Part Two: Aqua Tofana: How to Kill Your Husband

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Shereen about how, in the era before divorce, a group of women sold poison to aspiring widows.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people, get cool stuff. My
name is Margaret Kiljoy. And I will not continue the
bit where I set up the expectation that I will
tell a new joke eating introduction, because if I do,
my life get so much worse. And I don't jokes.
So if you got joke, shine anyone, Shine is like
the funniest person right now to pay no pressure. I

(00:23):
don't know if I have a joke right now. A
lot of my jokes are like annoyingly visual. Um, Like
my go to is like the daddy is joke, not
daddy is you? Like daddy joke is very different than joke.
But let me think. I mean I was inslated so
you can use irrigination. But basically, you put your hand

(00:45):
up as like a little cut, like you're making your
hand into a U shape, uh, and you ask people
what is that? What is this? And they're like, what
are you doing? You're a weirdo. And then you put
your upper forearm from the other arm on it and
you're like, it's a gun. Rack. I love that joke
because muscles are guns. I think it's funny because that's

(01:10):
the only gun that I approve of. Everybody who's there?
Beats me? Okay, Sophie, Okay, I got a knock knock joke.
You start knock knock, who's there? I don't know this
is your That's the point of the joke. I'm like,

(01:35):
I don't know, this is your bit Like you know,
I got nothing. Okay. My guest today is Sharne Shrine.
How are you doing today? I'm I'm good. I'm good.
I actually I'm excited about the continuation of the story
because you've definitely got me intrigued. Uh and not much
can do that these days. So hell yeah, Cliffhangers for

(01:56):
the wind. Yes, Sophie is our producer. Hi, Sophie him Margaret, Hi,
I like this little trio. I like and Ian as
our editor. He's in charge of editing. Now the parts
where Sophie reveals the secret of the alchemist Stone and on.
Women wrote out our theme music. So this is part

(02:17):
two of our two part series of women who murdered
their husbands or rather, um well, the people who provided
the poison. Good times were had by all except potentially
the husbands, which deserved it probably, so yeah, many of them.
So we heard about the legend of Aquata fauna the
cosmetic poison made by one brilliant poison lady. So let's

(02:39):
figure out what we know of the truth. We will
start in pal Merrow, a city in southern Italy. Well
it's in Sicily, which is part of Spain at the time,
where we meet two aspiring widows, so Fania Diadama and
Francesca Lisarda, And they were part of a thriving scene
in Italy which someone describing a similar community in Paris
referred to as the criminal magical underworld. Rome, for example,

(03:04):
at the time, had upwards of two d magical practitioners.
We don't actually know how many Palmaro had, but you know,
as a capital of the region, what qualifies is magical.
We will tell you. Oh hell yeah, did I set
that up perfectly? Everyone who couldn't go to the proper
channels of like doctors with leeches, would go to magicians

(03:25):
on the street who would sell them ship that honestly
was probably about as effective as what the leech doctors
had on offer. There were witches, they were sorcerers, and
they were priests. The underworld included and possibly revolved around
these priests who had gone all in for evil ship
and lived double lives and lead black masses and this, okay,
I'll get to what I do and don't believe in

(03:45):
this particular part. But these evil priests would live double lives,
lead black masses with naked women as the altar in
order to imbue different potions and saves, and ship with magic.
And they chanted in a made up mystical language that
they all came up put together that was just Latin
and Greek and Hebrew while stuck together basically like all
the old timey languages they had access to. And they

(04:08):
weren't quite like Satanists. Their magic supposedly came from God,
just in really weird ways. They would use blessed wands
to make potions in the shadow of a cross that
contained a fragment of the true Cross, while like leading
black masses with naked ladies as the altar. And I
wasn't sure I believed any of this ship, but there

(04:30):
are a ton of documents from the time attesting to
it and lots of confessions, although come on which unts
and inquisitions. I don't trust the confessions, but I think
some of the ship was actually real. I believe it. Yeah.
To quote the historian Mike dash this quote just because
it's cool. Raids conducted by the police on the on

(04:53):
the Paris Underworld of the sixteen eighties uncovered quantities of
Grimore's incense wands and a rich ariety of ingredients used
in sexual magic, including breast milk and bags of powdered
menstrual blood. Um, how do you make the idea of powder?
I guess it's like you just dry it out and
crush it up. That's interesting. Well, I also we still

(05:18):
do know everybody, but the culture of which witchiness is
still alive and well, whether it comes to like crystals
or even like even meditation, in my opinion, can be
a form of that kind of energetic change so or
even like I don't know, it's just I think it's

(05:39):
very interesting how it's evolved, but it's still here very much,
and like a lot of it is super legit and
a lot of it's not. And it's impossible to tell
who's a grifter and who's legit, just like back then,
because I think a lot of that ship that people
did probably fucking worked right, because you could go to
the Magical Underworld and get an abortion, and you could
get poison, and you get general he lane. You can

(06:00):
get fortunes and horoscopes, you can get love charms, you
could get cures for your bad breath. Whatever ailed you,
they take care of you, no questions asked. They would
sell stillborn fetuses to gamblers who used them as good
luck charms. WHOA. They also dealt with quote unwanted babies,
And I don't know whether that means abortion and fanticide

(06:20):
or selling children through underground adoption services or to slave traders.
I have no idea, Honestly, I kind of think it
was all of the above. Mhm. At the time. At
the same time, you have this magical not underworld that
was flourishing, right because science and magic are fucking at
the time, and Royalty was dumping tons of money on alchemists.
Who the like most famous thing that alchemists were trying

(06:42):
to do was like transmute base metals into gold. They
were like, oh, well, turn lead into gold or whatever.
But then they were also trying to cure disease and
live forever and improve crop yields and basically just like
do science and magic all put together, and well not
everyone involved in magic car alchemy were up to the
poison thing. These two women. They they might have done

(07:04):
some other ship. They probably sold charms and potions or whatever,
but they also sold poison. It's likely that Tofania was
who invented aquatfauna named after herself. It's also possible they
just sold people arsenic mhm. And I suspect that they
were breaking the law by working without their husband's permission um,

