August 27, 2025 • 29 mins
Why did so many women in the 1800s turn to poison to solve their problems? (Sorry husbands). Poisons like mercury, arsenic and strychnine were so cheap and readily available in the Victorian Era that it was called the "Golden Age of Poisoning." Besides being readily available, there were very few tests to detect murder by poison. Combine this with a society where women were powerless and poison becomes "the great equalizer for women in the 19th Century," as science historian Daniel Kevles wrote.
But not all poisonings in the 1800s were acts of desperation. Plenty were just good old fashioned murder. DUN DUN DUUUUN!!!
Joining Bob Crawford to help sort out the means, motive and opportunity of these Victorian Era women poisoners is Lisa Perrin.
GUEST: Lisa Perrin, author and illustrator of the book, The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message Welcome back American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
asked the question and I find the answer. The best
(00:25):
way to get us a question, of course, is to
record a video or a voice memo on your phone
and email it to Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com.
By now you know that email address Americanhistory Hotline at
gmail dot com. And remember we are American History Hotline.
So please no questions about Caesar unless they're about the salad,
(00:48):
which I am told was invented in Tijuana. So who knows,
maybe we need to do an episode about that. I
am digressing as usual. Let's get to today's question. It's
about poison. Here to help me answer this question is
Lisa Perrin. She's author and illustrator of the book The
League of Lady Poisoners.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Such a beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Work of art. If you look this, I mean, I
encourage each of you to look this book up and
just it is gorgeous. So Lisa, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Today a shock, saujeez, thank you so much. I'm tickled
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, Lisa, here's our listener's question. Hi. This is Leanne
from Saint Joseph's, Michigan, and I was wondering why so
many women in the eighteen hundreds poisoned their husbands. This
is a great question. So first off, Lisa, yes, there
were a lot of women apparently poisoning their husbands in
(01:45):
the eighteen hundreds in America. Yes, like were there?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, I had never heard of this.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
This is such a fabulous question from your listener, and
it's actually the exact question I wanted to answer, and
one of the impetuses for me writing this book. I
had heard the expression, perhaps you've heard it too, Bob,
that poison is a woman's weapon, and I was very
curious to know is that true? And then if it's true,
(02:12):
how how did that become so? And then if it
isn't true, why has that sort of persisted? And one
of the early articles I encountered when I was researching
for this book, which is the League of Lady Poisoners
Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women, was this amazing article
by brilliant writer and authority on all things poison related,
Deborah Blum. It's an article that she wrote for Wired
(02:34):
in twenty thirteen called the Imperfect Myth of the Female Poisoner,
and she actually clarifies in it that this is actually
a cultural stereotype. It's actually a misconception. The poison is
a much more likely to be a gender neutral weapon,
and if you actually look at the statistics, a greater
proportion of poisoners are men, and that is because most
(02:54):
murderers are men, like ninety percent of all murderers are
committed by men, and therefore they use every tool, including poison,
more than women. However, women are more likely to be
serial poisoners, and that has to do with stereotypes about
who commits murder and who gets investigated for murder, and
that allows them to go on committing their crimes a
(03:15):
lot longer. So there's a lot of interesting misconceptions at
play here that kind of led to us believing that
this is true. However, in the cases where it does happen,
they got so sensationalized in the media and in the press,
and people got obsessed with this idea of the specter
of the poisoning wife, sort of undermining society, every element
(03:36):
of society, and just taking an incredible amount of power
and danger in this singular act. So, okay, that's some
context before we get to the heart of the question
is why are there so many poisoning murders committed by
women specifically against men the eighteenth in the nineteenth century,
in the eighteen hundreds, what we consider to be the
Victorian era. And there's a number of reasons for that,
(04:00):
and I know this is specifically American history, so I'll
definitely try to focus there, but it was true in
the UK as well. In the Victorian era. Poison, specifically arsenic,
what we call it the King of poisons, sometimes chicily
called inheritance powder, was so ubiquitous, was so prevalent that
the joke was you could buy arsenic as easily as
(04:22):
a loaf of bread. It was available in every grocery store,
every druggist's shop for pennies. It was the cheapest poison.
It almost made it democratic. And the reason it was
so available was it was used as a rat poison.
So in all the kitchens, in all of the homes,
and the restaurants and the businesses, everyone's going to have
a healthy supply of arsenic on hand, and that created
(04:44):
a really dangerous situation where arsenic was available. And then
you had a time period where women did not have
a lot of agency, and they almost created this perfect
storm of giving these often oppressed people access to a
really dangerous material. And that is kind of the heart
of how this was able to get started and keep going.
(05:05):
And then more about arsenic just being difficult to detect
and prove in terms of toxicology until science advanced much later.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Arsenic the people's poison.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So what is a famous serial poison our case from
that time period in America and what happened? Take us
into a deep dive into one of those instances.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, and there's definitely a lot, and I would encourage
you to check out the book to look at some
more of these phenomenal stories or fascinating stories. I think
one that jumped into my head when I was thinking
about the episode for today was a woman named Amy
Archer Gilligan. And she again in the eighteen hundreds, she
opens this retirement home in Connecticut and she realized and
(05:56):
again this is very early in the beginning the retirement
home senior living facilities not really a thing. She's almost
sort of a pioneer in this field.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I love it, a pioneer in the field of serial poisoning.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
She realized that the only way to get new inmates
and that's what they called them at the time, not residents,
but inmates into her residence was when somebody died, and
so she realized she had a financial sort of impetus
to get rid of some people to make new rooms available,
because that was the only way she could make more money,
and so she essentially started poisoning her various residents at
(06:31):
the senior living facility. And it wasn't until a writer
for the local newspaper noticed that her facility, even though
it was much smaller than other similar facilities, was having
like four times the amount of deaths that they started
to investigate, and she was eventually found guilty of the
murders of all of a great number of folks who
(06:53):
lived in her care, which I think is part of
what's so complicated about women killers in general, is that
they often will use weapons or they'll use murder to
harm those closest to them or people in their care.
