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Arsenic: The Assassin's Dream Weapon · Ridiculous History

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