(07:26):
which is just terrible. I bet their husbands and even
what they were doing, and they did. They reached their
main aspiration, which was to become widows. As best as
I could tell, they both off their husbands in order
to return to the status of free people. But it
didn't go well for these two particular women. First Francesca
and then too Fania went down for the magic trick
of turning their husbands into corpses. So the state pulled

(07:49):
the magic trick of turning them into corpses um by
a bit more gruesome of a method. So for all
of the like, oh, these like evil poisoners, like the
ship that happens to people is from the state is
so much worse than what these fucking poisoners are doing.
So Fanio was either hang, drawled, and quartered or one

(08:09):
account at the time says that she was sewing up
alive into a canvas sack and then thrown from the
roof of the bishop's palace into the street in front
of a large crowd. Oh that's brutal. Yeah, And I
think they pulled off being poisoners for a long time though,
and maybe had a good run of it before they
got thrown from sacks from the bishop's roof, so maybe
it was all worth it mhm. And most everything focuses

(08:33):
on this other woman, Julia to Fauna, who was born
Julia Mangiardi and legend hazardus to Fania's daughter who learned
the trade from Mom and then after Mom's execution, took
off to Rome with some of the other students to
set up a poison shop in the big city. And
apparently it was a vaguely normal thing at the time
in Italy or Sicily or whatever too for a woman

(08:56):
to take her mother's first name as her own last name.
But it's is just as likely that she took the
name to Fauna as a last name because she was
selling aquata Fauna. It also seems possible that she never
went by to Fauna, and this is the name that
folklore has abscribed to her and she has been her
whole life. Going by Mangiardi, there's no evidence that she
was to Fani's kid to Fani's kid, but there is
also no evidence that she wasn't whatever. It's also possible

(09:21):
she left her room before anyway, okay, whatever, but aquata fauna.
The symptoms, according to a public notice that was put
out later once everyone got busted, were, to quote the
book Toxicology in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in a
chapter by Mike dash the symptoms were a burning pain
in the throat and stomach, vomiting, extreme thirst, and diarrhea,

(09:43):
all of which point to arsenic as the active ingredient
of the poison. That suggested antidote was lemon juice and vinegar,
and to to continue the quote, aquata fauna was described
as clear and tasteless, suggesting that a key part of
the manufacturing process was masking the characterist the metallic taste
of arsenic. It was also considered to be a relatively

(10:04):
gentle poison which did not produce so much vomiting as
and hence aroused less suspicious than other preparations known at
the time, So basically all of the different poisons that
you were getting on the street that were any good
were just different concoctions of arsenic And it was just
like people figuring out different ways to like prepare the arsenic, right,
I mean, it is interesting. I wonder how they did

(10:25):
mask that taste, because it's impressive, I know, and I
think that there's some suspicion that they like did some
mask into the taste, but not actually as much as
people claim. It was not as perfect of a poison
as people claim. It was a very good poison, but
mostly it was added to wine because wine I was
going to say, like, if you had like a couple

(10:46):
drops to wine, it's probably not even traced or like
you can't taste it at all. And so Tafano wasn't alone.
Her stepdaughter, who just happened to be a widow surprised
there named Girolamas Bara or Spawna, depending on which book
you read. Both books are people are very committed to
these different spellings, and they're very legitimate, seeming sources. Spara

(11:10):
sold to the aristocratic circles that she worked in as
a professional astrologer, right, so she would get hired to
predict the future and find missing objects and tell people
about themselves and ship. Well, Giovanna de Grandie sold to
working class women. Um mostly she was a beggar, and
she would hang out outside churches, because churches where women
could gather and talk. And there's all these like cartoons

(11:31):
at the time about how like when women talk at church,
it's the devil talking through them, which most of the
time is bullshit. But I guess sometimes they were inspiring
to kill all their husbands or whatever. So whatever every
joke they say as a layer of truth. But yeah,
and they also sold other ship, right, They weren't just poisoners.
They worked as cunning women or sometimes wise women or

(11:53):
divine arresses, and they were selling charms and you know,
telling fortunes and ship. They started exporting poison to other
cities too, through women they trusted, and they had this
whole regional distribution network for husband killing poison. They found
their clients not by you'll be shocked to know this.
They don't just like hang up a sign and that
like in a you know, just like go into an

(12:15):
alley and there's a sign it's like kill your husband
five dollars. They were fortune tellers and likely abortionists and
all of that, and so they would slowly learn who
they could trust, and they also learned who was stuck
in unhappy marriages. So it's like they're they're witches and
terror readers and fortune tellers and therapists, you know, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no,

(12:39):
I mean it's like it's a necessary thing for society
to have. Are these people who provide all of these services.
So to make their poison they needed arsenic and then
actually theoretically the best guesses about Aquata fauna is that
it had antinomy and lead and maybe mercuric chloride, which
was a treatment for venereal disease at the time, And
my guess is what killed um Pathri's husband, but I

(13:02):
don't know. Rather than Bella Donna, which is what was
like rumored to be in it because Belladonna is a
poison and you know, has a romantic sounding name, there
are other things that were rumored to be in it,
including many of which I've never heard of before, toad flax,
Spanish fly, snap dragon, penny wart, and the spittle of
mad men. The spittle of mad men, you know, like

(13:25):
imagine being like someone whose job it is to be
like the madman who sells his spittle. Yeah, like what
if you went to therapy and you're like feeling better
to be like, no, I gotta keep it up. My
job depends on this. Yeah. I also because I am
a dummy sometimes I wanted to make sure I want.
I don't know exactly, or I didn't know before I

(13:46):
read it right now, Like where arsenic actually comes from? Okay,
I don't know, well it sounds like okay, inorganic arsenic compounds,
they're found in soils, sediments, and groundwater. They either occur
naturally or as a result of mining or smelting and
industrial use of arsenic. Okay. Organic arsenic compounds are mainly

(14:07):
found also in fish and in shellfish. So I'm wondering, like,
how did these women procure this? Is perfect? That is
literally the next sentence in the script. Oh hell, make see.
It was worth the little flip fumble there, but like, yeah,
it says arsenic is found in the natural environment, in