And sometimes you'll hear of nurses and other folks in
these sort of positions is called angels of mercy, and
(07:13):
they're saying they're doing it sort of as a merciful
act for someone who to put someone out of their misery,
but in her case it was purely financial.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
I think about newspapers back in this time period I love,
and there are newspaper archive dot com or dot org.
I mean yet incredible when I do my research, I
love going back eighteen forties, eighteen fifties reading the papers
at the times, and their gossip be by nature, they're
(07:45):
sensationalistic by nature. Oh yeah, we talk about biased media today.
Each paper was biased in one way or another, meant
many owned by certain political parties or factions or politicians.
With all that in mind, were these stories of these
(08:05):
women poisoners? Were they popular in the day?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Were they popular? This was catnip? Are you kidding? The
readers loved this, And so much of what I learned
while researching this was that the stories really took this
incredible turn when they got to the media, and it
wasn't so much that the crime was on trial as
the woman, her character and her appearance, and women who
(08:29):
were more traditionally feminine and sort of more demure were
more likely to get off by the often male jurors,
but women who were You would see these really insane
articles where they were just commenting on specifically Amy Archer.
The women we were just talking about Amy Archer Gilligan
comments that even though she was in her thirties, she
(08:49):
looked much older, she looked very matronly, and just the
way they write about her is very cruel and very harsh,
just based on her appearance, let alone her actions, which
for the record were abominable, just really judged in the
court of public opinion. And I do love reading these
Victorian era articles because they're so sort of snorky and
(09:10):
sassy in a way we don't expect. I think we
think a very sort of aerodite and florid language being Victorian,
and they will just make these cutting remarks where you're like, oh,
that's a terrible burn. That was really mean.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, they had a way of slicing and diicing people.
What we call that, like dissing people or sick burns. Yeah,
you like to say these days, no one did it
better than in the nineteenth century. Like we could learn
like any rapper could learn a thing or two from
reading newspapers in the nineteenth century, and you know, same
(09:46):
as it ever was, right like true crime, I mean
it is, it is catnip today just like it was
hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, And I thought about that a lot, like why
why am I? Why are so many of us so
fascinated by true crime? Why is this something that I
listened to like episodes of Dateline, old episodes of Dateline
all the time, And I was trying to think about, well,
why do why am I so drawn to this? Why
are so many people so drawn to this? And I
think it's because it's brilliant examples of storytelling. It's great narrative.
(10:16):
You have all of these fascinating characters, you have this
terrifying climax, and in the end, ultimately hopefully you get
some kind of resolution and justice. And I think we're
just fascinated by the darker side of things, and it's
a safe way to kind of get close to and
approach you to the things we're most afraid of, is
by listening to true crime podcasts and reading true crime
books and TV and movies and all kinds of media.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So it's funny you talked, you brought up Dateline, and
when I saw your book and began to research your work,
I thought immediately of Dateline twenty twenty and forty eight hours.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Thank you, I'm honored.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yes, well, there was one I saw last Well, there's
a famous one. My wife and I joke about the
Black Widow. They're like, that's a famous twentieth like late
twentieth century situation like this where the woman, I think,
poison multiple husbands. Yes, and then there's one from I
believe I saw it yet last year. It could have
been a repeat, and I don't remember which brand it
(11:17):
was forty eight Hours twenty twenty or Dayline, but the
woman poisons her children with anti freeze.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Anti freeze. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That one with heartbreaking and it's there, right, they're heartbreaking,
they're chilling. You don't understand how this could someone could
do this, but from your book, it's not uncommon. So
so let me ask you this. You talked about arsenic
being like the go to poison of people. Were there
(11:48):
any other like plants, animals, chemicals that were used back
in the nineteenth century to get the job done?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yes, absolutely, and it is so fascinating, specifically the anti
freeze example, because it has some of the qualities that
arsenic has, so it's almost so interesting to see that parallel.
So just to go back to arsenic at the time,
it's colorless, it's odorless, it's tasteless. If anything, it tastes
a little bit sweet, and anti freeze, unfortunately, also tastes
a little bit sweet. So it's very easy. And again,
(12:21):
for the record, all none of this is a how
to please do Please do not get any ideas from this.
This is these are cautionary tales. I'm not giving advice
or instruction.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
You know, it's terrible we have to say this, but
please do not murder any anyone.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
With any kind of a chemical or pot.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
And again, the toxicology today, they it's not like in
the Victorian era. They can prove these poisoning cases and
people will get caught. But again we have the prevalence
of arsenic for sure. In the Victorian era. There are
poisonous plants. You don't see them as much in the
Victorian era. You'll see them in a lot of the
earlier crimes. But some of my favorites are deadly night
(13:04):
shade or what we call belladonna, poison, hemlock, foxglove, and
I love some of the alternative names for these, like
foxglove is also called witch's gloves or dead man's bells.
