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CLASSIC: Arsenic: The Assassin's Dream Weapon · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: You forgetting a situation and you're thinking, like, what would
0:03
Speaker 1: be my dream way to kill this person?
0:07
Speaker 2: All the time?
0:08
Speaker 3: No, okay, maybe maybe sometimes I don't know.
0:12
Speaker 2: Just to think about the rhyme, to think about it.
0:15
Speaker 3: Well, for centuries, people have asked themselves this question, uh,
0:21
Speaker 3: historically speaking, what what what what would it take to
0:25
Speaker 3: just get rid of this inconvenient person in my life?
0:28
Speaker 1: Right without getting in trouble?
0:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, without getting caught.
0:31
Speaker 3: It turns out there is a perfect answer to this question, uh.
0:35
Speaker 3: And then you'll find it in all kinds of cool
0:37
Speaker 3: detective novels, you know, Agatha Christie, Our snick and old
0:42
Speaker 3: Lace comes to mind, right, because our snick was an odorless, tasteless,
0:49
Speaker 3: clear substance that could very easily be snuck into somebody's
0:54
Speaker 3: cup o tea, you know, or perhaps administered in various
0:58
Speaker 3: and sundry other ways without the ever knowing. And again,
1:01
Speaker 3: because of the lack of forensic technology that existed in
1:06
Speaker 3: the days of yr, was unlikely to ever be traced
1:09
Speaker 3: back to the perpetrator of said the heinous crime.
1:13
Speaker 1: So tune in to learn how what our brit friends
1:17
Speaker 1: call the old inheritance powder became the assassin's dream weapon.
1:24
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Are you a
1:52
Speaker 1: jilted lover a turn bit of from every Tom, Dick
1:54
Speaker 1: and Harry that comes calling? Are you a child of
1:56
Speaker 1: well desperate to make progress through a little bit of
1:59
Speaker 1: italianation or inheritance spouder? If so, tune in quickly to
2:03
Speaker 1: this episode of Ridiculous History.
2:05
Speaker 2: My name is Ben. Ben. Your fast talking's got my
2:07
Speaker 2: head spinning. You made me forget my name once again.
2:10
Speaker 2: Give me one second. Okay, it's nol and it's true.
2:12
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous History, And I'm just gonna say right
2:14
Speaker 2: out of the front of the show, I'm a little
2:15
Speaker 2: horse today as opposed to a giant, luxurious steed.
2:20
Speaker 1: Huh worth it well, you don't know. I think it
2:23
Speaker 1: gives a bit of gravitas to your statements.
2:27
Speaker 2: And hopefully our super producer, Casey Pegram can fix it
2:30
Speaker 2: in post.
2:31
Speaker 1: The man is a wizard, I am telling you he
2:35
Speaker 1: is also. In addition to being quite talented, Casey Pegram
2:40
Speaker 1: is also a very i would say, principled man.
2:46
Speaker 2: That's true. If he was ever to slip you a mickey,
2:48
Speaker 2: he would have damn good reason. Let me tell you
2:50
Speaker 2: what it would be, a justified mickey.
2:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had talked about this off the air. If
2:56
Speaker 1: either of us ever walked by and saw a super producer,
3:00
Speaker 1: Casey Pegrim dragging a body sized garbage bag down the street,
3:06
Speaker 1: we would just pick up the other end and help
3:08
Speaker 1: him move it, because even if it were a body,
3:10
Speaker 1: he would have good reason for his actions.
3:14
Speaker 2: And you know that antiquated term slipped him a mickey
3:17
Speaker 2: or her a mickey I just use typically referred more
3:19
Speaker 2: to lacing a drink with a psychoactive drug or something
3:23
Speaker 2: that would incapacitate someone, not necessarily kill them, like the
3:27
Speaker 2: mickeys that we're talking about today would.
3:30
Speaker 1: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Today we are talking about the
3:34
Speaker 1: dark art of poison. Not just any poison. However, we're
3:38
Speaker 1: talking about one of the most storied, notorious, and for
3:43
Speaker 1: a time popular poisons in human civilization. We'd like to
3:47
Speaker 1: introduce you to arsenic.
3:49
Speaker 2: That's right. It actually earned the title the King of
3:52
Speaker 2: Poison by the fifteenth century, but it had a quite
3:57
Speaker 2: rich history even well before that.
4:00
Speaker 1: Right, we know that ancient Egyptians mind arsenic compounds. We
4:05
Speaker 1: know that in one of the very very early pharmacological
4:11
Speaker 1: text the d Materia medica arsenic is also mentioned. This
4:17
Speaker 1: is a naturally occurring element that is just across the planet,
4:22
Speaker 1: and you can find a map of naturally occurring arsenic
4:26
Speaker 1: here in the United States. It's spooky, it's scary stuff.
4:29
Speaker 2: And the fact that it was naturally occurring is one
4:31
Speaker 2: of the many reasons that made it such a popular
4:35
Speaker 2: tool for getting the job done, because it was easy
4:38
Speaker 2: to get because of its use in everything from medication
4:42
Speaker 2: to pesticides, to industrial processing materials and things like that.
4:47
Speaker 2: And it is odorless, colorless, and tasteless and dissolves in
4:53
Speaker 2: water and any other liquids easily in its oxide form.
4:57
Speaker 2: The word arsenic itself comes from from the Greek arsenacon,
5:02
Speaker 2: which meant bold or potent, and that is an apt
5:05
Speaker 2: moniker for this little killer.
