An astonishing local book which tells the story of the murderous activities of an infamous killing syndicate of women operating in the heart of Victorian Liverpool. This money-making enterprise involved a complicated 'web' of ordinary women from a poor area of Liverpool who conspired to insure and then poison their victims for their insurance pay out. Two sisters, Catherine Flanagan and Margaret Higgins, sat at the centre of the web, preying like Black Widow spiders on their victims, including their own husbands. Angela Brabin has unearthed fascinating new evidence, as well as discovering more probable victims and accomplices, to produce a gripping account of crime and punishment, and a real insight into working-class life in nineteenth-century Liverpool.