The following is a list of serial killers i.e. a person who murders more than one person,^[1] in two or more separate events over a period of time, for primarily psychological reasons^[2][3] who began committing their crimes before 1900. This list does not include mass murderers, spree killers, war criminals, or members of democidal governments. This list is chronological by default, but can be re-ordered using the button at the top of each column.

The existence of the following serial killers is dubious or contradicts the accepted historical record:

More information Name, Country ...

Name	Country	Time Period	Notes
Poison ring	Roman Republic	331 BC	According to Livy, there is a story that several Roman men died in what was believed to be a plague, until a servant woman revealed that they had been poisoned by a conspiracy of matrons. According to this story, twenty patrician women arrested admitted to preparing concoctions but claimed that they were medicinal; when they drank it themselves to prove it, (at their own suggestion), they died immediately. The story states that a total of 170 matrons were arrested. Livy says that "their act was regarded as a prodigy, and suggested madness rather than felonious intent."[194]
John Jarman and his wife	England	12th to 14th century	"The Jarmans of Colnbrook." Claimed to have murdered between 13 and 60 people at the Ostrich Inn of Colnbrook, in the Middle Ages. Though the building is real (and still stands), it only dates to the 1500s, and the most famous description of the killers modus - involving a trapdoor in a bedroom that opened to a boiling pot in the kitchens beneath - is first described in a fiction work, Thomas Deloney's Thomas of Reading (1602).[195]
Andrew Christie	Scotland	1320–1339	Called "Christie-Cleek." Purported Perth butcher turned road bandit, murderer and cannibal during a severe famine.[196]
Bernabe Cabard and Pierre Miquelon	France	1410–1415	Barber and baker duo said to have murdered, robbed and butchered 143 men in Paris; Cabard, the barber, slashed the throats of his clients while shaving them and threw their bodies in a subterranean gallery through a trapdoor, where Miquelon took their meat to make pies.[197] Claimed sometimes to be the historical inspiration of Sweeney Todd and his ally Mrs. Lovett, but there is no record of them before Charles Dupressoir's Drames Judiciaires (1849), published three years after Todd's introduction in The String of Pearls. Mary Elliott's The Tell Tale (1824) details a similar story about a Parisian barber and wig-maker executed during the reign of Napoleon I, but they are not mentioned in the works of Joseph Fouché, the Paris police chief at the time.[198]
Christman Genipperteinga	Holy Roman Empire	1568–1581	Claimed German bandit who was executed for 964 murders, according to a 1581 pamphlet. Possibly inspired by real bandit Peter Niers, who confessed under torture to 544 deaths and was executed in the same year, although similar characters appear in German fairy tales and folk songs from before that time.[199]
Sawney Bean's clan	Scotland	1575–1600	Claimed cannibal family that robbed, killed and ate travellers in a cave of Bennane Head, until their manhunt and execution by James VI. Contemporary documents make no reference to the hundreds of disappearances and murders said to have been carried by Bean's clan, which was probably inspired by the earlier legend of Christie-Cleek.[200]
Simeon Fleischer	Holy Roman Empire	1581 and before	Supposedly married and murdered women in order to steal their money. Confessed under torture to 19 murders before being executed by being torn apart with red-hot pincers over a three-day period. The only account of the case comes from an unsigned pamphlet of dubious historicity which relates the life of Fleischer and fellow medieval serial killers Christman Genipperteinga and Peter Niers.
Juan Manuel de Solorzano, Count of La Torre Cosío and La Cortina	New Spain	1640–1641	Legendary criollo nobleman under the rule of Viceroy Marquis of Cadereyta, said to have murdered several men after mistaking them for a political enemy that had also seduced his wife,[201][202] and that later killed himself during his forced reclusion in a convent.[203] His attributed residence in Mexico City was not built until more than a century after his supposed death in 1641.
Lavinia Fisher	United States	1819 and before	Urban legends state that Fisher was the first female serial killer in the United States. She is supposed to have run an inn with her husband John where travellers were convinced to stay the night and then murdered while they slept in order to rob them. No evidence that such murders actually took place has been found; the legend of John and Lavinia Fisher appears to have been inspired by two highway robbers of that name who were hanged in 1820 for leading a gang which assaulted and robbed guests at their inn, but did not murder them.[204]
Annie Palmer	Jamaica	1827–1831	Legendary figure who supposedly poisoned three husbands and a number of lovers and tortured slaves to death for sexual pleasure before being killed in a slave uprising in 1831. The story was recorded as historical fact by some writers, but modern research has proved it to be a complete fiction.[205]
Don Vincente	Spain	1834–1836	Bibliomaniac ex-monk and librarian said to have killed ten men in Barcelona in order to steal unique books and add them to his collection, sentenced for his crimes to die by garrote. The story, first published as an anonymous article in an 1836 Parisian newspaper, was reprinted as a true story in France for a century, while remaining largely unknown in Spain.[206]
Swiatek	Austrian Galicia	1846–1849	According to a book by Sabine Baring-Gould, Swiatek was a homeless beggar who murdered and cannibalized a 14-year-old girl in 1849. After his arrest he admitted to killing and eating five other people, and evidence was found linking him to at least 14 murders. Committed suicide before trial.[207]
Polly Bartlett	United States	1868	Co-proprietor of "Bartlett's Inn," which was a scam she ran with her father Jim to lure Businessman and other white, male travelers with valuables, most often gold. They were seduced by Polly into sex, who fed them steaks and whiskey laced with arsenic to kill them, before their valuables were lifted from their person. The father of one victim called the police to the site, who found the bodies buried in the stables after the Bartletts fled. An attempted victim shot Jim and arrested Polly, who was shot and killed in her prison cell by one of the father's employees, who was never charged.[208] The story originated in a 1963 article in Real West magazine and is now generally considered to be a folk tale rather than actual history.[209]
Matthias Schambacher (or Schaumboch)	United States	1850–1879	Tavern owner in the Blue Mountains who local legend claims was long suspected of murdering some of his guests for their money. Allegedly confessed to at least 11 murders before dying from natural causes in 1879. No record of such crimes can be found from before 1938, when Maurice Broun compiled local legends about Schambacher while serving as curator of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.[210]
Agnus McVee, Jim McVee and Al Riley	Canada	1875–1885	Family claimed to have owned a hotel and store on the Cariboo Road of British Columbia during the Cariboo Gold Rush, where they killed miners for their gold and kidnapped women and forced into sex trafficking against their will until their arrest and death in prison in New Westminster. The story comes from a single source and there are no records of disappearances in the area at the time of the murders nor existing death certificates of the supposed serial killers apprehended.[211]

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