As we know, pop opium poppies can be very dangerous
as well. Wolf spain also called monkshood, delvil's helmet, women's vain,
(13:27):
or the Queen of poisons. And Strychnine of course, is
a terrible poison as well, which is it comes from
the gray disc shaped seeds of a tree native to
India and southern Asia, and it is one of the
most violent poisons on record. In terms of other sort
of poisonous elements and chemicals you might come across, which
(13:49):
will relate more to crimes that you'll see in the
nineteenth century, I would say mercury, lead. Occasionally you'll see
thallium and cyanide.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Talk about mercury. That came up in a recent episode
we did about Civil War soldiers.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Oh my goodness, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, So talk about being poisoned by mercury.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What is that? What does that do to a person?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Oh goodness, it's a terrible question. So mercury is a
naturally occurring metallic element found in the earth's crust. It
can take a few different kinds of forms, including metallic mercury,
which you might still find in glass thermometers and old
dental fillings. Symptoms of mercury poisoning can include a lot
of they're specifically very nasty mouth centric system symptoms such
(14:38):
as excessive salivation inflamed lips and gums, tooth loss, foul breath,
damage to the kidneys, and excessive exposure can lead to
things like mood swings, paranoia, and mental instability. And you
might have heard the expression mad as a hatter or
be thinking of the famous character from Alice in Wonderland,
(14:59):
and that is because many hatter as we're exposed to
mercury in the hat making process, and so they experienced
mercury poisoning at alarming rates. And that's where that expression,
unfortunately comes from.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Today.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
My guest is Lisa Perrin, author and illustrator of the
book The League of Lady Poisoners. It's such a cool book.
We'll put a link in the show notes. We're talking
about women poisoners of Victorian era America. Remember, send us
your burning questions, burning not poisonous questions, Your burning questions
(15:45):
about American history. Record yourself using the voice memo app
on your phone and email it to Americanhistory Hotline at
gmail dot com. That's Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. Now
back to the show. So we talked a little bit
about mercury and what that's like to be poisoned by mercury.
(16:08):
What talk about like, because when you think about poisoning, right,
you know, you talk about how it can taste like
arsenic and anti freeze have a sweet taste to it.
You know, what is like the process? You know, how
long does it take for someone to succumb to being poisoned?
What does it actually look like?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, another really good question. I think we all have
this misconception from like the movies or like films based
on Agatha Christie's books, where like someone takes a swig
out of a golden goblet and they suddenly grab their
stomach or their throats, they fall to the floor convulsing,
and it's a really powerful image, but it's not totally accurate.
I think what I've learned is that most poisons can
(16:49):
actually take a very long time to work or go
into an effect, and it depends on the way the
poison was distributed to the individual. So there are two
main kinds of poisoning, one being acute and the other
being chronic. And acute is what it sounds like. You
were given a mega dose of poison all at once,
like something outrageous that could you know, take out like
one hundred men to give to like one person, and
(17:11):
that's when you have that grabbing the throat, grabbing the stomach,
falling to the ground. Most poisoners that I research, specifically
women poisoners, did not do that because that attracts a
lot of attention, and people are much more likely to
investigate that. They were much more likely to participate in
a sort of chronic approach to their poisoning by which
they're giving small amounts of the poisoning of the poison
(17:32):
excuse me, in doses over time, which is much more
likely to mimic a lot of common diseases of the era,
like cholera or tuberculosis. The person might actually get a
little better and then get a little bit sicker, and
it's much it looks much more natural, and that's one
of the reasons that the chronic poisoners were much more
(17:53):
likely to get away with their crimes, especially in times
before there were great advances and talk psychology to determine
what was the means of death if it was indeed chemical.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, well, let me ask you this, if I can,
and I'm going to break I'm going to break my
own rule.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Okay, we're gonna leave America for just a moment.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Where are we going?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Ancient Egypt? Like, aren't there, like, you know, occurrences in
the ancient world where people were poisoned by actually by
animals like spiders and things like that.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Talk about that for a second.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Oh for sure, And I appreciate the little diversion from
the regular route. Yes, I mean. The most famous story
I can think of is Cleopatra, who was famously the
stories that she committed suicide by taking a poisonous asp
snake and letting this bringing the snake to her chest
(18:49):
and letting it strike her and bite her, and then
she dies from the venom. There's now a lot of
scholarship that says that that is likely not true. If
she did die by poison, it was likely that she
would have drunk it. There's no way to know that
the poisonous that the venomous asp would like kill her
in a single bite. It was too much to leave
up to up to chance. But yeah, there's actually a
(19:11):
number of venomous or toxic animals that you might come
across in some of these stories, the black widow spider
being one, the cobra's being another.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
How would someone use a cobra to poison?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
So this is one of the reasons why I think
that it's not terribly likely. It's very hard to get
like toads to do your bidding, you know, like send
out your spiders and get them to do what you want.
I think it's much more likely to be an accident,
I think, if you're gonna get experienced a poisoning by
this method. But you will read some of these sort
(19:46):
of stories from the ancient world where they they claim
that they used a poisonous snake or a poisonous spider
to that they sent them to sort of bite or
infect this person with the poison to sort of. And
again a lot of these stories have to do with
figures who were in power. You'll often have like especially
you mentioned Caesar salads and like ancient Rome. But there's
(20:07):
all long litany of stories of deposing emperors and a
lot of scheming behind the scenes to get the air
they want in line for power and using poison or
different methods of doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I saw this quote that called poison quote the great
equalizer for women in the nineteenth century, I see a
time period when women they're powerless. There's no mental health care.
Poison is everywhere, as you already explained, and there aren't
really any tests to detect it. So was this like
a perfect storm moment for poisoning, Like, did poisoning have
(20:44):
its moment?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It totally did. And that's actually, I think the exact
same phrase that I use, it's a perfect storm. You
have a lot of individuals women who do not have
the same kind of rights as men. When they marry,
they lose inheritance rights, they lose autonomy. There are not
a lot of rules to protect women from domestic abuse
(21:07):
at the hands of their husbands. Essentially, he has the
right to do that to her, and there's very little protection.