(14:28):
some abundance in the Earth's crust and in small quantities
and rock, soil, water, and air like that is that's wild?
I don't know. It's just a yeah, something to think about.
So they needed arsenic, so they found a priest they
found one of these sort of fallen priests that was

(14:49):
talking about earlier in the Magical Underworld. His name was
Father giro Lama and his brother was an apothecary, and
so he hooked them up and this religious overlap continued.
They didn't always sell it as aqua to fauna, and
it's actually possible they never sold as aqua to fauna,
and that's just like the myth name that gets attached
to it. But they definitely sold it for a while

(15:09):
under the name Mana of St. Nicholas. And because when
I first started researching this, it would talk about how
sold as holy water or cosmetics, but the wacky thing
is that it was both at once. Speaking of skincare routines,
Mana of St. Nicholas was meant to be the oil
that dropped from St. Nicholas's bones where it was held

(15:30):
in a church. Or maybe they like pour the oil
over his bones, I'm not sure. And this holy oil
got sold in the street as not as poison, as
a as a kind of regular scam. So this holy oil,
when it wasn't just poison, the regular scam and it
was sold for the purpose of fighting acne and other
facial blemishes. Interesting, So this is what they labeled their

(15:54):
poison as because basically it's like the woman will have
all of the different you know, cosmetics on the shelf
and the man never touches any of it whatever, So
it's a safe place to put it. And so they
labeled it in these like vials that look very holy
and the St. Nicholas on them or whatever. But it's
just meant to be this like fucking you know, face

(16:15):
blemish cream oil whatever. Hey, facial oils are still used today.
People stand by them, so it's like you're wrong too something. Again,
I don't use an oil, use a cream. But I
also but I'm like, I like my crow's feet. I
want everything else to stay youthful, but I like my
crows feet is like a sign of like you've lived
happy time. Yeah, totally get out and the sun enough

(16:38):
the forehead wrinkles. I would take some oil that dropped
off of St. Nicholas's bones. Maybe the blood of innocence,
especially billionaires, the blood of available. Yeah can we can?
So if you can, we be sponsored by the blood
of billionaires. Yeah? Why not? Hell? Yeah? Wow, she's the best. Yeah,

(17:00):
and uh it is. It is that time. It's that time.
Well that you did that without even trying. Do you
have a husband, is he a great person? If he's
not a great person, are you living in a time
when divorce is not an option? Well, akwa toe fauna.

(17:20):
Four drops administered to wine over the course of four months,
and you will be a widow. Here's some other ads.
We are back and speaking of people who are mostly
in money, these women were mostly in it for the money,
right as you know the whole thing which is like

(17:41):
people are like, oh, they're in it for the money.
I'm like, oh, yeah, they're in it for the like
means by which they feed themselves and take care of
their families, like when a bunch of monsters, right, yeah, exactly,
because but I mean it's like freedom in a lot
of ways, like freedom from their husbands, but also like
money will give you freedom as well, and then a
lot of ways to write totally, it's the it's it's
a agency in a lot of ways. The problem is
that people have too much agency and other people too

(18:03):
little agency. But they did have some altruistic moments, and
in particular, they would give the poison out for free
to women who couldn't afford it, who really needed to
reach widowhood decades into her poisoner's career, at least twenty
one years into it, probably longer than that. Juliet Tefauna
died peacefully in her bed in sixteen fifty one. She

(18:24):
was like seventy years old. She didn't die from poison.
She'd never been caught. She lived her whole fucking life
as fucking and she's Actually it's possible she invented to
Fauna and then like named it after her mentor you know,
I don't know. Um, and her friends, including possibly her stepdaughter,
carried on without her, and I tried really hard. I

(18:49):
think that I think this is enough of a pop
culture reference that I'll get Sophie's attention and love, um,
which is why I make this podcast, UM free. Thanks.
So I tried to find an earl killed by the
gang because of the country song about killion earl or
almost died. Yeah, thanks, um, because I want to make
the girls about to die joke. Yeah. Um. But I

(19:12):
didn't find an earl, but I did find a duke.
Francesco Cessi, the Duke of Seray, was thirty years older
than his wife when he suddenly died and she was
suddenly doing way better in life. But in sixteen fifty
eight the Poisoner's gang came to the attention of the authorities.
And I, as the way it's always phrased, right, I

(19:35):
struggle to imagine that they kept it up for thirty
years unnoticed. I bet they were paying someone off. They
were protected by some kind of crime syndicate or just
I don't know the Catholic Church, which was basically the
biggest crime syndicate in Rome at the time, because why
would they protect them, though I presume money is my
main guess. Um. I presume that they were paying someone

(19:56):
off or power, right, yeah, giving them poison, I you know,
providing abortions for their mistresses. Like it's a good point
because the magical underworld was an open secret. And the
reason we know this is that the women who are
selling this poison ship, they like kept receipts, and they
like with like issue written promises of payment like and

(20:19):
I think it wasn't like payment for services rendered dead
husband or whatever. But they were like being very above
ground about how they handled a lot of their finances.
But history doesn't like talking about whether or not they
were in the bed with Catholic Church or some other
crime syndicate or something. I don't know. I don't know exactly,

(20:41):
but it seemed like an open secret, and I doubt
that they were doing this for thirty years unnoticed. How
did they get caught? Multiple versions of the story you
will be shocked to know. One version of the story
is that so many people were fessing up and confessional
that the pope decided to do something about it, because
I guess the people, you know, the priests would like
turn around and tell the confessions to the pope or whatever.

