoned houses. Shaw and McKay found that neighborhoods with significantly low socio-economic status had a correlation with higher crime rates. Arguably, one could say that children being able to play in abandoned houses or building, as if playing on a playground, lack significant social control in their neighborhood. It should be argued that for Mary Bell to go undetected in her behaviors, and for her personal abuse to continue for so long, shows that there was a failure in both formal and informal social control. Therefore, her neighborhood was socially disorganized and lead to the deviant behavior of Mary’s neighbors––and ultimately Mary’s. Sadly, if only some form of social control was present in Mary’s life, even in a minute form, possibly the two boys may never have died.
No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...
As a small child, about two years old, Lizzie's mother died. Her father, Andrew, married again. Lizzie did not like her stepmother even though she did not really remember her real mother at all. She never really accepted her stepmother as the person who raised her. And then one afternoon they were robber sunk in the house a...
Also, she thinks working is the only anodyne for her pain of being left. Keep the focus on work and make herself busy, to neglect that men, to neglect the sorrow. Nevertheless, we can find out that the feasibility is not so well. That her works are full of her past. We can find evidence of Mary who is excellent at " The tone of time". For example, copying some old portrait or somebody's style. Conversely, she trapped in it at the same time. Her new commission is to think of a sitter, she can only think of him as a bigot. Mary was the prisoner of the past and the prison guards, her past, is tormenting her. As we can see, she cannot get away from the shadow that the man is gone, turned his back to another woman and never came back for her. All these actions and thoughts are what she does to reject the man has left her, this is the unexpected turn. We also know the man that we consider it is not worth it, it is what she thinks important which more than life. Moreover, Mary's only friend is the narrator but her heart is always on that man. She doesn't trust the narrator as in the last part of the story, she assumes he
Mary Karr is the daughter of laconic Texas oil worker that her family was not really wealthy. She had difficult life but the major theme of the memoir can be how the characteristics of working class family portrays. Even though they were not rich, the “love” of family reveals in the worst of circumstances. Her childhood was very difficult compared to other kids. She was raped multiple times, but she did not tell anyone. Her parents got divorced but they went back together. Her mother was alcoholic, she got addicted to diet pills and she also tried to kill her children and her new husband, Hector. Mary Karr’s siblings did not like Hector, but when their mom tried to shoot him, they protected him. This again shows the family bond that they do the things that they think is right. Pete Karr, Mary Karr’s father, reveals as ideal working class father. He treated his children warm and likes to indulge them. He is also thrifty that does not like to waste money. As a father of family, unlike Malachy McCourt from “Angela’s Ashes” he knows what to do and tries to keep the family. He flew all the way to his children when they called him. Mary Karr constantly fights with her sister, Lecia. However, throughout this memoir, it shows that she cares her deeply. When Lecia got serious injured by a jellyfish, she was very worried about her that says “I wrapped my arms around my knees, bowed my head, and prayed to a god I didn’t trust a prayer that probably went something like this: Please let Lecia not die… Don’t let them chop off her leg either…” (Carr 115). Later in the memoir, she started to hate again. Not only just the family bonding of working class were discussed in this memoir, but the friendship of working class people were also discussed. The unofficial club that her dad goes to is the group of working class men father together and drink, talk, and discuss exaggerated stories. Mary Karr
Bell grew up in a nightmare. Her mother, Betty McCrickett was a mentally, unstable alcoholic and prostitute. According to Gitta Sereny in her book, Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell, Betty would force Bell to take part in prostitution. Others say Betty had tried killing Mary making it seem like an accident. There were suspicions that Betty suffered from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, which could explain why she acted the way she did with her daughter. Due to the bad home environment, it could have possibly affected Bell’s personality. At school, she had an unpredictable and violent behavior. Even though she was violent, nobody did anything to stop it from continuing and it eventually got out of proportion. May of 1968, Bell strangled a four-year-old. This was ruled an accident and no act was taken. Later, Bell and her friend Norma Joyce Bell broke into a nursery and vandalised it, but police considered it a prank. July of 1968, both Mary Bell and Norma Bell strangled a three-year-old. Eventually both deaths were linked and both girls were charged with two counts of
In the reading “The Silent Neighborhood” by Annie Dillard, Annie describes an ordinary day in her childhood as a five year old in 1950. According to the author, “the neighborhoods across continental America were abandoned” (Dillard 1). Annie Dillard loved the silence, and wishes she could go back to it.
