Five Famous Poisoners and Their Hapless Victims
By: Denise Shelton
Tags: Homicide, History, Poison, True Crime, Murder

History

Five Famous Poisoners and Their Hapless Victims

It must have been something they ate

1. Locusta: Professional poisoner of ancient Rome

“Proclaiming Claudius Emperor” by Lawrence Alma-Tadena, 1867 (public domain)

Clients:

Agrippina the Younger

Roman Emperor Nero

Known victims:

Roman Emperor Claudius Britannicus

Poisons:

death cap mushrooms, belladonna

The members of Rome’s Julio-Claudian dynasty were an ambitious and impatient lot, who had few qualms about dispatching their enemies and inconvenient relatives. Add to that the fact that suicide was a socially acceptable way to end one’s life, and you can see why professional poisoners like Locusta did a brisk business.

Sketch by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre for his painting “Locusta testing in Nero’s presence the poison prepared for Britannicus,” c. 1875 (public domain)

Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Deo all mention her in their writings. They accuse Agrippina, the Younger, sister to the Emperor Caligula, of employing Locusta to murder her husband, the Emperor Claudius, so that her son (by a previous husband) Nero could become emperor. They also accuse Nero of ordering Locusta to murder his 13-year old step-brother Britannicus because he believed he posed a threat to his throne.

Locusta provided Nero with poison. He kept it in a gold box in case he ever wanted to kill himself. He eventually did, but lacking the nerve, he ordered his private secretary to slay him. With Nero dead, Locusta’s glory days were at an end. Nero’s successor, the Emperor Galba, had her arrested, led in chains through the city, and executed.

2. Guilia Tofana: Deadly beauty in Renaissance Italy

“The Magdalene” by Bernardino Luini, 1525 (public domain)

Clients:

Primarily female occupants of Palermo, Naples, and Rome, Italy

Known victims:

Over 600 persons during a career that spanned 50 years. Some of these were suicides. The most common victims were unwanted husbands.

Poisons:

Aqua Tofana, also sold under the label “Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari.” Historians suspect that the concoction intended to work slowly over time, with multiple ingestions, is thought to have contained arsenic, lead, and belladonna.

One of history’s most prolific prisoners was Giulia Tofana. She was born in Palermo, Italy, in 1620. Giulia was just 13 years old when her mother, Thofania d’Adamo, was executed for murdering her husband. Some scholars believe that this early experience may have been the catalyst that propelled her into her life of crime.

Illustration of a bottle of Aqua Tofana marketed under the label “Manna di San Nicola” by Pierre Méjanel (public domain)

Guilia found work selling cosmetics. This occupation put her in contact with apothecaries and with women customers. The women confided in her about their loveless marriages and abusive husbands. Divorce was not a possibility at that time, so the only way out of a marriage was death.

Whether she got the recipe for her famous Aqua Tofana from her mother or concocted it herself, Guilia soon became quite wealthy selling it to customers looking for what is euphemistically known as “an Italian divorce.” The recipe is no longer known, but reports indicated that it was odorless, colorless, tasteless, and effective with as little as three small doses. The difficulty in detecting it made it possible for her customers to kill without being caught.

“There was not a lady in Naples who had not some of it lying openly on her toilette among her perfumes. She alone knows the phial, and can distinguish it.” — from the letters of Ferdinando Galiani, 1805

The end came for Tofana when a customer exposed her operation to the authorities. Under torture, she confessed to the poisoning of 600 men in Rome alone between 1633 and 1651. Papal officers executed her in the Campo de’ Fiori, along with her daughter Girolama Spera and three helpers, in July 1659.

3. Madame de Brinvilliers: Practice makes perfect

Portrait of Madame de Brinvilliers, artist and date unknown (public domain)

Known victims:

Antonine Dreux d’Aubray

Antoine d’Aubray

François d’Aubray

Suspected victims:

Up to 50 poor people she visited in hospitals, allegedly to test the poison she concocted to kill her father and two brothers

Poison:

Aqua Tofana. She learned how to make this from her lover Godin de Sainte-Croix, who had shared a prison cell with the notorious Italian poisoner Exili.

“Half the people of quality are involved in this sort of thing, and I could ruin them if I were to talk.” — Madame de Brinvilliers during questioning

The recipe for Aqua Tofana did not die with its namesake, for 17 years later, a French aristocrat named Madame de Brinvilliers would mix up a batch of her own. This time the motive for murder was money and the victims were her blood relatives from whom she wished to inherit sooner rather than later.

In 1651, Marie- Madeleine –Marguerite D’Aubray married Antoine Gobelin de Brinvilliers. There was plenty of money in the union at first, but her husband’s gambling habit and their lavish lifestyle soon led to financial difficulties.

Madame de Brinvilliers’ husband introduced her to one of his gambling buddies, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, who became her lover. When her husband fled the country to escape his creditors, she and Sainte-Croix publically flaunted their affair. The resulting scandal upset the lady’s father, who used his influence to have the captain arrested and thrown into the Bastille in May of 1663.

As luck would have it, the captain’s cellmate was Exili, a notorious poisoner in the employ of the Queen of Sweden. Madame de Brinvilliers supplied Sainte-Croix with the money to pay his cellmate for lessons in poison-making.