(21:02):
I don't believe that one. It's also possible that de
grand Is, the lower class poisoner, got entrapped by a
woman working for the police who showed up with a a
sob story and desire to kill her husband. My my guess,
and this is I'm not a historian. I'm not allowed
to make whatever I'm making. This guess. I think they
went down because they killed that earl because he died

(21:23):
a year before the investigation into them started, right the duke.
They didn't kill an or only killed a duke. Interesting
And because when you're helping random people kill people like whatever,
But then when you when you get to a duke,
maybe it's a step too. Yeah, but I guess like
if you're if they're doing pro bono poison poison services,

(21:45):
then the duke client must have been a good Like
there was probably money and that how do you turn
that down? I know? And like maybe the duchess was like,
it's really bad, right, and she's married to some thirty
year old older than her dude that like, yeah, I
mean whatever, maybe there's a happy no, you know what
I'm if you are forty and you date a seventy

(22:06):
year old, I don't care. Yeah. Anyway, Also around that time,
they might have been stepping up their murders around the
time that they started to get caught, because there was
a plague going through room at the time, which was
a particularly good time for men to die unnoticed. So
either they were stepping up their murders or suspicion of

(22:27):
them being murderers was going through the roof because all
of these people were dying right. Either way, the poisoner's
ring goes down after at least thirty years, easily fifty years.
Five poisoners are put up on trial, mostly poor women.
Several of them are the are beggars. One of them
Maria Spinola. Her nickname is Griffola, which is a type

(22:49):
of mushroom more commonly known as head of the woods.
And it's just a sick name. And anyone out there
is looking for a new name, Yeah, Griffola, you know
the Yeah. And not all of the five who went
down were widows. Two of them were happily married, although
one was married to her like fourth husband. I wonder

(23:10):
what happened to the first three. I know she really, uh,
I don't know how some trial runs, yeah exactly. Stefana
herself had remarried and stayed remarried. And actually it was
like her husband's daughter who continued on the gang after
she died. And I would say, the kind of man
who is willingly married to a crime lord, poisoner, who
helps people murdered her husband's is a keeper mm hmmm.

(23:34):
He's an ally, Yeah, an ally man, God bless whoever
whoever those people are. But yeah, he knows, he's he
knows he's part of the problem or is tight, you know, Yeah,
And I suspect he would never occurred to him to
do anything abusive or cruel to his wife. That's yes, exactly, Uh,

(23:58):
but you hear that that's how you become an ally everybody? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the first poisoner who got arrested de Grandis. She
she named names, presumably after torture h Spana or Spara,
the astrologer. She held out for months of torture before
she confessed, and the torture they faced was another one
I'd never heard of, called strapado, where your wrists are

(24:20):
tied together behind your back and you're hung from your
arms while your shoulders slowly dislocate. What the funk Medievo era?
No that I don't like that either. Yeah. I hate
the people that made these up, Like right, it's just
like what not into it? Right? And then they turned

(24:42):
around and they're like that woman is an evil, murderous
as They're like, how else do you think we could
make people unhappy? Yeah? I want to hear them scream more. Yeah,
maybe that's what it was. There's just a lot of
migraines going around from like the smoke in the air,
burning trash, air pollution. Yeah really, Um, you blame them? Yes?
The answers, yes, but worth noting for any listeners today.

(25:05):
A couple of the women named names, right, away and
they were hanged with the rest because snitching doesn't pay.
Only for that kids only starting off rich pays. Unfortunately
when it comes to crime. Based on who survived this ordeal,
I mean also true today, soop forty six murders get

(25:26):
hurt out in court and the five woman women plus
one of their clients were hanged in front of a
huge crowd in sixteen and before her execution, Spannah said,
I've given this liquid to more people than I've got
hairs on my head. That rules. I love that. Also,
just like, even if they got caught, they helped so

(25:50):
many women probably you know what I mean. They they
like not all those women that their clients, like, their
clients didn't get caught. I'm assuming right many of them did.
But um, about forty of them got put on trial.
Um but out of six hundred, yeah, more than forty.

(26:11):
Lower class widows get put on trial. Most of them
get life in prison. One of them got hanged. And Okay,
the fucked up thing we know the men who were
killed were pretty monstrous because of the court record, because
all of their abuse against their wives was heard in
court as evidence, but it was evidence for the prosecution

(26:33):
because the fact that the men like beat their wives
and ship was considered not as justification but as motive.
M M. So it would be like, how do you
know this woman you know, murdered her husband and someone
would be like, well, her husband used to beat her,
and so they'd be like, ah ha, she's the murderous,
interesting and scruel. Well. Also, I guess it was like

(26:57):
legal right to be your wife. Yeah, I presume so, yeah,
the complicated part. To complicate, no one's perfect. A few
of the husbands were murdered, maybe for being gay, basically
like he was fucking boys instead of me. But at
least in one of the cases, it was he was

(27:18):
bringing home boys and making me watch and I don't
know what is meant by boys in this context, and
also forcing someone to watch this funked up so like
maybe deserved a murdering. Maybe it's I guess you can't
just sell poison and expected to only be used in
good ways. There's another moral of the story, unfortunately, But

(27:41):
you know who didn't have to go on trial, Suan
they're rich clients. Oh yeah, right, so the duke's the
duke's person wife person probably just had a great, rich
life after that well. Yeah, like basically, okay, so the
priests that hooked them up with the arsenic and the
clients weren't put on trial. The Pope himself intervened to

(28:04):
keep the names of the rich ladies out of the trial.
They were interrogated separately for information, but not dragged in
front of the judge and face no charges. So basically
they were just like turn state's evidence. Yeah, and assumably
like they paid off, like they were like they bribed
them or something like. I don't know whether it was
a bribe thing or whether it was a like we

(28:25):
don't want to look bad and these women matter and
these other women don't. Um, but I'm not I'm not sure.
I mean it was you know, I think you could
buy indulgences from the Catholic Church at the time where
he'd be like I did a sin. They'd be like,
all right, a hundred bucks, you know, because I definitely
had bucks. Dollars was the currency of choices renaissance and medioidally. Yeah,

(28:49):
George Washington, Yeah, totally, yeah, Like who is this guy?
Oh you'll know one day. M and the priest guy,
no one knows why he wasn't put on trial. He
could have honestly been dead by then, or the church
could have taken care of their own. Who knows. But
while only forty six of the murders were heard in court,
the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth later had legal