There's also very little mechanisms to leave an abusive relationship.
Their divorce is very rare. It is socially frowned upon.
It is often very expensive and difficult to procure. So
you end up with people trapped potentially in dangerous and
(21:29):
abusive situations and they have access to poison, and it creates,
like you said, this sort of perfect storm where if
they are able to there's this chance that they could
get away with it right if they pass it off
to look natural. And again, during the Victorian era, you
have such a high mortality rate from diseases. Unfortunately, it's
not unusual for a relatively healthy adult to get sick
(21:51):
and pass away suddenly, and as long as they do
it subtly and they don't adde too much attention to themselves,
and some of them can't help it, and they do,
you have these situations sometimes where you get serial poisonings.
And again, and this is what is so complicated about it.
There is this nuance of women who are doing this
to avoid or escape abuse, and then the ones who
(22:14):
are doing it purely for evil machinations, who just want
to get more life insurance policies or just pure evilness
want to get rid of a person. And there's some
nuance in there because they're not the same. But then
do we treat them the same, And that's one of
the reasons I wanted to write this book was because
I think so many of these women in the League
(22:34):
of Lady Poisoners get put into one camp, and I
think knowing the context gives you so much more nuance
to think about the stories in a different way. Again,
not condoning the actions ever, but I can think about
it with a little bit more compassions if I understand
that there was there was an abusive situation and this
was perceived as the only way out.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Give us an example about getting caught, like how did
they get caught? Like when they did get caught? I mean,
because we only know about it because they got caught
or they confessed in some way, right historically speaking, So
when a woman did get caught poisoning her husband or
her children, you know, how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yes? And usually what happens is you finally get an
astute neighbor or someone who notices there's been too much
going on here and they go to the police. A
lot of this will depend on the timing. In the
eighteen thirties, they developed James marsh, a British or Scottish chemist,
developed a new test for arsenic to detect arsenic in
(23:40):
the tissues of a corpse, called the Marsh test, And
prior to that there was really no generally effective test
to prove the presence of arsenic. You also have to
remember the Victorian era arsenics in everything it's They used
it in cosmetics, they used it in dyes and fabrics,
in gars that they wore, in the wallpapers in their homes.
(24:04):
Arsenic was just such a ubiquous part of the culture
that everybody was going to have arsenic in them if
you tested them. It was even part of the embalming process.
So how do we prove that someone was killed deliberately
in a homicidal way via arsenic? And the Marsh test
was really revolutionary because it was able to detect very
minute amounts of arsenic in the tissues. And again this
(24:26):
is after eighteen thirty six, so again prior to that,
there almost is this a little bit of a blank check.
And you'll hear these sort of anecdotes of well, in
like the medieval times, they would throw with the person
eight in the fire if it smelt like garlic it
was arsenic or poison or they might and this one's
very sad because im an animal lover. They might give that
meal to a dog or an animal to eat, and
(24:48):
if the animal passed away, then that was arsenal. With
that is that would not hold up in court, you know.
So having like a real test like the March test
that could hold up in court was really a game changer,
and it became the chief terror of poisoners now that
they could be detected. But again it was up to
someone to report it, for a coroner's investigation, for someone
(25:12):
to investigate and find out if there were arsenic presents
present in the body, and then you know, are there
witnesses someone finds. Oh. The other thing was eventually in
the nineteenth century they created poison registers at the druggist shops.
So they passed laws that said, if you sell poison,
you have to write down to whom you sold it
and when and again, prior to this it was very
(25:34):
difficult to prove. But once they had this, this also
helped aid in proving some of these crimes and putting
some of these individuals away.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So we talked about like the registry for purchasing poison,
We talked about the Marsh tests, some of these ways
of detecting poisoning how and When did the heyday of
the women poisoners finally come to an end?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
If it did, if it has so, that's a really
good question. I will say. The Victorian era is called
the Golden Age of poisoning, and I do want to
say yes for women, but also men too. Men weren't
doing just as many, if not more, poisonings for the
same reasons women were able to do it because poison
was so accessible and difficult to detect. I do think
(26:18):
that you see a big drop off of these cases
as we enter the twentieth century and later. But that
being said, they do still happen. And I'm always now
because I'm the poison lady. I get emails every time
someone sees an article about a woman poisoner in the
modern context. And one of the things I know that,
again we're focusing on American history here, but this is global, like,
(26:42):
this is not a unique phenomena to any particular country
or any particular gender. It's definitely something that has spread
and it does still happen, and it's very sobering to
see that it's a lot of the same themes and reasons,
and it has to do with often abuse and lack
of agency that and money. Money is the other big one,
(27:03):
which I think can also be tied to sort of
societal confinements of women not always being able to earn
for themselves and have sort of financial power or autonomy either.
But yeah, I think once we get these big advancements
in toxicology that start to occur in the Victorian era
and then into the early twentieth century, and it could
(27:23):
be proved much more easily and successfully in a court
of law, you do see a drop off in poison
in cases. Also. Frankly, guns are just so much more
popular and I imagine easier in some ways, so you
definitely see poison is no longer a popular weapon. I
think the guns bar by far, of all of the
(27:47):
different means to commit homicide, Guns are the winner.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Guns win. Yeah, why bring arsenic to a gunfight?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, it's true. What are you going to do? Blow
the powder in their faces?
