Hieronyma Spara and Her Secret Society of Poisoners

Hieronyma Spara, known as "La Spara," organized instruction in the uses of arsenic for married women who were considering bettering their station in life by becoming wealthy widows. After the church became suspicious of this secret society, they infiltrated her group -- and La Spara was hanged in 1659.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia,
where this season we are exploring the lives and motivations
of some of the most notorious lady poisoners throughout history.
I'm Holly Frying and I'm Maria tre Marking. And in
today's episode, we are going back to seventeenth century Italy,

(00:23):
specifically to Rome, to look at the life of a
woman named Hieronymus Bara, who went by the professional name
Las Bara. So we'll be honest here at the very
top of the episode. Outside of her work with poisons,
we don't actually know a whole lot about Las Bara.
We don't know where she was born. Her first name

(00:44):
is Greek, but is that where she hailed from before
settling in Rome? How did she learn her trade? Was
she married? Did she have children? We don't have any
of these answers. Now here's the tricky part. If you
start to do a little bit of poking around, it
is easy to think that there are in fact answers
to those questions. But here's the problem with Laspara. Her

(01:05):
story and her life throughout its history have gotten intertwined
with another famous poisoner that may sound familiar, Julia Tafauna.
So you have heard that name before. Have you been
listening to the show, because we talked about Julia in
an episode earlier this season, And it's really really easy

(01:25):
to see why the two women are so confused with
one another. There are some really big similarities. The biggest
overlap though, is their work. Poison and politics were incredibly
intertwined in this period in Italy, but neither woman was
in the poisons business to become wealthy or to become powerful.

(01:46):
Julia and Laspara were both known for supplying poisons to
women around Rome, and their clients were mostly women who
wanted to get out of their marriages. There was a
subtle difference in their efforts, though, While Julia tended help
women out of abusive situations, Laspara was available to help
women become wealthy widows. And because they were contemporaries, that

(02:09):
makes the information in many historical records a little wonky too.
For instance, some accounts suggest that Julia was a student
of Laspara. Some suggest it was the other way around,
but honestly, to us, it doesn't look like either of
those scenarios was actually true. What we do know for sure, though,
is that they operated during the same period of time

(02:31):
and interesting maybe we were actually even executed in the
same year, although it was in unrelated circumstances. But so
it's a little early. But we're gonna go ahead and
take a quick break here, and that's so that when
we return you'll have everything looped together, because we're gonna
set the scene of Rome at this time in history
and how Laspara fit into it. Welcome back to Criminalia, Okay,

(03:05):
So I'm gonna set the scene a bit for this
time in Rome, the good, the bad, and the ugly,
all of it. This was a time when there were
witch hunts. There were some very creative methods of torture,
so just boiling people to this, and there was also
a plague epidemic sweeping through the city. So kind of

(03:26):
a dicey time to live in Row, right. So this
was also a time when the Catholic Inquisition was very like,
very very active. Um so if you're imagining just how active.
So in sixty three they tried Galileo and found him
and we quote this vehemently suspect of heresy. So you're

(03:51):
probably thinking Galileo heresy, because we're taught that Galileo was
a groundbreaking thinker of his time. That charge, my sound
a little bit ludicrous, but it really did happen. Yeah,
And they tried to force him to recamp his idea
of heliocentrism, which of course was his concept that the
Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun, which sits

(04:13):
at the center of the universe. And if you know
galileo story, you know that he refused to recant it, saying, quote,
I do not believe that the same God who has
endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us
to forego their use. And this is also worth considering.
This was only about twenty years after Galileo observed the

(04:36):
Moon through a telescope and wrote about it. He was
literally starting the field of modern astronomy in a time
when astrology was a science, so he was completely blowing
people's minds. You can imagine his observations and efforts to
understand the heaven scientifically meant that a lot of long
held religious beliefs were being subverted by science, and that

(05:00):
meant that he was upsetting people in power. For really
quite a long time, with all of this us the
heresy charge, but this is not a Galileo show. Delightful
and interesting though his story maybe, but look not everything
was was going wrong in Italy at this time. This
is also a time when art was really flourishing. The

(05:23):
Renaissance period, which was from the late fourteenth and into
the fifteen centuries, produced amazing writers and artists that we
still are in awe of today. And by the time
we get into the seventeenth century, when Laspara was living
in Rome, it was the time of Baroque Rome, when architects, artists,
and urban planners were being celebrated. This was a bustling city.