(29:12):
papers describing the death of six people caused by that
particular poison. So that's where we get the six hundred
head count from them, and the court records from the
whole trial were locked up in a castle because the
pope didn't want anyone knowing how to make the poison.
They weren't uncovered until eighty. So there was two hundred

(29:33):
years of like myth making and folklore that muddied historic
waters and are part of why we have such a
hard time like tracking what happened. The name aquata fauna,
it lived on. It became a folkloric term alongside water
from Palmero Renny quote slow poison, and for centuries men
lived in fear of this slow poison. Mozart, when he died,

(29:56):
admittedly kind of suddenly at thirty five years old, which
is like a hundred years later or whatever, he's like,
I have been poisoned by akuata fauna, he said, But
no one actually knows how he died. Um. It could
have been poison It could have been syphilis, it could
have been food poisoning poisons. Um. Yeah, there's like one

(30:17):
that's like maybe it's like undercooked pork chops or whatever.
I don't know. It could have been a variety of things,
you're right at that time. Yeah, And actually one of
the main things that people thought was poisoning but wasn't
was friend of the pod tuberculosis. Anytime anyone died of tuberculosis,
people will be like it was poison, Like no, honey,
you're just living in the pre antibiotic era. Mm hmm.

(30:43):
I mean, I guess it's like if you have no
way of knowing how someone dies and then you assume
it's like this magical or like out of nowhere thing
and you can't exactly like prove otherwise, I don't know,
poison seems likely if it's like also this like fearmongering
like big yeah, yeah, everyone's afraid that there's all of

(31:06):
these you know, women running around poisoning everything, and some
of them are right, Like hundreds of men you know,
met their end because of this. But that what's kind
of interesting is that there were ways to find out.
Sometimes you could tell an autopsy if someone had been poisoned,
and you know, you cut them up and you look
to see what happened to their intestines and guts and
stomach and ship see if there's like different kinds of damage.

(31:28):
But the thing about akwatafauna that became sort of magical.
It was this poison that defied autopsy and ship and
it's like yes and no, this concept of the slow
poison that you could if you control it just right,
you could poison someone one drop of time over months
and they die of natural causes months later. That's not

(31:50):
real or at least it wasn't real then, and I
think it's not real now. And it was basically this
like boogeyman moral panic thing that help men become more
afraid of women because they're like, oh, I'm slowly getting
sick and then died. I've been slow poisoned by my wife.
Like most poisons that kill people at the time, including
arsenic and probably including the actualk with tafauna, you put

(32:13):
some drops in someone's food or wine or whatever, and
then they fucking die. And awkward sefauna was really good
and that you didn't vomit all over the place, and
you know, it was like a it was a better poison,
but and it was like harder to detect the damage
the organs and ship m hm. Also, have you seen

(32:37):
the movie Phantom Thread? I have not. This is I mean,
I guess I don't know if it's spoiler alert if
I mean, if you want to go watch it, go
watch it. But essentially the couple, the woman is poisoning
her husband over time because she wants him to like
need her so she can take care of him. So

(32:59):
maybe like was love behind at of these motives, you know,
like they just wanted to the men to be like
little babies that they should take care of. But I mean,
it's just Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and he deserves to
be in jail solely because of how we treated you
and Apple. But that's another story. Um, But I don't
think it's another I mean, okay, I don't know at

(33:19):
that particular story, but in some ways I don't think
it's another story because I think that's a misogynist. Take
this concept of the woman who is poisoning the husband,
whether it's a literal poison or whether it's the like
draining his soul to make him reliant on her or whatever.
Is this misogynist myth and it kind of has the
roots in that's very true. Well in the movie too,

(33:43):
it's very much romanticized because he eventually finds out and
he just keeps going along with it because it's like
she loves me or whatever the moral that was. But yeah, wow, um,
but I guess that's a really good point. That is
also a missogyn to take to be like, oh, she
wants his attention so bad, or like she like it's

(34:05):
so desperately wanting to seem valuable to someone. Yeah, and
I'm I am sure there is someone in history who
has done something like this, you know. But yeah, just
like concept. But the one upside, right, So you have
all of these these women to these men, now like
I if men die people like it was the wife, right,

(34:25):
And I'm sure like a lot of god people got
murdered for being poisoners who weren't poisoners. The one upside is,
I bet a lot of men stayed their hand because
they realized the power that women had because of the
existence of aqua to fauna. Yeah, put them in place, yea.
So so as as this thing became a legend, right,

(34:47):
more poisoners took the name to Fauna, at least one
that we have a record of as a prisoner. In
seventeen thirty, a hundred years after the Heyday, she took
the name to Fauna. Another Italian poisoner, which who is
still in Palmero, was Giovanna Bana No. And her nickname
and I'm literally including in her in this because I
like her nickname was the Old Vinegar Lady, oh, which

(35:09):
ruled her poison got called vinegar and it was a
mixture of arsenic white wine and vinegar. And she worked
as a beggar and a poisoner. And she was hanged
in nine because I guess being a poisoner is illegal
for some reason. Um, but Old Vinegar Lady also a
sick name might not be as good as a choice
for someone, um who's looking for a new name. Up
to you. Yeah, but has a bite that's true, that's true. No, No, No,

(35:36):
twenty years there's more poison hell yeah years. I don't know,
I feel maybe I'm maybe I'm too excited about this. No, no, whatever,
like this is this is cool. People do cool stuff,
like like it's complicated, right, but like overall, like what
do you fucking want you create a society where women
the only way that they can have freedom is to
poison people. They're gonna fucking poison people, and that's on

(35:59):
fucking you. Women did not create that society. If anything,
equality at that point would have helped the men, you
know what I mean, Like if they want killing to
stop happening, they can just treat women like human beings,
you know. But that's that they would rather not have,
Like they would rather the casualties than actual freedom for women,

(36:19):
which is another interesting shitty thing. Yeah, some of us
will die so that we can all hold our power
over our wives. That makes us miserable too, because of
sucking patriarchies of prison for everyone. Twenty years after the
main circle of poisoners from sixteen seventy to sixteen eighty two,
King Louis the fourteenth Court in France was rocked by