5:08
Speaker 1: And we do know that even in ancient times people
5:12
Speaker 1: were aware of arsenic's potential as a poison. The first
5:17
Speaker 1: law against poisoning was passed in eighty two BCE. It
5:22
Speaker 1: was a Roman law that specifically mentioned outline arsenic because
5:29
Speaker 1: it was used so often by assassins. And Noel, I
5:33
Speaker 1: love that you point out the medicinal or the perceived
5:37
Speaker 1: medicinal benefits of Arsenic, because that's a thread that we
5:41
Speaker 1: see continuing concurrently with its popularity as a poison. And earlier,
5:48
Speaker 1: just a moment ago, we mentioned that the fifteenth century
5:53
Speaker 1: is crucial to Arsenic's role as a poison, used by
5:58
Speaker 1: everyone from lovers to assassins to wealthy Italian aristocrats. This
6:06
Speaker 1: is the moment where if Arsenic was some sort of
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Speaker 1: pop star, it suddenly recorded its breakout single yeah.
6:14
Speaker 2: And I think the reason that that's a good way
6:16
Speaker 2: to put it is because it actually had a substance
6:19
Speaker 2: had a huge impact on politics, especially in Italy. Italians,
6:24
Speaker 2: as it turns out, had quite the reputation of wielding
6:28
Speaker 2: this substance and poisons in general for political gain. So
6:33
Speaker 2: in the Italian Renaissance, you may have heard of the
6:36
Speaker 2: Borgia family, and there was a I think there was
6:38
Speaker 2: a Netflix series called The Borgos or maybe it was
6:41
Speaker 2: an AMC or something like that, but you can get
6:43
Speaker 2: it and with Jeremy irons is in it. But it
6:45
Speaker 2: chronicles this pretty shady Italian Renaissance family that were quite powerful.
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Speaker 2: In fact, Rodrigo Borgia, who actually went on to become
6:54
Speaker 2: Pope Alexander the sixth and fourteen ninety two, so no
6:57
Speaker 2: slouch and big, big social climbers these and he had
7:01
Speaker 2: two children. One was Cesare, so I think hope I
7:05
Speaker 2: did okay, and then the other one was Lucrezia. And
7:08
Speaker 2: Lucrezia actually is the one who got sort of a
7:10
Speaker 2: bad rap as being a poisoner, because there is an
7:14
Speaker 2: opera by Donazzetti called Lucrezia, and there's a scene in
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Speaker 2: it where she apparently poisons several people, five people, and
7:25
Speaker 2: history doesn't really support that. In fact, she was apparently
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Speaker 2: quite a pious woman and died without probably ever having
7:32
Speaker 2: poisoned anyone. Had just credit where credit is due. Upfront,
7:36
Speaker 2: we're getting a lot of this information from a fantastic
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Speaker 2: book called The King of Poisons the History of Arsenic
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Speaker 2: by John Pariscandola. So Lucretia seems to have her hands
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Speaker 2: mostly clean, but her brother Chesai or Cesare is the
7:50
Speaker 2: one who really took this to the next level. And
7:53
Speaker 2: as we'll get to it's interesting because poison got a
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Speaker 2: bit of a rap as a quote unquote woman's weapon
8:00
Speaker 2: of that later, so Chesare Borgia apparently was guilty of
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Speaker 2: just poisoning hundreds of people dozens at the very least
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Speaker 2: in his pursuit of a political career.
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Speaker 1: It was like hism o, his modus operandi. What's fascinating
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Speaker 1: here is that poisoning via arsenic became so prevalent and
8:21
Speaker 1: well known in Italy that it was considered a formal
8:25
Speaker 1: method of assassination. And earlier in the beginning of the show,
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Speaker 1: you may have heard the phrase italianation italianation. I do
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Speaker 1: love that Italianation was the slaying term for poisoning via
8:41
Speaker 1: arsenic outside of Italy.
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Speaker 2: I think the Brits came up with that one, and
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Speaker 2: very British. And we'll get to how this ultimately spread
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Speaker 2: from Italy elsewhere. Before we do that, I just want
8:50
Speaker 2: to talk about this. There were a handful of poison
8:53
Speaker 2: assassins that really made names for themselves, one of whom
8:58
Speaker 2: was Julia to Lato Fauna, which I love. All of
9:02
Speaker 2: these assassins have these amazing shorthand names. And she her
9:08
Speaker 2: story goes a couple of different ways. There's there's there's
9:10
Speaker 2: several versions of it. But one version is that she
9:13
Speaker 2: invented this mixture, a harmless looking liquid that apparently is
9:21
Speaker 2: as few as four to six drops would be enough
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Speaker 2: to quote destroy a man. And the principal ingredient in
9:28
Speaker 2: this material, which was called aqua tofauna, is thought to
9:32
Speaker 2: have been arsenic. And you got to think about the
9:36
Speaker 2: time we're talking about where men ruled families and governments
9:41
Speaker 2: iron fists, and women were nothing but chattel. So to
9:45
Speaker 2: empower women with this material was lots of Funa was
9:49
Speaker 2: able to do because it you know, there are many
9:51
Speaker 2: historians who say every woman in Naples probably had a
9:55
Speaker 2: bottle of this stuff in their you know, medicine cabinets
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Speaker 2: among their perfumes, that only they would know which one
10:01
Speaker 2: it was.