(05:46):
The printing press had been around for quite some time,
right Guttenberg had invented it in the mid four hundreds,
which means there was mass production of books, pamphlets, and newspapers.
It was also a time when people patronage transform formed Rome.
A lot of when you visit Rome, a lot of
the sculptures that you see that are there now come
from this period. It was such an influential time for

(06:09):
the Romans, and of course it was also a time
of poison. This is our show. We got to get
to it at some point poison was a part of
of everyday life in Italy, not just in Rome. And
if poison and poisonings were an art form during this time, uh,

(06:29):
you could probably say that the Spara and Julia tofauna
were the finest of their craft. And I like to
think that if one of them was the Beatles, then
the other one was the rolling stones. Like they together.
Though we mentioned that there has been confusion in the
historical record about these two women, there was probably no

(06:51):
confusing them if you pass them on the street. It
has always been suggested that Julia was known for being
a great beauty, while by all accounts, les Bara was.
She's often described as like a little old woman who's
kind of ugly. Uh. People frequently referred to her as
a hag in their writings about her. I'm gonna take

(07:11):
back that word for all of us. I know hags
such a terrible anyway. So, um, she was known as
a hag, but she was also known around the city
as a sorceress or a witch, depending on who you know,
which which version you wanted to take. At that time,
she was an astrologer, she was a fortune teller. Um.

(07:33):
But those were actually her her side gigs. She was
best known as being the head of an all female
secret society that was a lot. I mean, there's a
lot deadlier than like my knitting circle. Even though those
needles were quinty. Most of the women who attended we're young,
and they came from some of the most elite and
wealthy families in the city. Yeah, my stitching bitch looks

(07:57):
pretty benign at this point, I know, right, like things
I could do with that crochet hook. You don't want
to listen. I got very nice dressmaker shears. Oh no,
I was just thinking. I didn't even think of the
dressmaker shears, Like you could cause them damage there, But anyway, sorry,
go ahead, but I never will because nothing touches those
shears but fabric. I don't want adult blade. So a

(08:21):
few of the stories of las Barre's folklore suggest that
she took the wealth of these women into consideration when
opening her doors to the ladies of Rome and kind
of felt that those who were a little more upper
class were less likely to talk about the doings of
the society than those who were just part of the masses. Right,

(08:41):
they had more to lose if somebody blabbed sure is
this true? Maybe, but also maybe not. There's no substantiation,
so there had to be a reason why these when
we were collecting at her house. And it wasn't to
share recipes or to play games like Bunko used to
be popular, you know, or whatever the women of Rome
did to pass the time in the evening. It was

(09:03):
about poisons. Um specifically, it was to learn how to
effectively use poisons and even more specifically, how to kill
off a husband to become a wealthy widow. Here's the
big difference, well, one of the big differences between Laspara
and Julia. Julia was an apothecary and she focused on

(09:24):
helping women get out of abusive situations. And this time
in Italy, there was no such thing as divorce, regardless
of whether it was through a natural means um, the
teachings of a secret society or the potions of an apothecary.
To get out of your marriage, you needed your spouse
to die. And if you're looking to get wealthy through

(09:46):
it and you wanted to affect it, uh, Laspara was
your girl. So although this is not mentioned in most
tellings of Laspara's life, some stories do suggest that she
actually used that side sole of fortune telling to drum
up interest in her poisonous society, so which I think
it's really kind of interesting. It's a very um, I

(10:08):
just picture her going, I have a synergized marketing approach exactly.
She would tell fortunes and in doing so, she would
gain women's trust, and she would let them know that
she had a solution to their problems and when they
were lured in by that, with that there was another
member to the secret society. So this is another we

(10:31):
don't know if it's true. It's certainly plausible, um, but
it's also still also very plausible that the fortune telling
was just a way to support herself with diversified revenue streams,
Like she basically was just making sure she had money
coming in from as many ways as she could, and
that regularly, perhaps he didn't nightly at Laspara's home where
she would supply the instruction and she would supply the poison.