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Like I've been talking with Lisa Perrin, author and illustrator
of the book The League of Lady Poisoners. It's such
a cool book. We'll put a link in the show notes. Lisa,
thanks for joining us on the American History Hotline today.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Thank you so much. This was so much fun.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Please keep in touch.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com. If
you like the show, please tell your friends and leave
us a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
(29:01):
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening. See you
next week.
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message Welcome back American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
asked the question and I find the answer. The best
(00:25):
way to get us a question, of course, is to
record a video or a voice memo on your phone
and email it to Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com.
By now you know that email address Americanhistory Hotline at
gmail dot com. And remember we are American History Hotline.
So please no questions about Caesar unless they're about the salad,
(00:48):
which I am told was invented in Tijuana. So who knows,
maybe we need to do an episode about that. I
am digressing as usual. Let's get to today's question. It's
about poison. Here to help me answer this question is
Lisa Perrin. She's author and illustrator of the book The
League of Lady Poisoners.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Such a beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Work of art. If you look this, I mean, I
encourage each of you to look this book up and
just it is gorgeous. So Lisa, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Today a shock, saujeez, thank you so much. I'm tickled
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, Lisa, here's our listener's question. Hi. This is Leanne
from Saint Joseph's, Michigan, and I was wondering why so
many women in the eighteen hundreds poisoned their husbands. This
is a great question. So first off, Lisa, yes, there
were a lot of women apparently poisoning their husbands in
(01:45):
the eighteen hundreds in America. Yes, like were there?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I mean, I had never heard of this.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
This is such a fabulous question from your listener, and
it's actually the exact question I wanted to answer, and
one of the impetuses for me writing this book. I
had heard the expression, perhaps you've heard it too, Bob,
that poison is a woman's weapon, and I was very
curious to know is that true? And then if it's true,
(02:12):
how how did that become so? And then if it
isn't true, why has that sort of persisted? And one
of the early articles I encountered when I was researching
for this book, which is the League of Lady Poisoners
Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women, was this amazing article
by brilliant writer and authority on all things poison related,
Deborah Blum. It's an article that she wrote for Wired
(02:34):
in twenty thirteen called the Imperfect Myth of the Female Poisoner,
and she actually clarifies in it that this is actually
a cultural stereotype. It's actually a misconception. The poison is
a much more likely to be a gender neutral weapon,
and if you actually look at the statistics, a greater
proportion of poisoners are men, and that is because most
(02:54):
murderers are men, like ninety percent of all murderers are
committed by men, and therefore they use every tool, including poison,
more than women. However, women are more likely to be
serial poisoners, and that has to do with stereotypes about
who commits murder and who gets investigated for murder, and
that allows them to go on committing their crimes a
(03:15):
lot longer. So there's a lot of interesting misconceptions at
play here that kind of led to us believing that
this is true. However, in the cases where it does happen,
they got so sensationalized in the media and in the press,
and people got obsessed with this idea of the specter
of the poisoning wife, sort of undermining society, every element
(03:36):
of society, and just taking an incredible amount of power
and danger in this singular act. So, okay, that's some
context before we get to the heart of the question
is why are there so many poisoning murders committed by
women specifically against men the eighteenth in the nineteenth century,
in the eighteen hundreds, what we consider to be the
Victorian era. And there's a number of reasons for that,
(04:00):
and I know this is specifically American history, so I'll
definitely try to focus there, but it was true in
the UK as well. In the Victorian era. Poison, specifically arsenic,
what we call it the King of poisons, sometimes chicily
called inheritance powder, was so ubiquitous, was so prevalent that
the joke was you could buy arsenic as easily as
(04:22):
a loaf of bread. It was available in every grocery store,
every druggist's shop for pennies. It was the cheapest poison.
It almost made it democratic. And the reason it was
so available was it was used as a rat poison.
So in all the kitchens, in all of the homes,
and the restaurants and the businesses, everyone's going to have
a healthy supply of arsenic on hand, and that created
(04:44):
a really dangerous situation where arsenic was available. And then
you had a time period where women did not have
a lot of agency, and they almost created this perfect
storm of giving these often oppressed people access to a
really dangerous material. And that is kind of the heart
of how this was able to get started and keep going.
(05:05):
And then more about arsenic just being difficult to detect
and prove in terms of toxicology until science advanced much later.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Arsenic the people's poison.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
So what is a famous serial poison our case from
that time period in America and what happened? Take us
into a deep dive into one of those instances.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, and there's definitely a lot, and I would encourage
you to check out the book to look at some
more of these phenomenal stories or fascinating stories. I think
one that jumped into my head when I was thinking
about the episode for today was a woman named Amy
Archer Gilligan. And she again in the eighteen hundreds, she
opens this retirement home in Connecticut and she realized and
(05:56):
again this is very early in the beginning the retirement
home senior living facilities not really a thing. She's almost
sort of a pioneer in this field.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I love it, a pioneer in the field of serial poisoning.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
She realized that the only way to get new inmates
and that's what they called them at the time, not residents,
but inmates into her residence was when somebody died, and
so she realized she had a financial sort of impetus
to get rid of some people to make new rooms available,
because that was the only way she could make more money,
and so she essentially started poisoning her various residents at
(06:31):
the senior living facility. And it wasn't until a writer
for the local newspaper noticed that her facility, even though
it was much smaller than other similar facilities, was having
like four times the amount of deaths that they started
to investigate, and she was eventually found guilty of the
murders of all of a great number of folks who
(06:53):
lived in her care, which I think is part of
what's so complicated about women killers in general, is that
they often will use weapons or they'll use murder to
harm those closest to them or people in their care.