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Speaker 1: This is this is a crucial point because I don't
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Speaker 1: know if we're jumping ahead too much with this, but
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Speaker 1: it seems like a good time to mention the method
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Speaker 1: of delivery that was employed often in Italy. It wasn't
10:16
Speaker 1: an immediate death, and this is a instead a slow poisoning,
10:20
Speaker 1: so you would have there's this old myth I found,
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Speaker 1: or this old legend that said women in particular parts
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Speaker 1: of Italy, to keep their husbands faithful, would supply them
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Speaker 1: with a small amount of poison and then a small antidote,
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Speaker 1: so they had to keep coming back home. But regardless
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Speaker 1: of the rat veracity or falsity of that, we do
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Speaker 1: know is true that people were being poisoned slowly rather
10:47
Speaker 1: than immediately often.
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Speaker 2: You know it's true. And I actually found another fantastic
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Speaker 2: article called aquatafauna, slow poisoning and husband killing in seventeenth
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Speaker 2: century Italy from a website called a Blast from the Past,
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Speaker 2: and it's really kind of just a blog, but it
11:02
Speaker 2: was written by Wow. It's not even really credited as
11:05
Speaker 2: having an author, but I checked everything and it had
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Speaker 2: really great qualifying links and just a fantastic article, specifically
11:12
Speaker 2: talking about the role that women played in this whole
11:14
Speaker 2: poisoning epidemic, and Lata Fanna especially being kind of the
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Speaker 2: one that jump started that, and how a lot of
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Speaker 2: her story is sort of the stuff of legends. But
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Speaker 2: to your point, then, the idea of the slow poisoning
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Speaker 2: was really important in very devout Catholic Italy, right because
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Speaker 2: it gave the dying husband time to do a couple
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Speaker 2: of things, one of which was get his affairs in order.
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Speaker 2: If you're talking about this inheritance powder, making sure that
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Speaker 2: the wife would be well provided for and the family
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Speaker 2: would have all that he needed. After he passed, or
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Speaker 2: the church would have a donation, the church would have
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Speaker 2: a donation, or that he was able to repent for
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Speaker 2: his sins. So this is a really interesting thing because
11:54
Speaker 2: that slow meeting out of poison through food or drink
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Speaker 2: was really a crucial part of this whole thing. And
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Speaker 2: there's a fantastic quote in this article from Chambers Journal,
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Speaker 2: which was a magazine started in eighteen thirty two by
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Speaker 2: William Chambers. And it's a little long. I'm just going
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Speaker 2: to read part of it just to kind of give
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Speaker 2: the sense of at the time how this was looked upon.
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Speaker 2: Administered in wine or tea or some other liquid by
12:17
Speaker 2: the flattering traitress, it produced but a scarcely noticeable effect.
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Speaker 2: The husband became a little out of sorts, felt weak
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Speaker 2: and languid, so little indisposed that he would scarcely call
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Speaker 2: in a medical man. After the second dose of the poison,
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Speaker 2: this weakness and languor became more pronounced the beautiful Medea.
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Speaker 2: See there's a lot of language in here that characterizes
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Speaker 2: this woman as some sort of horrible, murderous, harpy type character,
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Speaker 2: like referencing Medea. But obviously, you know, in political landscape
12:46
Speaker 2: of the time. There's kind of a gray area there,
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Speaker 2: but we'll get to that later. This beautiful Medea, who
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Speaker 2: expressed so much anxiety for her husband's indisposition, would scarcely
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Speaker 2: be an object of suspicion, and perhaps would prepare her
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Speaker 2: husband's food or prescribed by the doctor with her own
13:02
Speaker 2: fair hands. In this way, the third drop would be
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Speaker 2: administered and would prostrate even the most vigorous man. Okay,
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Speaker 2: And then this is the last bit to save her
13:12
Speaker 2: fair fame, the wife would demand a post mortem examination,
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Speaker 2: resulting nothing except that the woman was able to pose
13:19
Speaker 2: as a slandered innocent and then it would be remembered
13:22
Speaker 2: that her husband died without either pain, inflammation, fever, or spasms.
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Speaker 1: This is important because for a long time, arsenic was
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Speaker 1: a difficult poison to identify. Not only was it odorless
13:37
Speaker 1: and colorless and so on, but arsenic poisoning exhibited symptoms
13:42
Speaker 1: that could easily be confused with symptoms of diseases that
13:45
Speaker 1: were common at the time, such as cholera, which you
13:48
Speaker 1: will remember from several other strange episodes we have done
13:52
Speaker 1: on Ridiculous History. And because again it was naturally occurring
13:58
Speaker 1: and considered medicinal people were able to easily obtain arsenic. This,
14:05
Speaker 1: you know, in our earlier episode on Guy Fox we
14:07
Speaker 1: talked about the relative ease or difficulty of acquiring gunpowder.
14:12
Speaker 1: It was much easier to acquire arsenic. And additionally, arsenic
14:18
Speaker 1: was used in so many other things. We'll get to
14:21
Speaker 1: that in just a second. I have a great list
14:24
Speaker 1: for you know, but before we do, I think we
14:27
Speaker 1: need to bust some stereotypes here. The idea of poison
14:31
Speaker 1: being so closely associated with Italy. This concept thrived because
14:38
Speaker 1: it sort of justified the stereotypes that the French or
14:42
Speaker 1: the British already had about Italians. They thought they were devious,
14:46
Speaker 1: you know, Monty burns as canned rubbers. Sure, and they
14:51
Speaker 1: often described it, you know, as an italianation or as
14:54
Speaker 1: an Italian method of murder, with the connotations being that
15:00
Speaker 1: somehow cowardly. But the French and the British both were
15:04
Speaker 1: often using arsenic. They were just claiming it was an
15:09
Speaker 1: Italian thing.
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Speaker 2: It's true. It was actually Catherine de Medici, who married
15:13
Speaker 2: Henry the Second, who would go on to become the
15:15
Speaker 2: King of France in fifteen thirty three, who is given
15:19
Speaker 2: lots of credit for bringing the Italian method of assassination
15:25
Speaker 2: to France, and specifically in using it for political gain.