(10:53):
So as Julia to faun Is, poison was known as Aquata,
the drops that Laspara would pull out were and this
is a big maybe because the accounts on this name
very they were possibly known as Aquetta di Peruggia, which
basically translates into water or Perugia or Perusian water in Peruggia,

(11:16):
if you if you're not aware, is a city in Italy.
Laspara primarily worked with a liquid poison that she made herself,
and she primarily used arsenic as its main ingredient. Of
course she did, or she didn't. We talk about arsenic
all the time. Let's talk about it some more. It's
really we're just going to rena the show, the Arsenic Files,

(11:36):
and that's because arsenic has a very long history in agriculture,
in homicides and more. We've covered it add nauseum on
the show. Can talk a lot about rat poison, all
of the things all the time. You know, for centuries,
it's been an ingredient in insecticides, rodent poison would preservatives, pigments,
in paint, wallpaper, ceramics. There were also so interesting off

(12:01):
label uses, of course, yes, which gave the poison. It's
very ominous nickname that we have also used before inheritance
powder Son. Collie was just saying, we talk a lot
about the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, but today I thought
maybe we could get into the fundamentals of what it
actually does to your body when you consume it accidentally

(12:23):
or not accidentally. So arsenic work something like this. So
it's really all about sulfur actually, and I'll explain this
because following calcium and phosphorus, sulfur is the third most
abundant mineral in your body, and it's what's known as
an essential element, which means it's something your body needs

(12:46):
to keep itself alive. Because arsenic is so strongly attracted
to sulfur, binds right to it. So when that happens,
your body begins to lose its ability to function properly,
and that, of course can cause a whole bunch of problems,
problems that you have heard us talk about a lot
in other episodes, a lot everything from vomiting an abdominal

(13:08):
paint to organ fill here, I'm sure there's bleeding internally
and all those other things, every gross thing that's popped
out of and as we have said, these are all
symptoms that often mimic other conditions, from something as benign
as food poisoning to something as serious as kidney disease.
Because it lacks color, it lacks odor, it doesn't have

(13:30):
a taste when you mix it into food or drink.
It became a super popular poison and stayed that way
for centuries, and it didn't really hurt that it was
so readily available that it was it was available to
anyone and everyone in all classes of society, and you
really didn't need very much a fatal dose. We've talked
about this before. It's really just about the equivalent in

(13:52):
size of a p which is less than a tenth
of anounce, so it's just a teeny tiny bit and
Laspara it was like she was handing out poison spy,
like a mason jar gallen or something. She was just
applying drops. Here's your mason jar poison. Now it's so
it's so much more discreet than that when it's just
a few drops a few drops. So, beginning in the

(14:15):
eighteenth century, these so called off label uses of arsenic
started to wane, and that's mostly because the tests for
detecting it in bodily fluids, hair, and nails had been developed.
We've also talked about that and the many experts that
were evolving into the limelight at the time that we're
sort of becoming famous. But in the sixteen hundreds, when

(14:36):
Laspara was practicing her trade. Those methods had not been
developed yet to detect it, and it was most definitely
the king of poisons. So we're gonna take a little
break to hear from our sponsor, and when we returned,
we're going to talk about how the authorities infiltrated Laspara's
secret society. Welcome back to Criminalia. We are at that

(15:13):
point in Laspara story where someone we're not naming names,
although we wish we could, but somebody spilled the beans.
So now that we know why our snick was so
perfectly deadly, we're gonna go back to the secret society. Right,
So Laspara practiced it for years until well, there's always

(15:34):
someone who talks, isn't there like one person several people,
you only need the one. But it's possible that several women,
depending on the account of the story, disclosed during their
Catholic confessional that they had poisoned their husbands. And despite