When the captain got out of prison, he and his lover hatched a plot to speed her inheritance. There is some evidence to suggest that Sainte-Croix continued his lessons in poisoning with noted Swiss chemist Christopher Glaser, but he was most likely unaware of the plot.

Madame de Brinvilliers succeeded in killing her father in 1666 and her two brothers in 1670 by poisoning their food slowly over time. Although by this time, people around Madame de Brinvilliers were suspicious, it looked for a time as if she would get away with murder.

Unfortunately, when Sainte-Croix died in 1672, he left behind a box containing letters incriminating her as well as a vial of poison. Since Sainte-Croix had no heirs, the box fell into the hands of the magistrate, who issued an order for Madame de Brinvilliers’ arrest.

The murderess fled first to England and then to Belgium, where she took refuge in a convent. A policeman disguised as a priest apprehended her there. She made a full confession under torture, and the King ordered her execution by beheading on 17 July 1676.

4. La Voisin: French sorcery with poisons à côté

Illustration of La Voisin (aka Catherine Montvoisin) 1680 (public domain)

Known clients:

Marguerite Leféron

Madame de Montespan

Françoise de Dreux

Countess of Soissons

Known victims:

King Louis XIV (failed attempt)

Judge Leferon

Monsieur Pajot

Monsieur de Varennes

Numerous others

Other specialties:

Fortune teller, abortionist, Black Mass officiate including human infant sacrifices

Poisons:

death cap mushrooms, belladonna

“Paris is full of this kind of thing and there is an infinite number of people engaged in this evil trade.” — La Voisin at her trial

La Voisin (aka Catherine Monvoisin) was a central figure in a scandal that rocked France during the reign of King Louis XIV. What came to be known as the Affair of the Poisons resulted in the execution of 36 people.

The case of Madame de Brinvilliers two years before sparked an investigation that uncovered a massive network of people who were providing poison to Parisians wishing to rid themselves of spouses, parents, lovers, and rivals.

Portrait of Madame de Montespan, c. 1660 (public domain)

The clients of people like La Voisin and her contemporary Marie Bosse included numerous members of the French aristocracy, including Marguerite de Poulaillon, who made several unsuccessful attempts to poison her husband. Two of the King’s mistresses Madame de Montespan and the Countess of Soissons, were both accused of plotting with La Voisin to poison him, and noble Françoise de Dreux used poisoned wine to kill at least four people and to attempt to kill several others.

During her trial, La Voisin refused to name her clients or admit to her crimes. She was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake on the Place de Grève in Paris on 22 February 1680.

Some months later, La Voisin’s daughter Marguerite Monvoisin testified that the charges against her mother were accurate and released the list of La Voisin’s clients. She also confirmed that Madame de Montespan was involved in the plot against the King. Another accused sorcerer Adam Lesage confirmed that the Black Masses held in the presence of the King’s mistress included infant sacrifice.

With these revelations, King Louis decided to dispense with any further trials as no good could come from the outrage that would result if Madame de Montespan’s case went to trial. She was, after all, the mother of seven of his children who he had formally legitimized in 1673.

Of the 26 named clients of La Voisin, only three faced execution. The rest had to pay fines, leave the capital permanently, or received pardons. Marguerite Leféron, found guilty, was fined and exiled from Paris. Countess of Soissons was also expelled. The court acquitted Françoise de Dreux and allowed her to remain in Paris under her husband’s supervision. The rest executions were of poison merchants, fortune tellers, and sorcerors.

Spared the indignity of a trial, Madame de Montespan retired to a convent in 1691 with a pension from the King of half a million francs. She spent the rest of her life as a patron of the arts and donated large sums of money to charity.

5. William Hardaker: Humbug Billy and his poisonous peppermints

A caricature by John Leech, published in Punch magazine in November 1858, illustrating the Bradford poisoning case.

Known victims:

200 people, 21 fatalities

Special circumstance:

Poison was administered accidentally in a tainted batch of candy

Poison:

Arsenic trioxide

Unlike the previous examples given here, the Bradford poisonings were entirely accidental. William Hardaker (aka Humbug Billy) sold candy out of a stall in an outdoor market in the town of Bradford, England. In October of 1858, some of Hardaker’s customers started becoming sick.

The first two to die were children who it was assumed had contracted cholera, which was common in the area. As more and more people fell ill, the police noticed that many of the victims had ingested peppermints purchased from Humbug Billy.

Traditional peppermint humbugs (image via toffeeworld.co.uk)

Hardaker bought the candy from candymaker Joseph Neal. To cut costs, Neal substituted powdered gypsum — known as “daff” — for some of the sugar in his recipes. On the occasion in question, Neal sent an assistant to purchase daff from druggist Charles Hodgson. Hodgson sent his young helper William Goddard to the attic to get a cask of the daff.

Goddard mistakenly picked up a cask of arsenic trioxide, a substance that looked similar. Thinking it was daff, he sold it to Neal’s assistant. The candymaker did not discover the mistake, even though his employee James Appleton felt ill while he was making the peppermints, and the finished product looked different than usual.

When Hardaker collected his order, he was able to secure a discount on the basis that the candy looked a little odd. After sampling the product, Hardaker didn’t feel so well himself, but he sold five pounds of the tainted candy at his stall that evening anyway.

Hodgson, Neal, and Goddard were all up for manslaughter, but the court withdrew the charges against Hodgson and Neal, and Goddard was acquitted.

©2020, Denise Shelton. All rights reserved.