(36:40):
a scandal called the Affair of Poisons that was kind
of just a moral panic, but with some actual poison involved. Oh.
It started with an aristocratic lady, Madame de brund Vier,
who killed her father and two brothers and tried to
kill her husband, and she theoretically did this to get
all their ship like at their a EIDs or whatever. Right, Um,

(37:01):
that's the easy answer of why she did it. The
real answer is you we shoked to know patriarchy. She
supposedly and I think this part is not true. But
the legend against her claims that she practiced her poison
by poisoning poor people in the hospital. First, like, she
killed thirty peasants in the hospital, and she was accused

(37:23):
of the murder of her brothers and dad, which was true.
She murdered them. She fled, she got arrested, and then
she was tortured because let's be real, its fucking whatever.
That feels like there's no death without torture at this
Uh yeah, there's one historian who claims that she wasn't tortured. Um,

(37:43):
this whole thing became a bigger deal because it like
goes all the way up in the court. But the torture,
I guess now called the water cure. At the time,
it was called being put to the question in France,
and basically she was forced to drink sixteen pints of water,
two gallons of water. She confessed, and she was beheaded.

(38:08):
But so she probably did it, but when she confessed,
it came out that she had been sexually assaulted, probably
by her dad, as a kid. When she was seven,
she had been sexually assaulted, she didn't say by whom,
and also that she started sleeping with one of her
younger brothers who she later murdered. And I have no
idea what age that happened or what direction the abuse

(38:29):
went in that setup. Then she grew up and got married,
even though she didn't want to get married. She wanted
a divorce because she liked sucking around and be She
liked being a free person who was in charge of
herself um and specifically, she knew a divorce wasn't possible,
so she tried to separate her money from her husband's money.
And this pisss off her dad because it would ruin
his reputation because royalty is fucking dumb. So her dad

(38:53):
had her lover, a captain in the army, thrown into prison.
In that prison, her boyfriend meant it and poisoner named
ex Silly who had been the court the court poisoner
for a bunch of royalty in a bunch of countries,
and he teaches boyfriend the art of poison, and boyfriend
gets out of prison and he becomes a licensed alchemist

(39:14):
so he can get arsenic and all that ship and
starts making poisons. And the cool thread is that a
silly might have gotten his information? Who might have gotten
his information? I read this whole article tracing the lineage
between the fauna are our heroes from last time, right
and ex silly and therefore all of these other murders um,

(39:35):
So this whole long line, you know, it's the gift
that keeps on giving. Yeah, her boyfriend gets pretty good
at making poisons, or maybe he just bought the poisons.
Suing stories change have a question alchemists. There there are
legal professions back then. Apparently what are they? What are
they doing? So, like, what are what is alchemy? As

(39:57):
far as like if they're not killing people, are they
like having little potions that heal? You like? Is that
the like what is what is it? So alchemy was
like in some ways was kind of the word for
science before science and um and so it was like
people who were like studying ship and trying to invent
different chemical ship. Again with the theoretical long lineage of

(40:19):
trying to create the philosopher's stone and make gold out
of lead or whatever. But mostly alchemists, I believe at
the time we're essentially apothecaries and we're like druggists and
you can go yeah, um. And I don't know exactly
how the licensing thing worked in France at the time,
but apparently he was able to get his license to
be an alchemist in the same way that the arsenic

(40:41):
that the other people got was through an apothecary, you know, um,
someone who had legal access to it, who then turned
around and sold it on the side. And the suspected
poison this time was oursnic and the essence of toads.
And it really seems like all the poison at the
time was just arsenic, was something for flavor. You know.

(41:01):
They're like, what if you mix arsnic with this, and
you're like, well, yeah, it's gonna kill someone because it's
sucking arsenic. It's like the fucking I don't know. Yeah,
it's like your your style, your brand. But one of
the things that is interesting, she actually killed her husband,
and I'm sorry her. She didn't kill her husband. She
tried to kill her husband. She killed her brothers and

(41:22):
her dad with like a super basic poison that was
like really obvious when they like cut open, cut them
open and looked at their organs. And when they found her,
they found super basic shitty poison which I don't even
think was arsenic based. I can't remember what it was
based on. And they also found clear vials of a
suspected our snake based one, and in order to test it,

(41:42):
they gave it to stray dogs and killed those dogs,
which happened a lot of the time. But did you
know that aquata fauna would never kill a dog. Aquata
fauna only kills husbands. It will kill a hundred percent
of husbands one of the time. It is available for
purchase where ever you get your magical charms. Any person

(42:04):
you meet on the street who will give your fortune. Actually,
don't go acost actual fortune tellers asking them for poison.
But but they can get off right with the with
the code with the code cool people. Yeah, you go
in and say I'm with cool people and get off
your aquata fauna. Remember to ask for aquata fauna. Margaret
Killjoyce sent you and then murder your huh uh nope, Okay,

(42:31):
Sophie is shaking her head. Uh as we are back
from ads and we are talking about how some poisoned
ship poisoned. But the husband may have been making sorry,

(42:54):
the boyfriend may or may not have been. I'm just
using boyfriend andship because if I started writing it all
out with all the her names used every time, and
then I was like, I can't keep track of this
many names. And if I was a listener, I would
also not keep track of this many names. And so
I'm just going with boyfriend. You can look up the
affairs of the poisons if you want to learn all
of these people's names. He wasn't very good at security culture.