And sometimes you'll hear of nurses and other folks in
these sort of positions is called angels of mercy, and
(07:13):
they're saying they're doing it sort of as a merciful
act for someone who to put someone out of their misery,
but in her case it was purely financial.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
I think about newspapers back in this time period I love,
and there are newspaper archive dot com or dot org.
I mean yet incredible when I do my research, I
love going back eighteen forties, eighteen fifties reading the papers
at the times, and their gossip be by nature, they're
(07:45):
sensationalistic by nature. Oh yeah, we talk about biased media today.
Each paper was biased in one way or another, meant
many owned by certain political parties or factions or politicians.
With all that in mind, were these stories of these
(08:05):
women poisoners? Were they popular in the day?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Were they popular? This was catnip? Are you kidding? The
readers loved this, And so much of what I learned
while researching this was that the stories really took this
incredible turn when they got to the media, and it
wasn't so much that the crime was on trial as
the woman, her character and her appearance, and women who
(08:29):
were more traditionally feminine and sort of more demure were
more likely to get off by the often male jurors,
but women who were You would see these really insane
articles where they were just commenting on specifically Amy Archer.
The women we were just talking about Amy Archer Gilligan
comments that even though she was in her thirties, she
(08:49):
looked much older, she looked very matronly, and just the
way they write about her is very cruel and very harsh,
just based on her appearance, let alone her actions, which
for the record were abominable, just really judged in the
court of public opinion. And I do love reading these
Victorian era articles because they're so sort of snorky and
(09:10):
sassy in a way we don't expect. I think we
think a very sort of aerodite and florid language being Victorian,
and they will just make these cutting remarks where you're like, oh,
that's a terrible burn. That was really mean.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, they had a way of slicing and diicing people.
What we call that, like dissing people or sick burns. Yeah,
you like to say these days, no one did it
better than in the nineteenth century. Like we could learn
like any rapper could learn a thing or two from
reading newspapers in the nineteenth century, and you know, same
(09:46):
as it ever was, right like true crime, I mean
it is, it is catnip today just like it was
hundreds of years ago.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, And I thought about that a lot, like why
why am I? Why are so many of us so
fascinated by true crime? Why is this something that I
listened to like episodes of Dateline, old episodes of Dateline
all the time, And I was trying to think about, well,
why do why am I so drawn to this? Why
are so many people so drawn to this? And I
think it's because it's brilliant examples of storytelling. It's great narrative.
(10:16):
You have all of these fascinating characters, you have this
terrifying climax, and in the end, ultimately hopefully you get
some kind of resolution and justice. And I think we're
just fascinated by the darker side of things, and it's
a safe way to kind of get close to and
approach you to the things we're most afraid of, is
by listening to true crime podcasts and reading true crime
books and TV and movies and all kinds of media.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So it's funny you talked, you brought up Dateline, and
when I saw your book and began to research your work,
I thought immediately of Dateline twenty twenty and forty eight hours.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Thank you, I'm honored.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yes, well, there was one I saw last Well, there's
a famous one. My wife and I joke about the
Black Widow. They're like, that's a famous twentieth like late
twentieth century situation like this where the woman, I think,
poison multiple husbands. Yes, and then there's one from I
believe I saw it yet last year. It could have
been a repeat, and I don't remember which brand it
(11:17):
was forty eight Hours twenty twenty or Dayline, but the
woman poisons her children with anti freeze.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Anti freeze. Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That one with heartbreaking and it's there, right, they're heartbreaking,
they're chilling. You don't understand how this could someone could
do this, but from your book, it's not uncommon. So
so let me ask you this. You talked about arsenic
being like the go to poison of people. Were there
(11:48):
any other like plants, animals, chemicals that were used back
in the nineteenth century to get the job done?
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yes, absolutely, and it is so fascinating, specifically the anti
freeze example, because it has some of the qualities that
arsenic has, so it's almost so interesting to see that parallel.
So just to go back to arsenic at the time,
it's colorless, it's odorless, it's tasteless. If anything, it tastes
a little bit sweet, and anti freeze, unfortunately, also tastes
a little bit sweet. So it's very easy. And again,
(12:21):
for the record, all none of this is a how
to please do Please do not get any ideas from this.
This is these are cautionary tales. I'm not giving advice
or instruction.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
You know, it's terrible we have to say this, but
please do not murder any anyone.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
With any kind of a chemical or pot.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
And again, the toxicology today, they it's not like in
the Victorian era. They can prove these poisoning cases and
people will get caught. But again we have the prevalence
of arsenic for sure. In the Victorian era. There are
poisonous plants. You don't see them as much in the
Victorian era. You'll see them in a lot of the
earlier crimes. But some of my favorites are deadly night
(13:04):
shade or what we call belladonna, poison, hemlock, foxglove, and
I love some of the alternative names for these, like
foxglove is also called witch's gloves or dead man's bells.