15:29
Speaker 1: Yes, and by the sixteenth century, court records revealed that
15:35
Speaker 1: cases involving poisoning were occurring regularly in Britain, if not frequently.
15:41
Speaker 1: There were about a dozen recorded poisonings between fifteen seventy
15:45
Speaker 1: one and fifteen ninety eight. And of course one of
15:49
Speaker 1: the most popular choices of poison was in a stunning
15:53
Speaker 1: plot twist arsenic.
15:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in France, Louis the fourteenth got so weirded
15:59
Speaker 2: out by this thing and feared for his life to
16:02
Speaker 2: the point that he established a special commission with the
16:05
Speaker 2: express purpose of investigating this phenomenon. It took him until
16:09
Speaker 2: sixteen eighty two to finish, during which time one hundred
16:12
Speaker 2: and four people were tried, thirty four were executed, and
16:15
Speaker 2: the rest were either banished or got prison terms. And
16:19
Speaker 2: then this is the first time you start to see
16:21
Speaker 2: maybe not super well codified regulations regarding the sale of poison,
16:26
Speaker 2: but it was a little bit more draconian, where if
16:29
Speaker 2: you were caught supplying someone poison for the purposes of
16:34
Speaker 2: committing a murder, whether or not they succeeded, you would
16:37
Speaker 2: be subject to death yourself.
16:39
Speaker 1: Right, So not a fine, not imprisonment, but a hard
16:44
Speaker 1: death penalty if you are even accidentally associated with an
16:48
Speaker 1: unsuccessful murder attempt. And as we trace Arsenic in the
16:58
Speaker 1: world of Western Europe, I guess as you say the region,
17:01
Speaker 1: but saying the world of Western Europe sounded cool, you know,
17:04
Speaker 1: had this time life vibe. Anyhow, as we see, the
17:08
Speaker 1: laws were slow to evolve in step with Arsenic's evolution
17:13
Speaker 1: in terms of popularity. In fact, before eighteen fifty one,
17:17
Speaker 1: there were no laws against selling poison in England. There's
17:21
Speaker 1: just it just hadn't occurred to anybody that there should
17:24
Speaker 1: be a law against that end. Amidst the panopoly of
17:27
Speaker 1: poisons available there, it was especially easy to purchase arsenic.
17:32
Speaker 2: Now I like that one. Then the panopoly of poisons.
17:34
Speaker 2: That's a good one.
17:35
Speaker 1: Ah, thanks so much man. Amidst this great selection, did
17:38
Speaker 1: we mention the difference between naturally occurring arsenic and arsenic
17:41
Speaker 1: compounds yet a.
17:42
Speaker 2: Little bit at the top of the show. But why
17:43
Speaker 2: don't we circle back? Because I think that is a
17:44
Speaker 2: good point and something worth exploring just a little bit further.
17:48
Speaker 1: So we mentioned that arsenic was a known thing that
17:52
Speaker 1: occurred in the natural world, and you could see it
17:55
Speaker 1: in soil, you could see it in groundwater. But what
17:59
Speaker 1: is what is white arsenic?
18:00
Speaker 2: What do we mean when we say that arsenic is
18:03
Speaker 2: of course an element and the symbol is as and
18:06
Speaker 2: its atomic number is thirty three with a mass of
18:09
Speaker 2: seventy four point nine, and it is in group fifteen
18:12
Speaker 2: of the periodic table, along with things like nitrogen, bismuth, phosphorus,
18:17
Speaker 2: and antimony, and it is considered a metalloid.
18:23
Speaker 1: It's the twentieth most common element I believe in soil.
18:26
Speaker 2: That's right. And apparently it's estimated that its concentration in
18:30
Speaker 2: the Earth's crust goes from between one to five parts
18:35
Speaker 2: per million, which means that it is not particularly prevalent
18:38
Speaker 2: in the Earth's crust, but it's associated with so many
18:41
Speaker 2: other metals and human activities that it becomes more prevalent
18:45
Speaker 2: in the Earth's crust.
18:46
Speaker 1: And this means that it is entirely possible for people
18:52
Speaker 1: to receive arsenic poisoning without someone attempting to poison them, right.
18:58
Speaker 2: I think even in our Poison Squad episode where we
19:01
Speaker 2: talked about adulterants in food, Arsenic low levels of arsenic,
19:04
Speaker 2: that is, was one of the potential adulterants that Harvey's
19:07
Speaker 2: poison squad we're looking at right.
19:09
Speaker 1: So white arsenic then is a poisonous trioxide of arsenic,
19:15
Speaker 1: which no I believe you mentioned at the top of
19:17
Speaker 1: the show. And it has legitimate uses. It's been used
19:21
Speaker 1: as a pesticide, rat poison, it's been used to manufacture glass.
19:26
Speaker 1: But it was just top notch when it came to
19:29
Speaker 1: being an agent of mortality. But along with this, I
19:35
Speaker 1: think this is important to mention. I don't know if
19:37
Speaker 1: this fascinated you as much as it fascinated me, But
19:40
Speaker 1: along with this known use of arsenic as a tool
19:44
Speaker 1: for assassination, it was also used in so many other things.