(15:54):
the rules of the confessional where the confession is supposed
to be between the penitent and their God, the local
priests became alarmed and notified the authorities. And in this instance,
those authorities weren't like your local cops. They were Pope
Alexander the seventh and the papal authorities who took immediate
the immediate interest in what the secret of the secret

(16:18):
society really was, which was a place where women learned
how to use poisons. So, following some cursory investigation, the
papal authorities discovered that there did seem to be an
awful lot of young widows living in Rome, mostly wealthy,
and most who's young and presumably healthy husband's had suddenly

(16:40):
become ill and died. And exactly how they ascertained this,
like what their data gathering mechanism was, we don't really know.
Your guess is as good as ours. We don't know
if they went door to door, if they just sort
of if they were just sort of recare. Hey, I
do know a young widow. She's thinking that, like, there's
two young women on my street who don't seem to
be married anymore, and just gotta put that altogether, I

(17:01):
have ready cash. They seemed very liquid um but nevertheless,
nevertheless they put together enough information that they were definitely
very suspicious. Naturally, their next step was to get inside
a society, so to find out exactly what was going
on during those secret meetings, they set up a trap.
They hired a young, well healed woman to infiltrate the group,

(17:25):
and she feigned extreme distress over the infidelities of her
wealthy and ill tempered husband. And Lispara, who wasn't suspicious
that this at all. She helped women all the time,
invited her in and included her in that evening's how
to Poison Your Husband's seminar. She also gave her a
few drops of a colorless, tasteless liquid poison to take

(17:47):
with her on her way out. Of course, she immediately
brought those drops back to her bosses with the papal authorities,
and when those drops were analyzed, the liquid was as
they hoped and suspected, a slow acting poison. They really
did hope. Laspara and a dozen of her associates and
pupils were of course, immediately implicated in running a poison ring.

(18:11):
You know. I mean, we're in Rome in the mid
sixteen hundreds, and there was, of course torture. Torture during
the seventeenth century in Italy was an entirely legal way
to force a confession you wanted to force that confession,
but under Roman law, You couldn't have a conviction without
having a confession, so there were several favorite methods of

(18:34):
drawing one out. While torture practices were frequently used to
punish heretics, it was open season on anyone. Really, this
was considered an art form. Crucifixion was by far one
of the most common forms of torture in Roman times,
although there were many many methods to choose from and

(18:55):
to torture a confession out of Laspara, she was put
on the rack. Despite being punished on one of the
chief instruments of torture at the time in Rome, Laspara
didn't confess committing any crimes at all. However, one of
her accomplices in the society, a woman named La Gratiosa,

(19:18):
did confess under torture, and that's really all they needed
under the law. So all twelve women, as well as
Laspara and La Gratiosa were hanged in sixty nine. But
you may be wondering what about the women who participated
in the society and those who had killed their husbands,
But maybe we're not the instructors. Those women certainly were

(19:39):
not overlooked by the authorities. In addition, to the hangings
that Maria just mentioned, there was also the matter of
the larger group that had taken part in Laspara's instruction.
These were wealthy women of Rome, and they were considered guilty,
but to a lesser degree because of their status in society.
In total, there were about thirty or so women who
were publicly whipped through the streets of the city, and

(20:02):
some of the highest class women were fined and banished
from the city, and additional nine women were ultimately hanged
for poisoning a few months later, allegedly also associated with
Laspara's society. So despite the torture and the hangings and
the whippings and the banishment, the methods used by the

(20:23):
authorities to take the hard line against poisonings really didn't
actually do anything to stop the poisonous practices across the
city Laspara, and for that matter, Juliet Tafauna as well.
We're certainly not the only vendors in town, and Roman
women and men continued to poison their spouses and family
members as a way to gain wealth and power. But

(20:44):
at the end of the day, the authorities were doing
the same thing. Rome Poisonous Room Rome in the seventeenth
century an interesting place to be. So I hear that
you have of ever called the Poison Society punch, that
maybe the ladies could have sipped on while they were

