Cool People Who Did Cool StuffCool Rerun: Part Two: Aqua Tofana: How to Kill Your Husband
In part two of this week's rerun episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Shereen about how, in the era before divorce, a group of women sold poison to aspiring widows.
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 will get so much worse and I don't have enough jokes. Sophie, you got joke, Sharen, anyone.
SuRie is like the funniest person right now. Hey, no pressure. I don't know if I have a joke right now. A lot of my jokes are like annoyingly visual, Like my go to is like the daddiest joke, not Daddy's Like.
Daddy joke is very different joke.
But let me think. I mean I just explaining to you can use yourragination. But basically you put your hand up as like a little cup, 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.
Hellya guns?
Hell yeah, I'm gonna.
I think it's funny because that's the only gun that I approve of. Everybody knock who's there? Eats too me?
Okay, Sophie, Okay, I got a knock knock joke. Ea, start knock, knock, who's there?
I don't know.
This is your joke. That's the point of the joke.
I'm like, I don't know.
This is your bit, Like you know, I got nothing. Okay. My guest today is Sharene Shreen. How are you doing today?
I'm good, I'm good. I actually am excited about the continuation of the story because you've definitely got me intrigued, and not much can do that these days.
So hell yeah, cliffhangers for the wind. Yes, Sophie is our producer, Hi.
Sophie, him Margaret, Hi Scheren. I like this little trio.
I like, hey, this is fun. And Ian is our editor. He's in charge of editing. Now the parts where Sophie reveals the secret of the Alchemist's Stone and unwoman wrote our theme music. So this is part two of our two part series of women who murdered their husbands, or rather 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 Aqua tafauna, the cosmetic poison made by one brilliant poison lady. So let's figure out what we know of the truth. We will start in pal Marrow, 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 Lasarda. 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.
Hmmm.
Rome, for example, at the time, had upwards of two hundred magical practitioners. We don't actually know how many Palmero had. But you know, as a capital of the region.
What qualifies as magical question?
Oh, 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 on the street who would sell them shit 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 shit and lived double lives and led black masses. And this, okay, I'll get to what I do and don't believe of 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 shit with magic. And they chanted in a made up mystical language that they all came both together, that was just Latin and Greek and Hebrew while stuck together basically like all the old timy languages they had access to.
That's fun.
And they 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 shit, uh huh, But there are a ton of documents from the time attesting to it and lots of confessions. Although come on, witch huns and inquisitions. I don't trust the confessions, but I think some of the shit was actually real. I believe it. Yeah, to quote the historian Mike dash this quote, just because it's fucking cool. Raids conducted by the police on the Paris underworld of the sixteen eighties uncombed quantities of Grimour's incense, wands, and a rich vervariety of ingredients used in sexual magic, including breast milk and bags of powdered menstrual blood.
Humm, how do you make that into a powder? I guess it's like you just dry it out and crush it up. That's interesting. Well, I also we still do not everybody, but the culture of 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 are even like, I don't know it, just I think it's very interesting how it's evolved, but it's still here.
Very much, totally opinion, 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. Mm hmmm, Because I think a lot of the shit 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 heat, you could get fortunes and horoscopes, you could get love charms, you could get cures for your bad breath. Whatever ailed you, they'd 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 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 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 most famous thing that alchemists were trying 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 while not everyone involved in madge alchemy were up to the poison thing, these two women they They might have done some other shit. They probably sold charms and potions or whatever, but they also sold poison. It's likely that Tofania was who invented aqua tafauna named after herself. It's also possible they just sold people arsenic and I suspect that they were breaking the law by working without their husband's permission, which is just terrible. I bet their husbands and even what they were doing. Yeah, 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 Tofania went down for the magic trick of turning their husbands into corpses. So the state pulled the magic trick of turning them into corpses by a bit more gruesome of a method. So for all of the like, oh, these like evil poisoners, like the shit 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 account at the time says that she was sewn 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. Well 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. And most everything focuses on this other woman, Julia Tufana, who was born Julia Mangiarti and legend hazrus 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 for a woman to take her mother's first name as her own last name. It seems just as likely that she took the name Tafauna as a last name because she was selling Aqua tafauna. It also seems possible that she never went by Tafauna and this is the name that folklore has described to her, and she spent her whole life going by Menngiarti. There's no evidence that she was Tefani's kid Tefania's kid, but there is also no evidence that she wasn't whatever. It's also possible she left for Rome before any of that. Okay, whatever, yeah, yeah, but aqua tafauna. 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, all of which point to arsenic as the active ingredient of the poison. The suggested antidote was lemon juice and vinegar, and to continue the quote, Aqua tafana was described as clear and tasteless, suggesting that a key part of the manufacturing process was masking the character as stick metallic taste of arsenic. It was also considered to be a relatively 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 would get in 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 mask that taste, because that's impressive.