As we know, pop opium poppies can be very dangerous
as well. Wolf spain also called monkshood, delvil's helmet, women's vain,
(13:27):
or the Queen of poisons. And Strychnine of course, is
a terrible poison as well, which is it comes from
the gray disc shaped seeds of a tree native to
India and southern Asia, and it is one of the
most violent poisons on record. In terms of other sort
of poisonous elements and chemicals you might come across, which
(13:49):
will relate more to crimes that you'll see in the
nineteenth century, I would say mercury, lead. Occasionally you'll see
thallium and cyanide.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Talk about mercury. That came up in a recent episode
we did about Civil War soldiers.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Oh my goodness, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, So talk about being poisoned by mercury.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What is that? What does that do to a person?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Oh goodness, it's a terrible question. So mercury is a
naturally occurring metallic element found in the earth's crust. It
can take a few different kinds of forms, including metallic mercury,
which you might still find in glass thermometers and old
dental fillings. Symptoms of mercury poisoning can include a lot
of they're specifically very nasty mouth centric system symptoms such
(14:38):
as excessive salivation inflamed lips and gums, tooth loss, foul breath,
damage to the kidneys, and excessive exposure can lead to
things like mood swings, paranoia, and mental instability. And you
might have heard the expression mad as a hatter or
be thinking of the famous character from Alice in Wonderland,
(14:59):
and that is because many hatter as we're exposed to
mercury in the hat making process, and so they experienced
mercury poisoning at alarming rates. And that's where that expression,
unfortunately comes from.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Today.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
My guest is Lisa Perrin, author and illustrator of the
book The League of Lady Poisoners. It's such a cool book.
We'll put a link in the show notes. We're talking
about women poisoners of Victorian era America. Remember, send us
your burning questions, burning not poisonous questions, Your burning questions
(15:45):
about American history. Record yourself using the voice memo app
on your phone and email it to Americanhistory Hotline at
gmail dot com. That's Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. Now
back to the show. So we talked a little bit
about mercury and what that's like to be poisoned by mercury.
(16:08):
What talk about like, because when you think about poisoning, right,
you know, you talk about how it can taste like
arsenic and anti freeze have a sweet taste to it.
You know, what is like the process? You know, how
long does it take for someone to succumb to being poisoned?
What does it actually look like?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, another really good question. I think we all have
this misconception from like the movies or like films based
on Agatha Christie's books, where like someone takes a swig
out of a golden goblet and they suddenly grab their
stomach or their throats, they fall to the floor convulsing,
and it's a really powerful image, but it's not totally accurate.
I think what I've learned is that most poisons can
(16:49):
actually take a very long time to work or go
into an effect, and it depends on the way the
poison was distributed to the individual. So there are two
main kinds of poisoning, one being acute and the other
being chronic. And acute is what it sounds like. You
were given a mega dose of poison all at once,
like something outrageous that could you know, take out like
one hundred men to give to like one person, and
(17:11):
that's when you have that grabbing the throat, grabbing the stomach,
falling to the ground. Most poisoners that I research, specifically
women poisoners, did not do that because that attracts a
lot of attention, and people are much more likely to
investigate that. They were much more likely to participate in
a sort of chronic approach to their poisoning by which
they're giving small amounts of the poisoning of the poison
(17:32):
excuse me, in doses over time, which is much more
likely to mimic a lot of common diseases of the era,
like cholera or tuberculosis. The person might actually get a
little better and then get a little bit sicker, and
it's much it looks much more natural, and that's one
of the reasons that the chronic poisoners were much more
(17:53):
likely to get away with their crimes, especially in times
before there were great advances and talk psychology to determine
what was the means of death if it was indeed chemical.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, well, let me ask you this, if I can,
and I'm going to break I'm going to break my
own rule.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Okay, we're gonna leave America for just a moment.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Where are we going?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Ancient Egypt? Like, aren't there, like, you know, occurrences in
the ancient world where people were poisoned by actually by
animals like spiders and things like that.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Talk about that for a second.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Oh for sure, And I appreciate the little diversion from
the regular route. Yes, I mean. The most famous story
I can think of is Cleopatra, who was famously the
stories that she committed suicide by taking a poisonous asp
snake and letting this bringing the snake to her chest
(18:49):
and letting it strike her and bite her, and then
she dies from the venom. There's now a lot of
scholarship that says that that is likely not true. If
she did die by poison, it was likely that she
would have drunk it. There's no way to know that
the poisonous that the venomous asp would like kill her
in a single bite. It was too much to leave
up to up to chance. But yeah, there's actually a
(19:11):
number of venomous or toxic animals that you might come
across in some of these stories, the black widow spider
being one, the cobra's being another.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
How would someone use a cobra to poison?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
So this is one of the reasons why I think
that it's not terribly likely. It's very hard to get
like toads to do your bidding, you know, like send
out your spiders and get them to do what you want.
I think it's much more likely to be an accident,
I think, if you're gonna get experienced a poisoning by
this method. But you will read some of these sort
(19:46):
of stories from the ancient world where they they claim
that they used a poisonous snake or a poisonous spider
to that they sent them to sort of bite or
infect this person with the poison to sort of. And
again a lot of these stories have to do with
figures who were in power. You'll often have like especially
you mentioned Caesar salads and like ancient Rome. But there's
(20:07):
all long litany of stories of deposing emperors and a
lot of scheming behind the scenes to get the air
they want in line for power and using poison or
different methods of doing that.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I saw this quote that called poison quote the great
equalizer for women in the nineteenth century, I see a
time period when women they're powerless. There's no mental health care.
Poison is everywhere, as you already explained, and there aren't
really any tests to detect it. So was this like
a perfect storm moment for poisoning, Like, did poisoning have
(20:44):
its moment?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
It totally did. And that's actually, I think the exact
same phrase that I use, it's a perfect storm. You
have a lot of individuals women who do not have
the same kind of rights as men. When they marry,
they lose inheritance rights, they lose autonomy. There are not
a lot of rules to protect women from domestic abuse
(21:07):
at the hands of their husbands. Essentially, he has the
right to do that to her, and there's very little protection.
There's also very little mechanisms to leave an abusive relationship.
Their divorce is very rare. It is socially frowned upon.