19:48
Speaker 1: It went into food coloring, it was used in beauty
19:51
Speaker 1: products such as Get This arsenic complexion wafers. They were
19:57
Speaker 1: meant for women who wanted to remove limishes or felt
20:01
Speaker 1: that their hands were too darkly colored. That stuff was
20:04
Speaker 1: still available in the nineteen twenties. There's this excellent article
20:08
Speaker 1: by Honeia Ray called When Poison was Everywhere Available at
20:13
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, and it's a review of a book called
20:18
Speaker 1: bitten by which fever, which examines all of the different
20:23
Speaker 1: products that contained arsenic but were advertised also as containing arsenic,
20:29
Speaker 1: like wallpaper, was huge. I had no idea, Yeah I was.
20:32
Speaker 2: I really used in green pigment, I think is where Yeah,
20:35
Speaker 2: I read absolutely, which is it was used in green
20:38
Speaker 2: pigment and studdyingly popular due to a wallpaper manufacturer named
20:43
Speaker 2: William Morris.
20:45
Speaker 1: But what people found is that this green pigment was
20:48
Speaker 1: so dangerous in terms of its arsenic content that some
20:52
Speaker 1: of that wallpaper is still off gassing today, and books
20:55
Speaker 1: that collected William Morris's wallpaper, several of them have to
20:59
Speaker 1: be quarantined effectively, they have to be contained because you
21:03
Speaker 1: can't flip through the pages without getting arsenic poisoning.
21:06
Speaker 2: Jayce just from like touching it. Wow, well then I
21:09
Speaker 2: think I for one really needed that little diversion from
21:11
Speaker 2: all the chaos and death throughout history at the hands
21:17
Speaker 2: of those wielding arsenics. So you know, a little tainted
21:20
Speaker 2: wallpaper is a nice respite from this. But unfortunately we
21:23
Speaker 2: do have to go back into this troubled history.
21:27
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, to the history, and troubling is a perfect
21:31
Speaker 1: word for it. Nol. We mentioned earlier some stuff about
21:35
Speaker 1: France and some stuff about Italy. Let's take a closer
21:38
Speaker 1: look at England. We see in the Victorian era that
21:43
Speaker 1: it was as you had mentioned earlier, arsenic was considered
21:47
Speaker 1: a woman's weapon, quote unquote, and reviewing cases from England
21:53
Speaker 1: in eighteen forties, researcher Ian Bernie found that in sixty
21:57
Speaker 1: percent of the cases the used party was a woman,
22:02
Speaker 1: thirty seven percent of whom were charged with poisoning their spouse.
22:06
Speaker 1: And Burnie notes in seventy percent of these poisoning cases
22:09
Speaker 1: the poison used was arsenic. It was much much more
22:13
Speaker 1: popular than the I think the second most popular poison
22:16
Speaker 1: would have been opium, but it was a distant second.
22:19
Speaker 2: And you know, you mentioned again this idea of like
22:21
Speaker 2: arsenic being a woman's weapon. It's such a derisive term.
22:24
Speaker 2: In the same way that the whole italianation thing was
22:27
Speaker 2: a way to kind of poo poo the Italians and
22:29
Speaker 2: call them cowards. Calling it a women's weapon was basically
22:32
Speaker 2: saying the women were weak, and the political landscape surrounding
22:35
Speaker 2: their use of this, like I read at the top
22:37
Speaker 2: of the show, largely, I mean, of course, there were
22:41
Speaker 2: very nefarious reasons to use this material to have someone killed,
22:45
Speaker 2: but a lot of times it was used by women
22:48
Speaker 2: to get out from under the thumb of an abusive husband.
22:51
Speaker 2: Women were abused, and it especially was true where a
22:55
Speaker 2: lot of these high profile cases involved much more aristocratic
22:59
Speaker 2: members society. But as it turns out in England especially,
23:03
Speaker 2: it was much more likely to be used as a
23:05
Speaker 2: tool of those in poverty because they had no recourse
23:10
Speaker 2: to escaping these horrible lives. It was even used on
23:13
Speaker 2: children when the family couldn't feed them anymore. So there's
23:18
Speaker 2: a real dark history there. So I think it's really
23:21
Speaker 2: important when we talk about these terms that we you know,
23:24
Speaker 2: talk about the context too that they were wielded in. Right.
23:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, these became articles of oppression and tools of prejudice,
23:33
Speaker 1: especially when considered that the data people were looking for
23:38
Speaker 1: was largely constructed to conform to their pre existing views.
23:43
Speaker 1: And we see the rank hypocrisy here as well. But
23:48
Speaker 1: we see another big problem when when we ask about
23:51
Speaker 1: how they knew that arsenic was found in these cases,
23:55
Speaker 1: they didn't really have a way to test for it,
23:57
Speaker 1: so they would have to struck a timeline, you know,
24:01
Speaker 1: like the old English version of Casey Beckrum kills somebody
24:07
Speaker 1: with arsenic? How do they know it's arsenic? The best
24:09
Speaker 1: way they would be able to detect it for a
24:11
Speaker 1: long time would be to speak with the person who
24:15
Speaker 1: sold it to him. Thus the law in France right,
24:19
Speaker 1: it was the best way to find arsenic. The first
24:22
Speaker 1: known case in which convincing proof of poisoning ever showed
24:27
Speaker 1: up in court didn't take place until seventeen fifty two
24:30
Speaker 1: in Oxford, England.
24:33
Speaker 2: Was that the one where they found the residue at
24:34
Speaker 2: the bottom of the food bowl? Yes? Yes.
24:37
Speaker 1: The accused party was a thirty one year old woman
24:41
Speaker 1: named Mary Blandy. She was charged with poising her father
24:45
Speaker 1: with arsenic And you heard about this one too, right,
24:49
Speaker 1: I think we both read about this. Mary administered the
24:52
Speaker 1: powder to her father in food and drink and he
24:56
Speaker 1: became ill. But also two servants who had eaten some
24:58
Speaker 1: of the same food suffered the same effect, and that's
25:02
Speaker 1: when they noticed this powder.