I know, And I think that there's some suspicion that they like did some masking to the taste, but not actually as much as people claim. It was not as perfect of a poisonous people claim it was a very good poison. But mostly it was added to wine because wine.
Exactly, I was gonna say, like, if you had like a couple drops to wine, it's probably not even traced, yeah, or like you can't taste it at all.
Yeah. And so Tafana wasn't alone. Her stepdaughter who just happened to be a widow surprised there named Jialamas, Spara 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 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 shit. Well, Giovanna de Grandie sold to working class women. 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 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 conspiring to kill all their husbands or whatever, so whatever.
Every joke they say is a layer of truth.
But yeah, and they also sold other shit, right. They weren't just poisoners. They worked as cunning women or sometimes wise women or divine arresses, and they were selling charms and you know, telling portions and shit. 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 the you know, just like go into an alley and there's a sign that it's like kill your husband five dollars.
Yeah. Yeah.
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 tarot readers and fortune tellers and therapists.
You know, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, I mean it's like it's a necessary thing for society to have or these people who provide all of these services. Yeah, So to make their poison, they needed arsenic and then actually, theoretically the best guesses about Aqua tafauna is that it had antinomy and lead and maybe mercuric chloride, which was a treatment for venereal disease at the time, and my guess what killed Bathory's husband, but I don't know, rather than Bella Donna, which is what was like rumored to be in it, because Bella Donna's a poison and it you know, has a romantic sounding name, right right. 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.
I know, Like 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 were like feeling better, b to be like, no, I got to keep it up. I might. 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 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. Organic arsenic compounds are mainly found also in fish and in shellfish. So I'm wondering, like how did these women procure Ah?
This is perfect? That is literally the next sentence in the script.
Oh hell, like see it was worth the little flip fumble there, but like, yeah, it says arsenic is found in the natural environment in some abundance in the Earth's crust and in small quantities in rock, soil, water and air like that is that's wild.
I don't know, it's just a yeah, something to think about. Yeah, So they needed arsenic. So they found a priest. They found one of these sort of fallen priests that was talking about earlier in the Magical Underworld. His name was Father Girolama 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 Tafauna, and it's actually possible they never sold as Aqua tafauna, and that's just like the myth name that gets attached to it. But they definitely sold it for a while under the name Mana of Saint 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 Saint Nicholas was meant to be the oil that dropped from Saint Nicholas's bones where it was held 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 poisonous, regular scam and it was sold for the purpose of fighting acne and other facial blemishes. Interesting, So this is what they labeled their 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, Right, so it's a safe place to put it. And so they labeled it in these like vials that look very holy and they have Saint Nicholas on them or whatever. But it's just meant to be this like fucking you know, face blemish cream oil whatever.
Hey, facial oils are still used today. Oh yeah, people stand by them. So it's like you're onto something again.
Yeah, 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. I get out in the sun enough the forehead wrinkles. I would take some oil that dropped off of Saint Nicholas's bones. Maybe the blood of innocence, especially billionaires, the blood of Yeah, can we can, Sophie, can we be sponsored by the blood of billionaires?
Yeah? Why not?
Hell? Yeah?
Wow, she's the best?
Yeah, 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, aqua tafauna 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 it for the money, these women were mostly in it for the money, right, that's you know, their whole thing, which is like 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 win a bunch of fucking 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 in a lot of ways too right, 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 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 poisonous career, at least twenty one years into it, probably longer than that. Juliet Tafana died peacefully in her bed in sixteen fifty one. She 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, and her friends, including possibly her stepdaughter, carried on without her. And I tried really hard. I think that I think this is enough of a pop culture reference that I'll get Sophie's attention and love, which is why I make this podcast.