It is often very expensive and difficult to procure. So
you end up with people trapped potentially in dangerous and
(21:29):
abusive situations and they have access to poison, and it creates,
like you said, this sort of perfect storm where if
they are able to there's this chance that they could
get away with it right if they pass it off
to look natural. And again, during the Victorian era, you
have such a high mortality rate from diseases. Unfortunately, it's
not unusual for a relatively healthy adult to get sick
(21:51):
and pass away suddenly, and as long as they do
it subtly and they don't adde too much attention to themselves,
and some of them can't help it, and they do,
you have these situations sometimes where you get serial poisonings.
And again, and this is what is so complicated about it.
There is this nuance of women who are doing this
to avoid or escape abuse, and then the ones who
(22:14):
are doing it purely for evil machinations, who just want
to get more life insurance policies or just pure evilness
want to get rid of a person. And there's some
nuance in there because they're not the same. But then
do we treat them the same, And that's one of
the reasons I wanted to write this book was because
I think so many of these women in the League
(22:34):
of Lady Poisoners get put into one camp, and I
think knowing the context gives you so much more nuance
to think about the stories in a different way. Again,
not condoning the actions ever, but I can think about
it with a little bit more compassions if I understand
that there was there was an abusive situation and this
was perceived as the only way out.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Give us an example about getting caught, like how did
they get caught? Like when they did get caught? I mean,
because we only know about it because they got caught
or they confessed in some way, right historically speaking, So
when a woman did get caught poisoning her husband or
her children, you know, how did that happen?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yes? And usually what happens is you finally get an
astute neighbor or someone who notices there's been too much
going on here and they go to the police. A
lot of this will depend on the timing. In the
eighteen thirties, they developed James marsh, a British or Scottish chemist,
developed a new test for arsenic to detect arsenic in
(23:40):
the tissues of a corpse, called the Marsh test, And
prior to that there was really no generally effective test
to prove the presence of arsenic. You also have to
remember the Victorian era arsenics in everything it's They used
it in cosmetics, they used it in dyes and fabrics,
in gars that they wore, in the wallpapers in their homes.
(24:04):
Arsenic was just such a ubiquous part of the culture
that everybody was going to have arsenic in them if
you tested them. It was even part of the embalming process.
So how do we prove that someone was killed deliberately
in a homicidal way via arsenic? And the Marsh test
was really revolutionary because it was able to detect very
minute amounts of arsenic in the tissues. And again this
(24:26):
is after eighteen thirty six, so again prior to that,
there almost is this a little bit of a blank check.
And you'll hear these sort of anecdotes of well, in
like the medieval times, they would throw with the person
eight in the fire if it smelt like garlic it
was arsenic or poison or they might and this one's
very sad because im an animal lover. They might give that
meal to a dog or an animal to eat, and
(24:48):
if the animal passed away, then that was arsenal. With
that is that would not hold up in court, you know.
So having like a real test like the March test
that could hold up in court was really a game changer,
and it became the chief terror of poisoners now that
they could be detected. But again it was up to
someone to report it, for a coroner's investigation, for someone
(25:12):
to investigate and find out if there were arsenic presents
present in the body, and then you know, are there
witnesses someone finds. Oh. The other thing was eventually in
the nineteenth century they created poison registers at the druggist shops.
So they passed laws that said, if you sell poison,
you have to write down to whom you sold it
and when and again, prior to this it was very
(25:34):
difficult to prove. But once they had this, this also
helped aid in proving some of these crimes and putting
some of these individuals away.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So we talked about like the registry for purchasing poison,
We talked about the Marsh tests, some of these ways
of detecting poisoning how and When did the heyday of
the women poisoners finally come to an end?
Speaker 3 (25:57):
If it did, if it has so, that's a really
good question. I will say. The Victorian era is called
the Golden Age of poisoning, and I do want to
say yes for women, but also men too. Men weren't
doing just as many, if not more, poisonings for the
same reasons women were able to do it because poison
was so accessible and difficult to detect. I do think
(26:18):
that you see a big drop off of these cases
as we enter the twentieth century and later. But that
being said, they do still happen. And I'm always now
because I'm the poison lady. I get emails every time
someone sees an article about a woman poisoner in the
modern context. And one of the things I know that,
again we're focusing on American history here, but this is global, like,
(26:42):
this is not a unique phenomena to any particular country
or any particular gender. It's definitely something that has spread
and it does still happen, and it's very sobering to
see that it's a lot of the same themes and reasons,
and it has to do with often abuse and lack
of agency that and money. Money is the other big one,
(27:03):
which I think can also be tied to sort of
societal confinements of women not always being able to earn
for themselves and have sort of financial power or autonomy either.
But yeah, I think once we get these big advancements
in toxicology that start to occur in the Victorian era
and then into the early twentieth century, and it could
(27:23):
be proved much more easily and successfully in a court
of law, you do see a drop off in poison
in cases. Also. Frankly, guns are just so much more
popular and I imagine easier in some ways, so you
definitely see poison is no longer a popular weapon. I
think the guns bar by far, of all of the
(27:47):
different means to commit homicide, Guns are the winner.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Guns win. Yeah, why bring arsenic to a gunfight?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, it's true. What are you going to do? Blow
the powder in their faces?
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Like I've been talking with Lisa Perrin, author and illustrator
of the book The League of Lady Poisoners. It's such
a cool book. We'll put a link in the show notes. Lisa,
thanks for joining us on the American History Hotline today.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Thank you so much. This was so much fun.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Please keep in touch.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at gmail dot com. If
you like the show, please tell your friends and leave
us a review in Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford.
Feel free to hit me up on social media to
ask a history question or to let me know what
you think of the show. You can find me at
(29:01):
Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so much for listening. See you
next week.
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.