25:04
Speaker 2: And I think that circumstantial evidence of the servants having
25:08
Speaker 2: eaten the food too and come down with the same
25:10
Speaker 2: symptoms is what probably led the judge to be like, well,
25:14
Speaker 2: clearly this was not entirely natural. Causes if there are
25:18
Speaker 2: several people of different ages and health experiencing the same stuff.
25:23
Speaker 2: And there were very as this book describes non specific
25:27
Speaker 2: chemical tests that were done, which to me just kind
25:29
Speaker 2: of says they probably weren't very good and didn't work
25:33
Speaker 2: and weren't reliable, because, as we'll go on to discuss,
25:35
Speaker 2: a real chemical test that actually unequivocally proved the existence
25:40
Speaker 2: of this stuff in food or corpses wouldn't come along
25:44
Speaker 2: for a little bit later, yea. And in fact, the
25:46
Speaker 2: nature of the tests in this case were described as
25:49
Speaker 2: showing that the materials used in the the food behaved
25:54
Speaker 2: in the same way that oursnick would have. So it's
25:57
Speaker 2: very very general stuff. She did actually can fest to
26:00
Speaker 2: putting this powder into her father's food, but apparently she
26:05
Speaker 2: claimed to have not known it was poison. And this
26:08
Speaker 2: is interesting. Part of the story is that she was
26:09
Speaker 2: having an affair with a Scottish soldier by the name
26:12
Speaker 2: of William Crownston, and he heard that her father had
26:17
Speaker 2: a sizable inheritance that she was due to receive. So
26:22
Speaker 2: you know, he makes he comes off sending like a
26:24
Speaker 2: pretty pretty big rascal in this story, a real pill. Yeah,
26:27
Speaker 2: but he gave the poison to Mary and told her
26:32
Speaker 2: that if she gave it to her father, he would
26:34
Speaker 2: be more likely to accept their romance. That was how
26:39
Speaker 2: he put it. So she claimed that she didn't know
26:41
Speaker 2: it was poison. Kind of played dumb a little bit there.
26:44
Speaker 2: Unclear if she really believed that or not. Certainly doesn't
26:47
Speaker 2: make her come off looking particularly sharp here, But the
26:52
Speaker 2: jury did not buy it, right.
26:54
Speaker 1: The jury did not buy it, and, partially based on
26:58
Speaker 1: the arguments of the physician Anthony Addington, Mary was hanged.
27:04
Speaker 1: Cranston fled to France and died soon afterwards. And this
27:09
Speaker 1: all started bugging a chemist at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, England,
27:15
Speaker 1: a chemists named James Marsh because he said that the
27:18
Speaker 1: test Addington conducted were suggestive of arsenic but did not
27:25
Speaker 1: provide conclusive evidence. The kind of stuff that we be
27:28
Speaker 1: open and shut in a court of law.
27:31
Speaker 2: Kinds of things we think about every day now with forensics,
27:33
Speaker 2: you know, we take that stuff for granted, but it's
27:36
Speaker 2: a pretty big deal and really eliminates a lot of
27:39
Speaker 2: hearsay and a lot of very spurious evidence that could
27:44
Speaker 2: ultimately convict people that were not guilty. Of the crime.
27:47
Speaker 1: Yes, and for instance, he was called Marsh was called
27:51
Speaker 1: up in eighteen thirty two to test for arsenic in
27:54
Speaker 1: a murder case and Plumstead, the accused party, was charged
27:57
Speaker 1: with murdering his grandfather and there was evidence that the
28:01
Speaker 1: grandson had purchased arsenic purportedly as a rat poison. So
28:06
Speaker 1: they asked Marsh to test some coffee that had made
28:09
Speaker 1: several people in the house sick, including the grandfather, and
28:13
Speaker 1: test the stomach contents of the corpse. He was able
28:17
Speaker 1: to produce a yellow precipitate which showed the presence of
28:22
Speaker 1: arsnake and the coffee, but this didn't really seal the
28:26
Speaker 1: deal for the jury, and he couldn't prove there was
28:29
Speaker 1: arsnake in the stomach. The jury acquitted the defendant. The grandson,
28:34
Speaker 1: who later get this, came back and said, yeah, I
28:36
Speaker 1: did it.
28:37
Speaker 2: I totally did it, man, adding insults injury, especially for Marsh,
28:42
Speaker 2: because he was incredibly irritated by this whole situation and
28:45
Speaker 2: vowed to come up with a more let's say, stable test.
28:50
Speaker 2: So he kind of piggybacked off of some of the
28:53
Speaker 2: work of a chemist by the name of Carl Shiel
28:58
Speaker 2: who figured out that arsenal acid reacts with zinc and
29:02
Speaker 2: it creates this compound, this gaseous compound of arsenic and
29:06
Speaker 2: hydrogen that is called ar sign. And again this is
29:10
Speaker 2: all from King of Poisons, A History of Arsenic by
29:12
Speaker 2: John Pariscondola. So marsh was able to improve his test
29:17
Speaker 2: by piggybacking off of this research. So basically he was
29:20
Speaker 2: able to capture that gas and it leaves a film
29:24
Speaker 2: on a material that he was then able to test that.