I you get that for free.
Oh thanks. So I tried to find an earl killed by the gang because of the country song about killing earl or almost die. Yeah, yeah, thanks, because I want to make an earl's got to die doike. Yeah, but I didn't find an earl, but I did find a duke. Francesco Ses, the Duke of Siri, 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 that's the way it's always phrased, right, I 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. I presume that they were paying someone off or power, right right, right, yeah, like giving them poison, I you know, of providing abortions for their mistresses.
Like hmmm.
That'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 shit. They like kept receipts, and they like would like issue written promises of payment like wow. And 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. M 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, but it seemed like an open secret and I doubt that they were doing this for thirty years unnoticed. Right 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 in confessional that the pope decided had to do something about it because I guess the people, you know, the priests would like to turn around and tell the confessions to the pope or whatever.
I don't believe that one.
It's also possible that de Grandis, the lower class poisoner, got entrapped by a woman working for the police who showed up with a sob story and desired to kill her husband. My guess, m H. And this is I'm not a historian. I'm not allowed to make whatever I'm making his guess. I think they went down because they killed that earl because he died a year before the investigation into them started, right the duke. They didn't kill an earl, 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 two.
Yeah. Yeah, but I guess like if you're if they're doing pro bono poison poison services, then the earth the duke client must have been a good It's like there was probably money and that how do you turn that down?
I know? And like maybe the duchess was like, sh 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 mean, if you are forty and your date a seventy 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 Rome 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 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 are beggars. One of them Maria Spinola. Her nickname is Griffola, which is a type 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, 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 what happened to the first three.
I know she really, I don't know, had some trial runs.
Yeah exactly. Tefana 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 murder their husbands. Is a keeper mm hmmm, he's an ally. Yeah, that man is an ally.
Yeah man. Yeah, God bless whoever whoever those people are. But yeah, he knows, he's he knows he's part of the problem or is his type you know?
Yeah? Yeah, and I suspect it would never occur to him to do anything abusive or cruel to his wife.
That's yes, exactly, 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 named names, presumably after torture m Spawna 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 strepato, where your wrists are tied together behind your back and you're hung from your arms while your shoulders slowly dislocate. What the fuck medieval era? No that I don't like that either, Yeah, not sticky, I know.
I hate the people that like made these up, like right, it's just like what not into it?
Right? And then they turn 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 to hear my migraine.
Yeah, maybe that's what it was. There's a lot of migraines going around from like the smoke in the air, burning.
Trash, yeah, air pollution.
Yeah, really, can you blame them? Yes, the answer is yes, but worth noting for any listeners today. A couple of the women named names right away, and they were hanged with the rest because snitching doesn't pay. Only for yeah, only starting off rich pays unfortunately when it comes to crime. Based on who survived this sort deal, I mean also true today. So yepomp forty six murders get hurt out in court and the five woman women plus one of their clients were hanged in front of a huge crowd in sixteen fifty nine, and before her execution, Spanna said, I've given this liquid to more people than I've got hairs on my head, which fucking.
Hell Yeah that rules. I love that. Also, just like even if they got caught, they helped so many women probably you know what I mean, they like not all those women that their clients like, their clients didn't get caught.
I'm assuming, right, Yeah, many of them did, but about forty of them got put on trial. But out of six hundred, yeah, no more than forty. 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 because the fact that the men like beat their wives and shit was considered not as justification but as motive.
Mm.
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, aha, she's the murderous.
Interesting and cruel I know. Well, also, I guess it was like legal right to be your wife.
Yeah, I presume so. Yeah, damn the a 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 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 as fucked up, so like maybe deserved a murdering. Maybe it's I guess you can't just sell poison and expect it to only be used in good ways as another moral of the story, unfortunately. But you know who didn't have to go on trial? Streen? 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 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 faced 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 don't want to look bad and these women matter and these other women don't. 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 you'd be like I did a sin, they'd be like, all right, a hundred bucks, right, you know, because they definitely had bucks. Dollars was the currency of choices.
Mhm.