(43:15):
He might have been good at poison not good at
security culture because he saved all of the letters from
his girlfriend that said things like, hey, babe, what if
I killed everyone in my family so we could own
more land or whatever? He dies, I actually don't know
how he dies. I couldn't find out how he dies.
It's he's a captain in the army. It's the seventeenth century,
and he had just murdered some people. So stabbed with

(43:37):
a sword, hanged by the state, and tuberculosis are my
three guesses. After he dies, they found all the letters
and that's how she gets found out and torture and executed. Well,
during her confession she says, half the people of quality
are involved in this sort of thing and it could
ruin them if I were to talk, And by basically

(44:00):
hating that, she sent everyone into a panic and put
serious fear into the men at court. And my argument
would be, if you don't want to be murdered by women,
then don't create an economic system by which women can
only inherit wealth if they murder you. But whatever, And
this is the start of the affair of the poisons,

(44:20):
because her killing the people isn't the affair of the poisons.
That's just the actual poison murder um. Instead, it's this
like break up of the magical underworld scene of Paris.
And and I'm not going to do the whole details
of the affair of the poisons because it's not actually cool.
I think the underworld people are super cool, but I
don't give a shit about royalty. It led to this

(44:43):
crackdown of the criminal magical underworld of France. All the
fortune tellers and alchemist everyone's selling aphrodisiacts and horoscopes and
ship and they might have sold poison and called it
quote inheritance powder, which rules they're inventive with these names.
I know, I know, oh one woman who gets called
a witch and fuck it, I don't know she's a witch.

(45:04):
That's cool. Um, she might have been in charge of
it all. She might have been in charge of this
whole poisoner's ring, or there might not have been a
fucking poisoner's ring in the magical on the world at
the time. I don't fucking know. Her name was lavois In,
which means the neighbor, which is a sick name for
a witch. Uh, anyone searching for new names whatever, Okay,
that one might come off oddly. She made her living

(45:26):
selling love potions made with like after birth and ship.
She was also maybe responsible for poisoning more than a
thousand people, and after hours of looking into it, I
cannot decide whether I think it's true. She ends up
burned at the stake and it I kind of think
that the whole thing was made up after the woman

(45:47):
murdered the husband, the father right, and the brothers. But
the affair of the poisons leads to thirty six people
being executed, possibly as witch hysteria, or there might have
been pre with black masses and incest and poison and
a garden with the bones of two thousand, five hundred infants.
Voison's garden. Can you repeat that? Yeah, So supposedly when

(46:11):
they when they caught Levois in I'm just gonna say
the neighbor because they can't pronounce French, when they catch
the neighbor in her garden is buried the bones of
two thousand, five hundred infants. Oh, and here's a contemporary
description of one of the black masses from around from
the poison affair, which I'm guessing didn't happen whatever, Maybe

(46:34):
it did, there's a lot of evidence it did. It's
actually literally my skepticism is the only thing holding me
from just saying this is true. Everyone else is like,
this fucking happened, and I'm like, I don't fucking know
about this. Right, historians say this ship happened, It probably
fucking happened. Maybe not the garden of bones, We're not sure.
And this is talking about the King's mistress, and who
was implicated in the whole affair but ended up surviving

(46:56):
because she was the King's mistress. So here's a contemporary
description quote a long black velvet paul was spread over
the altar, and upon this the Royal Mistress laid herself
in a state of perfect nudity. Six black candles were lit.
The celebrants robed himself in a chawsable embroidered with esoteric
characters rotten silver. The gold pattern and chalice were placed

(47:18):
upon the naked belly of the living altar. All was
silent save for the low, monotonous murmur of the blasphemous liturgy.
An assistant crept forward, bearing an infant in her arms.
The child was held over the altar, a sharp gash
across the neck, a stifled cry, and warm drops fell
into the chalice and streamed upon the white figure beneath.

(47:41):
The corpse was handed to olive O's inn, who flung
it callously into an oven fashioned for that purpose, which
glowed white hot in its fierceness. Yeah the incantation of
the priest, in case anyone needs the incantation, asked her
off Asmadeus, Princes of friendship and love, I invoke you

(48:01):
to accept the sacrifice this child that I offer you
for the things I ask of you. They are that
the friendship and love of the King and the Dolphin
may be assured to me, that I may be honored
by all the princes and princesses of the court. That
the King denied me nothing. I ask, whether it be
for my relatives or for any of my household. Wow.

(48:25):
First of all, what a pathetic little chant, very desperate.
What if he loves me? What if he loves me? Yeah? Yeah,
Also the princes of friendship and love threw me off,
Like that's assurance has confirmed not a sligh not al.
But also I mean like most of that stuff for

(48:48):
me definitely sounds kind of made up, like the right, Yeah,
that's that is I mean this was written as a
thing that happened at the time. I don't know. I
like the affairs of the poisons like gets reported on
is like all this ship happened, and I don't really
believe a lot of it. I know that the I
know that people got hanged. I think it was witch hysteria. Um,

(49:12):
and probably someone listening knows why. Probably truth? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's probably a starting point of truth. And then people
get scared and take up a bunch of stuff and yeah,
just implement misogyny over and over the infants that we're
supposedly used in these rituals were alleged to have been
acquired from sex workers, or maybe are the fate of

(49:33):
the people who come to the Magical World asking for
help getting rid of a baby. The priest involved was
arrested and confessed. But again that means nothing to me,
because everyone's being tortured, you know. But he theoretically confessed
it that black mass, and he died in prison, and
in his confession he claims that he sacrificed several of
his own newborn children. I I don't believe anything people

(49:57):
who are confessing to saying, but there were several homes
for wayward priests around Europe, for priests who had started
doing weird ship like that, like having black masses and things.
So maybe it was actually kind of a big problem,
or maybe the moral panic was everywhere, and every priest
who seemed a little sketchy, you throw them in the

(50:17):
fucking home for wayward Priests and the whole conspiracy, right,
I'm curious, like, yeah, I don't know, Um, I mean,
do you can the baby stuff be true? Like do
they really kill little babies for blood? Maybe I bet

(50:42):
that some of the magical underworld ship included killing babies,
but also killing of babies and ship with blood is
like the core of like bullshit conspiracy type stuff and
moral panics and things. So like I bet mostly they
were abortionists and they were like, you know, love filter

(51:06):
people and whatever like mm hmm. But and I and
I bet you the I bet you the evil priests
were just like also making love potions where they were like, hell, yeah,
I'm gonna use my holy powers of God to like
you know, make some love potions for people or whatever.
And and they all like had mistresses and we're like
doing like or misters I guess, and doing all kinds

(51:27):
of ship that they weren't supposed to. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean I can't. I can't stop thinking about Raspuchin.
I don't know why. I feel like he's like a
very famous man which or wizard or whatever mystic, right,
I like man which is a snack. I'm just saying

(51:52):
that's funny. Um, But it's interesting that I don't know,
like he was a very public royal like yeah, my
essentially your mystic, you know what I mean. Like it's
just very uh that was like not even that long ago,
that was like late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds or something.