While Louise Penny’s Still Life is a modern detective story, a “cozy” narrative with contemporary references and characters, it also contains the misogyny that is present in earlier detective novels. Still Life, set in the small Canadian village of Three Pines, investigates the murder of one of the townswomen, Jane Neil. The murderer is revealed to be Ben Hadley, a native of Three Pines and friend of Jane Neil. The murder in Penny’s Still Life reflects violence against women in the way that Ben Hadley inflicts physical and psychological violence onto women. Ben inflicts violence onto three women in the novel—his mother, Jane, and Clara. While the novel begins after the death of Ben’s mother, Timmer, his involvement in her murder plays an important role in how he chooses to later kill Jane and attempt to murder Clara.
In Newcastle upon Tyne, England lived the troubled child named Mary Bell. She never knew who her real father was and only lived with her mother who was a prostitute. The serial killer Mary Bell was troubled by the conflicts of being from a broken home, repeated sexual abuse, and physical and mental abuse from her mother. The main thing that lead Mary Bell to kill was the abuse from her mother.
Mary’s ethnicity plays a significant role in her life because she didn’t want to be a loser. Mary’s ethnicity, gender, and the class had on defining appropriate and inappropriate behavior in early twentieth century urban life in America. She never wanted to believe that she is causing people sick. Mary acted and
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
The family lived in a housing authority dwelling in a rough neighborhood. Their grandmother was the primary watcher of the children and expressed concern about their welfare. The narrator of the movie mentioned several times about needing to get out of the neighborhood and that insistence became more persistent after her cousin, Terrell, was shot to death. There were also a lot of drugs and violence that affected the neighborhood through outside forces. The most closely fitting neighborhood typology from the Warren and Warren (1977) model would be the anomic neighborhood. Because of the lack of neighborhood unity, threat to wellbeing, and the poor living conditions it would be a valid to state the neighborhood has no protective barriers and lacks the wherewithal to initiate
In The Murder of Helen Jewett, Patricia Cohen uses one of the most trivial murders during the 1800’s to illustrate the sexiest society accommodations to the privileged, hypocritical tunneled views toward sexual behavior, and the exploitation of legal codes, use of tabloid journalism, and politics. Taking the fact that woman was made from taking a rib from man was more than biblical knowledge, but incorporated into the male belief that a woman’s place is determined by the man. Helen had the proper rearing a maid servant, but how did she fall so far from grace. Judge Weston properly takes credit for rearing her with the proper strictness and education. Was Helen seduced at an early age and introduced to sexual perversions that were more persuasive that the bible belt life that the Weston’s tried to live? Was Helen simply a woman who knew how to use what she had to get what she wanted? Through personal correspondence, legal documentation, census reports, paintings, and newspapers we are able to make our own determinations. Cohen provides more than enough background and history to allow any one to make their own opinion how the murder of a woman could be turned into a side show at a circus.
When she and her Ma got home, it was almost dark outside. Frances saw something suspicious, her brother(Mike), shouldn’t be out at this time. Once they got inside, Frances and her mother tucked in all the children and went to bed themselves. Frances was still wondering about Mike, “What was he doing?” She fell asleep falling wiry of her younger brother. When she up, they had breakfast, and headed to their jobs. Frances was still wondering what Mike had done. “Was he stealing? No, their Da(father) had taught them better than that before he fell ill and died. She had never seen her mother cry until then.
A just crime was committed out of hopelessness by a 19-year-old slave named Celia who had been a victim of her master’s constant sexual abuse since the age of fourteen, murdered her master Robert Newsom. Unfortunately it happen in the midst of turbulent political times because of the slavery struggles in the neighboring state, this was one of the many factors that influenced the outcome of Celia’s trial, which did not seem to be in her favor, for at the time slaves were seen as nothing more than property, so in order to rule in Celia’s favor they would have to recognize them as people, which would have raised significant questions about the right of slaves to fight back against their owners abuse. McLaurin provides a great insight into the hardships faced by slaves, especially females to whom being raped was a reality and why the ruling against Celia and her execution came as no surprise.
As a girl, she had an extremely difficult childhood as an orphan and was passed around from orphanage to orphanage. The author has absolute admiration for how his mother overcame her upbringing. He opens the third chapter by saying, “She was whatever the opposite of a juvenile delinquent is, and this was not due to her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, since whatever it was in her that was the opposite of a juvenile delinquent was too strong to have been due to the effect of any environment…the life where life had thrown her was deep and dirty” (40). By saying that she was ‘the opposite of a juvenile delinquent’, he makes her appear as almost a saintly figure, as he looks up to her with profound admiration. He defends his views on his mother’s saintly status as not being an effect of being in a Catholic orphanage, rather, due to her own strong will. O’Connor acknowledges to the extent that her childhood was difficult through his diction of life ‘throwing’ her rather than her being in control of it. As a result, she ended up in unsanitary and uncomfortable orphanages, a ‘deep and dirty’ circumstance that was out of her control. Because of this, the author recognizes that although his childhood was troublesome, his mother’s was much worse. She was still able to overcome it, and because of it, he can overcome