Renaissance in vidioid Lane. Yeah, George Washington, Yeah, totally yeah, Like who is this guy? Oh, you'll know one day h m hm. 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 fucking knows. But while only forty six of the murders were heard in court, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth later had legaled the papers describing the death of six hundred 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 eighteen eighty, So there was two hundred years of like myth making in folklore that muddy to historic waters and are part of why we have such a hard time like tracking what happened the name aquaitafauna. It lived on. It became a folkloric term alongside water from Palmero Rennie quote slow poison, and for centuries men lived in fear of this slow poison. Mozart when he died admittedly kind of suddenly thirty five years old, which is like one hundred years later or whatever, he's like, I have been poisoned by aqua tafauna, he said, And no one actually knows how he died. It could have been poison. It could have been syphilis, it could have been food poisoning poisons like young though, I know, yeah, there's like one as like maybe it was like undercook pork chops or whatever.
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. 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, then I don't know, poison seems likely if it's like also this like fear mongering, like big rumor right.
Totally, like yeah, yeah, everyone's afraid that there's all of these you know, women run around poisoning everything, and some of them are right, Like hundreds of men you know, met their end because of this. But was 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 shit, see if there's like different kinds of damage. But the thing about aquatafauna that became sort of magical, it was this poison that defied autopsy and shit. 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 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 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 some drops in someone's food or wine or whatever and then they fucking die. Like yeah, and awkward to Fana 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 to the organs and shit.
Also, have you seen 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. Oh yeah, totally, So maybe like there was love behind all 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 a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and he deserves to be in jail solely because of how he treated you on Apple. But that's another story.
But I don't think it's another I mean, okay, I don't know 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, 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, but I guess that's a really good point. That is also a misoge take to be like, oh, she wants his attention so bad, or like she like is 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, so these men now like if men die, people are like it was the wife, right, And I'm sure like a lot of got 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 tafanna.
Yeah, put them in place.
Yeah. So, so as as this thing became a legend, right, more poisoners took the name Tofauna. At least one that we have a record of as a prisoner in seventeen thirty one hundred years after the Heyday, she took the name Tofuna. Another Italian poisoner, which who was still in Palmaro, was Giovanna Bana and her nickname and I'm literally including her in this because I like her nickname was the old vinegar Lady, oh which 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 seventeen eighty nine because I guess being a poisoner is illegal for some reason. Yeah, weird, But old Vinegar Lady also a sick name might not be as good of a choice for someone who's looking for a new name. Up to you.
Yeah, but has a bite.
That's true, that's true. No, no, no, twenty years there's more poison hell, yeah, twenty years.
I don't know. I feel maybe I'm maybe I'm too excited about this, okay.
Goo, no, no, whatever, like 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 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 they would rather not have, like they would rather the casualties than actual freedom for women, which is another interesting shitty thing.
Yeah, some of us will die so that we can all hold our power over our lives. That makes us miserable too, because the fucking patriarchy's a prison for everyone. Twenty years after the main circle of poisoners from sixteenth seventy to sixteen eighty two, King Louis the fourteenth Court in France was rocked by 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 Brenvillier, who killed her father and two brothers and tried to kill her husband. And she theoretically did this to get all their shit, like if they're a dates or whatever, right, that's the easy answer of why she did it. The real answer is we shocked 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 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, fucking whatever.
That feels like, there's no death without torture.
At this Yeah, there's one historian who claims that she wasn't tortured. This whole thing became a bigger deal because it goes all the way up in the court. But the torture it gets 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, drew gallons of water. She confessed, and she was beheaded. Wow, but so she probably did it. But when she confessed, it came out that she'd 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 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 fucking around and she liked being a free person who was in charge of herself, and specifically, she knew a divorce wasn't possible, so she tried to separate her money from her husband's money. And this pisses off her dad because it would ruin his reputation because royalty is fucking dumb. So her dad had her lover, a captain in the army, thrown into prison. In that prison, her boyfriend meantime Italian poisoner named Aksilli, 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 so he can get arsenic and all that shit, and starts making poisons. And the cool thread is that Axilly might have gotten his information. Who might have gotten his information? I read this whole article tracing the lineage between Tofauna are our heroes from last time, right and Exsilly and therefore all of these other murders. 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. Fucking stories change.
I have a question. Yeah, alchemists, they're there are legal profession back.
Then, apparently what are they?