(21:04):
learning about their poison. That's exactly correct. Yeah, So for
what's your poison this week? I couldn't get away from
the idea of entertaining a bunch of people in your
home as you taught them how to poison. And I
just I love the idea of the poison society. I
want sure, I want you know, I want them to
have had a secret knock all of it, like I

(21:25):
totally do. And I thought it would be fun. Of course,
I think about what one might serve as refreshments. It's
such an event always, so yes, I came up with
poison Society punch. This is a super duper simple recipe.
And it is because the thinking here is that it's
something I just made myself. I will tell you I

(21:48):
made myself one as a test. I took a sip
and I immediately made my second one. I didn't even
wait the finish the Verstone and I literally walked over
to the couch to sit down and watch TV with
two drinks in my hand, which probably sounds terrible, but
it was really delicious. So Holly, by the way which
she was doing this, texted me and I was like,
she's got to be at least like two or three

(22:08):
punch drinks and just too. And the good thing is
it's not a heavy hitter, because if you're serving punch
at a party, you don't want to get everybody wasted.
You just want to keep like chatter flowing and keep
everybody in a good mood. Like that's the whole point
of an alcoholic punch, usually, especially at a poison party,
like easy to keep people kind of keep your wits

(22:31):
about you, right, not necessarily sober, but you gotta know
what's going on. Yes, So and also again, because it
is a punch, it has to be easy to throw
together and something you can scale up. So even though
I only made them as singular drinks, which is how
I'll describe it, you'll see that it's very easy. If
you are like that sounds delicious. I want to make
it myself for a huge punch bowl. You can scale

(22:51):
it up no problem. So it's literally four ounces of
cranberry juice, four ounces of champagne or sparkling wine of
your choice and an ounce of amaretto. We have not
used amoretto yet this season, we have not reached deep
into the liquor cabinet. Was like, why have I not
used this yet? Like legit again, so delicious. I took

(23:14):
one sip and was like, oh, I'm making another now, um,
and it is. It's it's not heavy. I also used
a diet cranberry juice because I don't like a lot
of sugar. Um, So it was not a very heavy
drink for me at all, but regular cranberry juice would
also work. Here's what I also like about this recipe.
Aside from the fact that you can easily just like

(23:34):
multiply those simple three ingredients to make larger matches, you
can also do a non alcoholic version really easily if
you're not a drinker, or if you want to I
don't know, serve it to underage poison learners. I don't um,
so you can. You could just do cranberry juice and
like a sparkling grape juice, and then I would put

(23:54):
in a little bit of almond extract to get that
little bitter almond flavor that you get from the armoretto
and it would be equally delicious. I think so, yes,
that's my poison Society punch that I'm now going to
serve with every party I labeled poison free, like right,
uh yeah, it was just super duper yummy. It's like

(24:16):
it's both um crisp without being bity, and it's also
like got a nice soft mouth feel because of the bubbles.
The tartness of both the cranberry and sometimes for some
people's champagne taste a little bit tart to them. The
armoretto takes that out completely, Like it just sweetens it

(24:37):
up enough that you don't get any tarts. So it's
really easy to drink a lot, which is also why
you don't want to put more armoretto in it than that,
because you would end up very drunk, very fast, and
we don't want that drink responsibly always. But yeah, that's
the ticket at the door, no more than this to

(25:00):
drink max and then you're out, um, relaxed enough to
be willing to talk about poison with other people, not
so relaxed that you blab it when you walk out later. Right,
she had too much, she had a third, she had
a service. She's like, are you gonna drink that. No,
I'll take just a little bit lest I'll just take
it home. And then she went right to confession and

(25:22):
blabbed everything, and she's like, how did I get on
this rack? I don't know what happens? We We hope
you have enjoyed this and that this punch sounds delightful.
And if you make it, share it with me on Twitter,
just tag it hashtag Criminalia. I'll find it, uh, and
hopefully we will also see you back here next week.

(25:42):
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(26:05):
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