(52:14):
So yeah, I mean like this underworld existed like and
a lot of times it was really out in the open.
And the question for me is just like whether or not,
because I I could imagine, like, I don't know, if
you came to my house and arrested me, it would
look real bad. Some of the ship I keep around
and the ship that I talked about on this podcast

(52:36):
and whatever. Right, but I don't like sacrifice babies or whatever,
you know, but if they would be like it would
be easy to make these jumps with a moral panic
mm hmm. Yeah, the collapse of this whole conspiracy of poisoners,
this particular new conspiracy of poisoners apparently, and this woman

(52:56):
probably was a poisoner, right, She probably was a selling
people poison person. And I think the neighbor was to um.
She she was a widow and a fortune teller, and
she bragged drunk at a party. It was sort of
like a girlfriend's party. She bragged drunk at a party
that she was doing so well in the poison game
that she could retire soon, which got the cops onto her,

(53:16):
who were like, hello, I would like to buy a
poison please, and she was like, hell, yeah, I got
you here some poison and they were like, just kidding,
we are the police. And so her whole family gets
arrested and her and her kids are all executed I think,
burned at the steak so don't brag drunk at parties
about felonies are doing. And then maybe her whole family

(53:40):
slept in one bed, all incest style. And this is
a messier episode that I'm used to doing. Her lesbian
lover whose party it was died under torture, and in
the end, the state killed thirty six people, not including
to Die who died under torture, and an unknown number
who killed themselves. During the repression, forty renegade priests were arrested,

(54:01):
many of whom got life in prison or I think
that probably translates to sent to those homes for wayward priests.
But the affair got kind of shut down once it
reached the King's mistress and she was never put up
on charges, and the whole thing fucked France's reputation internationally,
so much so that when the next crew of occultists

(54:22):
poisoners cropped up a couple of decades later, because apparently
there's a social need. In seventeen o two, they just
kind of quietly imprisoned the ringleaders and definitely without trial,
and just we're like, we're going to make this problem
go away. We're not going to make it do another
big stink. But anyway, men everywhere can rest a little

(54:43):
bit easier knowing that divorce is legal and their wives
have an easier way out of a bad relationship than arsenic. Yeah,
why are they complaining? Now? You know what I mean,
You'll have it easy. You'll have it so easy. Way
to the men or the time men, they should there
should not be any reason for any complaints at this juncture.

(55:05):
But I mean, like you brought up a good point
though about it being a need. It kept popping up
generation after generation or whatever, right, So it's really it's
pathetic actually how long it took them to even consider
making men or women and men equal, you know what
I mean, to hold onto that power or even just
able to leave each other. Yes, exactly. The concept of

(55:29):
someone being property was also a huge issue obviously, but like, no,
I never never affected anything else, right now, that's not
even sure, Yeah no, yeah, absolutely, yeah yeah yeah, And
it kept like like white men to be the people
that can wield power and only them, and so, like,
I don't know, power is a disease, and I don't

(55:53):
know most people when they get it, they I don't know,
they'll do anything to keep it. And that's unsettledly to me.
Would you say that the cure for the power disease
is arsenic? Maybe not in a legally binding way. What
I would the fact that it's like literally in our earth.
It's really magical to me, if you want to use

(56:16):
that word. It's pretty sick. The fact that, like I
mean a lot of things grow that are bad for us,
or or even just like roots or whatever is bad
for us. Yes, ouri is bad for us. There's like
certain berries you can't eat. But I mean, at the
end of the day, we are on this globe and

(56:37):
the Earth is deciding what happens, you know what I mean.
If the Earth wants to have some things that float around,
it can kill us. Yeah, you do? You like I
support her? You know? Yeah? Yeah, Well thanks for coming
on my How to Kill Your Husband episode. It was
fun to do something a little bit out of my

(56:58):
usual wheelhouse, you know. Yeah, I mean, I'm honored I
was chosen for this. It was very fun. I learned
a lot um and uh yeah, this is the only
I think podcasts are the way I learned things now,
and so I appreciate when they're kid you know. Well,

(57:18):
I learned a lot from Sharene's history episodes on it
Could Happen here, And other people want to learn from Sharine,
they can do so by listening to Shrine on it
Could Happen. Yeah, I'm on that. I am also the
co host of Ethnically Ambiguous, and you can follow me
on social media if you want, Sure Hero Instagram, I'm

(57:40):
sure hero Twitter. Also, after we're gonna have a joke
to wrap this up, okay, well my plug that you
can before you wrap it up with a joke, you
can also follow me on social media. I also wish
I wasn't on social media, but I feel more hooked
into it than I want to be. I'm on Twitter

(58:00):
at Magpie Killjoy and on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. And
I have a book called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow
that is available now in stores by It go buy it. Yeah. Also,
we like kind of shot ourselves in the foot Because
I also don't like social media and hate that I'm
that and connected. But like I feel like if you're

(58:21):
on a podcast, you kind of have to be front
facing in a lot of ways. Right, That's why I'm
on social media. That's called self outage. Yeah, um, all
ready for my joke. I am absolutely what kind of
t is hard to swallow? Honestly. Oh that's a good one.

(58:43):
But IoT the answer, But I take it. I will
take that though. I mean, honesty is better. I was
gonna say reality also true, so true. So yeah, that's
that's my joke. Thank you for coming to my joke.
Join next week joke our with Sharine. That wasn't a

(59:06):
very good joke. That's why it's a Sharina, not me.
We'll be We'll be We'll be back next week. We'll
be bad. We'll be bad, and you'll you'll be here too,
and you'll listen to because that's what you do. Cool
People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool

(59:26):
Zone Media. But more podcasts on cool Zone Media. Visit
our website cool zone media dot com, or check us
out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.