29:27
Speaker 2: You had to heat it and then he would test it,
29:29
Speaker 2: and then you could tell kind of roughly how much
29:32
Speaker 2: arsenic was in the sample based on the size that
29:36
Speaker 2: the film produced. So this is a good thing, right,
29:43
Speaker 2: You could tell how much arsenic was in the sample
29:45
Speaker 2: based on the size that film produced, and then any
29:48
Speaker 2: other scientists worth their salt could test that sample and say, yes,
29:53
Speaker 2: there is in fact arsenic in this There's no more
29:56
Speaker 2: questionable methods we have. You know, we have a good
30:00
Speaker 2: system for deciding whether or not this stuff is present
30:02
Speaker 2: in everything from food samples to corpses. Post mortem, you
30:06
Speaker 2: can do these tests on bodies. And then there is
30:09
Speaker 2: even a better version of the test beyond that, where
30:11
Speaker 2: you could detect smaller amounts, which is probably what you
30:13
Speaker 2: would need for testing a corpse to find trace amounts
30:16
Speaker 2: or see if there were amounts beyond normal atmospheric levels
30:21
Speaker 2: of our snacks that would be found in a body
30:23
Speaker 2: long after they had died.
30:24
Speaker 1: Yes, beyond what I've decided to refer to as ambient arsenic.
30:28
Speaker 2: Ambient arsenic.
30:29
Speaker 1: So yeah, Hugo Range develops this quicker, simpler test in
30:33
Speaker 1: eighteen forty one, and we see the dark magic of
30:38
Speaker 1: arsenic being whittled away by the scientific method and the
30:42
Speaker 1: advances of the day. And this leads to a tipping point. Now,
30:47
Speaker 1: remember earlier we had said that there were some initial
30:50
Speaker 1: laws royal edicts that came into play with arsenic before
30:54
Speaker 1: it was possible to test word effectively. Now that we,
30:58
Speaker 1: being human civilization, can tech the presence of arsenic, you
31:02
Speaker 1: would think maybe its popularity dies down. However, not so,
31:06
Speaker 1: at least not immediately. You see, arsenic was still readily
31:09
Speaker 1: available and inexpensive. And if you're poisoning someone, then you're
31:13
Speaker 1: hoping maybe this person will not be of enough consequence
31:17
Speaker 1: to warrant a medical investigation. Maybe they'll say clearly they
31:21
Speaker 1: had cholera. So now let's just bury them. And this
31:25
Speaker 1: eventually led to Parliament saying we have to do something
31:29
Speaker 1: about this. The attempted to pass legislation as early as
31:32
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen to regulate this sale. Finally regulate the sale
31:38
Speaker 1: of poisoning drugs such as oxylic acid, corrosive subliminate or
31:43
Speaker 1: mercuric chloride and of course arsenic. The drug store owners
31:48
Speaker 1: were concerned that big Pharma yeah time ye, Cottage Pharma. Yeah.
31:52
Speaker 1: Cottage Pharma at the time thought that this would interfere
31:56
Speaker 1: with dispensing medicine, and they successfully opposed it. Opposed this
32:03
Speaker 1: legislation and it was ultimately withdrawn. But that was just
32:07
Speaker 1: the first volley of a longer legislative process.
32:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think things got a lot more like you
32:13
Speaker 2: would see today with you know, if you could go
32:15
Speaker 2: to buy cold medicine of the store, like for my kid,
32:17
Speaker 2: I still have to enter my name into a registry
32:20
Speaker 2: and show my ID to prove that I'm twenty one.
32:22
Speaker 2: This is exactly the case, because you know, you can
32:24
Speaker 2: use cold medicine to make methamphetomy. So in eighteen fifty one,
32:29
Speaker 2: this thing passed called the Sale of Arsenic Regulation Act,
32:32
Speaker 2: that required people buying arsenic to be twenty one years old,
32:35
Speaker 2: and it required them to fill in their information in
32:39
Speaker 2: a poison book or a register, and then they had
32:41
Speaker 2: to sign for it. So you could have like much
32:43
Speaker 2: more of a paper trail, much less of a he said,
32:46
Speaker 2: She said, you know who bought the poison kind of situation.
32:49
Speaker 2: So you know these things, these safeguards were put in place.
32:52
Speaker 2: It didn't curb the use of arsenic entirely, and in fact,
32:57
Speaker 2: in the United States, while it was not near a
33:00
Speaker 2: popular as it had been in Britain, the colonies or whatever,
33:03
Speaker 2: it was still going on. And you know, you can
33:06
Speaker 2: argue in the same way you can about any kind
33:07
Speaker 2: of regulation, whether me filling out that cold medicine registry,
33:12
Speaker 2: you know, for buying my kids fair flu causes people
33:16
Speaker 2: to make less methamphetomy. That as up for debate, but
33:19
Speaker 2: a Storian, Catherine Watson, said that she was pretty sure
33:22
Speaker 2: that it did have a gradual effect reducing poisoning crimes,
33:27
Speaker 2: especially those involving arseny. But of course you could have
33:30
Speaker 2: situations where people would maybe turn to other substances to
33:33
Speaker 2: poison their enemies or mother in laws.
33:38
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, mothers in law. You know, I think it
33:41
Speaker 1: depends on how many there are. So just to set
33:45
Speaker 1: the scene for you, friends and neighbors, my co hosts
33:48
Speaker 1: and I are looking a bit mournfully across our table
33:52
Speaker 1: here in the podcasting studio because we realized there's so
33:55
Speaker 1: many fascinating things about Arsenic that we probably won't get
33:59
Speaker 1: into in this episode. No, I have with me a
34:02
Speaker 1: list of famous people who were probably poisoned by Arsenic,
34:06
Speaker 1: as well as updates on latest research about their deaths. Ah,
34:11
Speaker 1: I got so much stuff, man, serial killers, we need
34:13
Speaker 1: even get into that.