What are they doing? So what are what is alchemy? As far as like, if they're not killing people, are you 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 it kind of the word for science before science? And so it was like people who were like studying shit and trying to invent different chemical shit again with the theoretical long lineage of trying to create the Philosopher's stone and make gold out of lead or whatever. But mostly alchemists, I believe at the time were essentially apothecaries and were like druggists and you can go to essentially Yeah, 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 that the other people got was through an apothecary, you know, someone who had legal access to it who then turned around and sold it on the side. And the suspected poison this time was arsenic, and the essence of toads, And it really seems like all the poison at the time was just arsenic with something for flavor. You know, they're like, what if you mix arsenic with this, and you're like, well, yeah, it's going to kill someone because it's fucking arsenic. It's like the fucking I don't know. Yeah, it's like 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 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 arsenic based one, and in order to test it, they gave it to stray dogs and killed those dogs. Wow, which happened a lot at the time. But did you know that aquatafana would never kill a dog. Aquatafana only kills husbands. It will kill one hundred percent of husbands one hundred percent of the time. It is available for purchase where ever you get your magical charms. Any person you meet on the street who will give your fortune. Actually, don't go accost actual fortune tellers asking them for poison.
But they can get twenty percent off, right, Yes, with the with the code cool people.
Yeah, you go in and say I'm with cool people, and you get twenty percent off your aqua tafauna. Remember to ask for aqua tafauna. Margaret Kiljoyce sent you, and then murder your huh Nope, Okay, Sophie is shaking her head. Advice ADS. We are back from ADS and we are talking about how some poison shit poisoned. But the husband may have been making sorry, the boyfriend may or may not have been. I'm just using boyfriend and shit because if I started writing it all out with all their 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. 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, oh no, 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. He's a captain in the army. It's the seventeenth century, and he had just murdered some people. So stabbed with 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 tortured 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 hating that, she sent everyone into a panic wow 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 that they murder you. But whatever, And this is the start of the affair of the poisons, because her killing the people isn't the affair of the poisons, that's just the actual poison murder. Instead, it's this like breakup of the magical underworld scene of Paris. 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 crackdown of the criminal magical underworld of France. All the fortune tellers and alchemists. Everyone's selling afrodisiacs and horoscopes and shit, 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 yeah, one woman who gets called a witch and fuck it, I don't know she's a witch. That's cool. She might have been in charge of it all. She might have been in charge of this whole poisonous ring, or there might not have been a fucking poisonous ring in the magical underworld at the time. I don't fucking know. Her name was Levoison, which means the neighbor, which is a sick name for a witch. Anyone searching for new names whatever, Okay, that one might come off oddly. She made her living selling love potions made with like afterbirth and shit. 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 murdered the husband, the father, right, and the brothers. But yeah, 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, an incestin poison, and a garden with the bones of two thousand, five hundred infants Lavoisen's garden.
Can you repeat that?
Yeah, so supposedly when they caught Levozen, 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 from the poison affair, which I'm guessing didn't happen, whatever, maybe 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 shit 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 because she was the King's mistress. So here's a contemporary description quote. A long black velvet pall 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 celebrant robed himself in a chawsible embroidered with esoteric characters, wrought and silver. The gold patten and chalice were placed 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. The corpse was handed to olivo's in, 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 as Medeus. Princes of friendship and Love, I invoke you 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 Dauphin may be assured to me, that I may be honored by all the princes and princesses of the court. That the King deny me nothing I ask, whether it be for my relatives or for any of my household.
Wow, I mean, first of all, what a pathetic little chant, very desperate.
I know, what if he loves me? What if he loves me? Yeah?
Yeah, Also, the Princess of friendship in love threw me off, like that's assurance has confirmed not a sleigh. But also I mean like most of that stuff for me definitely sounds kind of made up, Like the he right.
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 shit 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. And probably someone listening knows ways truth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's probably a starting point of truth. And then people get scared and take up a bunch of stuff and yeah, yeah, just implement misogyny over and over.
Yea. The infants that were supposedly used in these rituals were alleged to have been acquired from sex workers or maybe are the fate of 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 gotting fucking tortured, you know. But he theoretically confessed to 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 who are confessing saying that's fair, But there were several homes for wayward priests around Europe for priests who started doing weird shit 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, throw them in the fucking home for Wayward Priests and the whole conspiracy. Right, I'm curious, like, yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
I mean, do you can the baby stuff be true? Like do they really kill little babies for blood?