34:14
Speaker 2: But then I have a story about a little village
34:16
Speaker 2: in Hungary in nineteen twenty nine where a group of
34:19
Speaker 2: women were prosecuted for poisoning like literally everyone in town
34:23
Speaker 2: because they were all horrible, abusive men. I think yours
34:27
Speaker 2: sounds less depressing. Let's go with yours, man.
34:30
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we can. We might have
34:32
Speaker 1: to post this on our community page. Ridiculous historians, just
34:36
Speaker 1: rattle off a few, just give people a sweet taste
34:39
Speaker 1: of that delicious poison. Alleged victims of Arsenic wolfgang Amadeus
34:44
Speaker 1: Mozart in seventeen ninety one.
34:46
Speaker 2: Then I'm sorry, interrupted, I just want to say. I
34:48
Speaker 2: had that in my research too. And there's a great
34:50
Speaker 2: quote from Old Wolfgang where he speaks more or less
34:53
Speaker 2: on his deathbed where he had fallen seriously ill and
34:57
Speaker 2: he was convinced that he had been poisoned. Says that
35:00
Speaker 2: he began to speak of death, and then he said
35:03
Speaker 2: that he was setting this requiem, the Mozart requiem, which
35:06
Speaker 2: he is most famously known for for himself. Quote, I
35:10
Speaker 2: feel definitely that I will not last much longer. I
35:13
Speaker 2: am sure that I have been poisoned, and I cannot
35:15
Speaker 2: rid myself of this idea. Someone has given me aqua
35:19
Speaker 2: tafana and calculated the precise time of my death. Please
35:23
Speaker 2: Ben go on.
35:23
Speaker 1: Only thirty five years old, poor guy, Poor Mazzi and
35:28
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte in eighteen twenty one, Alexander the Great in
35:31
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty six BCE, allegedly Zachary Taylor in
35:35
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty though that was later disproven. The list goes
35:38
Speaker 1: on and on, folks. You can read some of these
35:41
Speaker 1: additional stories nol and I found in full on our
35:45
Speaker 1: new community Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
35:48
Speaker 2: We promised we're gonna hop on there and put this
35:50
Speaker 2: up there, right Ben, and we commit to it right now.
35:53
Speaker 2: Butter twin style, boom done. We just put our fists
35:56
Speaker 2: together and lock it in. Yeah, locked it in, and
35:57
Speaker 2: we made it made a little poof of magical dust.
36:00
Speaker 1: So we are going to head out today. We hope
36:03
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed our exploration of the strange story of Arsenic.
36:07
Speaker 1: We also, of course, as always, liked to thank our mastermind,
36:12
Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Pegrod, who has, believe it or not,
36:15
Speaker 1: to this day, still not being convicted of poisoning anyone.
36:20
Speaker 2: That's because it hasn't kicked it out. He's been giving
36:21
Speaker 2: it to us a little bit at a time, a
36:23
Speaker 2: little bit at a time, and before you know it,
36:25
Speaker 2: we're just going to begging him to take care of
36:27
Speaker 2: us and nurture us and give us hugs and belly rubs.
36:30
Speaker 2: I thought I had a cholera.
36:31
Speaker 1: Then we'll be in the palm of his evil hand
36:33
Speaker 1: and on our way to our arsenic riddled graves.
36:38
Speaker 2: Will be riddled. It'll just be trace amounts probably right, Yes.
36:40
Speaker 1: Yes, our Arsenic tinged a grade.
36:43
Speaker 2: I like it.
36:44
Speaker 1: We'd like to thank Alex Williams for writing our theme song.
36:47
Speaker 1: Be sure to tune in for our next episode where
36:51
Speaker 1: we reveal why and how Germany sacrificed sausage for war and.
36:55
Speaker 2: As a former little German boy in fact, spoke like
36:58
Speaker 2: a native and went to German kindergarten, lived among the
37:01
Speaker 2: German people until I was six years old. The Germans
37:04
Speaker 2: do love a good vorced, so I want to hear
37:06
Speaker 2: that story about what would cause them to have to
37:08
Speaker 2: give up that delectable treat in the name of justice,
37:13
Speaker 2: And we can't.
37:14
Speaker 1: Wait to tell you in our next episode. In the meantime,
37:17
Speaker 1: no old folks can find us on Instagram, they can
37:19
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, they can find us on Twitter,
37:22
Speaker 1: where we are some variation of ridiculous history.
37:24
Speaker 2: We're still wood shopping the pinterest. Ben and I have
37:27
Speaker 2: combined our vision boards into a Megavision board involving dolphins
37:32
Speaker 2: and color swatches and crafts, and.
37:34
Speaker 1: We're putting out some Viewmaster adaptations. Does anybody else remember view.
37:40
Speaker 2: Masters that one? Yeah?
37:44
Speaker 1: Can you hear the riveting tension as you move from
37:46
Speaker 1: frame to frame?
37:47
Speaker 2: Pictures of parks mainly Yeah, And.
37:50
Speaker 1: There's like one picture of a Reddit meme that's not
37:54
Speaker 1: appropriate for work. But again, that's all brainstorming and workshopping is.
37:58
Speaker 2: If you have some signs questions for.
38:01
Speaker 1: A social media site, we should we should move on
38:04
Speaker 1: to go ahead and let us know you could write
38:06
Speaker 1: tw us directly.
38:07
Speaker 2: We are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com and most importantly,
38:11
Speaker 2: we hope that you enjoin us next time for another
38:13
Speaker 2: episode of ridiculous history. Thanks everyone. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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38:31
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