Maybe? Uh? I bet that some of the magical underworld shit included killing babies, but also killing of babies and shit with blood is like the core of like bullshit conspiracy type stuffy and moral panics and things. So like I bet mostly there were abortionists and they were like you know, love filter people and whatever like mm hmm. But and I and I bet you the 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 like holy powers of God to like you know, make some love potions people or whatever, and and they all like had mistresses and were like doing like or misters, I guess, and doing all kinds of shit that they like weren't supposed to. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean I can't. I can't stop thinking about Resputin. I don't know why. I feel like he's like a very famous man, witch or wizard or whatever.
Mystic, right, I like man, which I'm just saying he's a.
Man, which that's funny, but it's interesting that I don't know, like he was a very public royal, like yeah, mystic or essential you're mystic, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's just very Uh that was like not even that long ago. That was like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds or something, so damn yeah.
I mean like this underworld existed like h 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 mean 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 shit I keep around and the shit that I talk about on this podcast and whatever, right, but I don't like sacrifice babies or whatever. You know. Yeah, but if they would be like it'd 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 probably was a poisoner, right, She probably was a selling people poison person. And I think the neighbor was too. She she was a widow and a fortune teller, and she bragged drunk at a party. It was her like 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, who were like, hello, I would like to buy a poison please, and she was like, hell, yeah, I got you. Here's 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 stake. Oh no, So don't brag drunk at parties about felonies are doing and then.
Maybe good tip.
Her whole family 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 two who died under torture and an unknown number who killed themselves. During the repression. Renegade priests were arrested, many of whom got life in prison or I think that probably translates to scent 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 occultist poisoners cropped up a couple decades later, because apparently there's a social need. In seventeen oh two, they just kind of quietly imprisoned the ring laders and definitely without trial, and just were 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 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? Y'all have it easy. Y'all have it so easy.
Wait too, the men or the men, yeah, men.
They should There should not be any reason for any complaints at this juncture. But I mean, like you brought up a good point though about it being in 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 on.
To that power, yeah, or even just able to leave each other, yes, exactly.
Like the concept of 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 know most people when they get it, they I don't know, they'll do anything to keep it. And that's un settled to me.
Would you say that the cure for the power disease is arsenic? Maybe not in a legally binding way, you.
Know what I would the fact that it's like literally in our earth is really magical to me. If you want to use 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 real is bad for us. Yes, arsen 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 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?
Yeah?
You know?
Yeah? Yeah, well, thanks for for coming on my How to Kill Your Husband episode. It was fun to do something a little bit out of my usual wheelhouse, know.
Yeah, I mean, I'm honored I was chosen for this. It was very fun. I learned a lot and uh yeah, this is the only I think podcasts or the way I learn things now, and so I appreciate when they're good.
You know. Well, I learned a lot from Sharene's history episodes on It Could Happen here, And if other people want to learn from Sharen, they can do so by listening to Shreene on It Can Happen Margaret.
Yes, I'm on that. I am also the co host of Ethnically ambiguous, and you can follow me on social media if you want, Share Hero, Instagram, Shure, Hero, sixt x' six Twitter. Also, after we're going.
To have a joke to wrap this up, Okay, well, my love that blug 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 at Magpie Killjoy and on Instagram at Margret Kiljoy and I have a book called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow that is available now in stores. Buy 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 connected, but like I feel like if you're on a podcast, you kind of have to be front facing in a lot of ways.
Right, Yep, that's why I love on social media.
That's called self sabotage. Yeah, are you ready for my joke?
I am absolutely.
What kind of tea is hard to swallow?
Honesty?
Oh that's a good one, but I's all the answer, But I take it. I will take that though. I mean, honesty is better I was gonna say reality.
A true so true.
So uh yeah, that's that's my joke. Thank you for coming to my.
Joke next week Joke Hour with Jerine. That wasn't a very good joke. That's why it's with Serena, not me.
We'll be We'll be We'll be back next week. We'll be back, We'll be bad, and you'll you'll be here too, and you'll listen to it because that's what you do.
We'll be.
Cool.
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