Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret phil Joy. Sophie says that I
Speaker 1: have to start each episode with a joke in order
Speaker 1: to be part of the Cool Zone Media network of podcasts. Yeah, so, okay,
Speaker 1: let me tell you. I remember that detail of my
Speaker 1: contracts because I've got a photographic memory. It's just that
Speaker 1: i left the lens cap on bump. That's my joke. Okay.
Speaker 1: And today we've got a returning guest, the one and
Speaker 1: only Sharene Sharne. How are you hi, I'm okay, Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Yeah, what do you? What do
Speaker 1: you do? How do you justify your existence? That's a
Speaker 1: hard question for me to answer right now. I've been
Speaker 1: going through a very extended existential crisis, like extended by
Speaker 1: like years. Uh oh, Now I feel guilty. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I should know at this point how to answer that
Speaker 1: after all this time. But I uh, I make stuff
Speaker 1: and try every day to stay alive. But yeah, I've
Speaker 1: I write and wrecked and I can't say that I've
Speaker 1: done that in a while though. So there's what. There's
Speaker 1: what the imposter syndrome comes in. But you're not asking
Speaker 1: me all these questions. This is not therapy. I do
Speaker 1: need therapists and want to shut up. Yeah, hotly, I
Speaker 1: was trying to get you to talk about your podcast
Speaker 1: really quickly. Oh my podcast. I do co host a
Speaker 1: podcast called Ethnically Ambiguous. It's uh, it's evolved over the years.
Speaker 1: It used to be about news, and we do a
Speaker 1: lot of guests in tributes now because the news hurts.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, Sophie is our producer and is on
Speaker 1: the line too. How are you, Sophy? It's just Sophie.
Speaker 1: As we established ahead of this podcast, we do believe
Speaker 1: I have been cursed. So, um, if if you're listening
Speaker 1: and you are the one who did that, how dare you?
Speaker 1: How dare you? And I believe we could probably do
Speaker 1: like a Peter Pan thing where if everyone starts clapping
Speaker 1: and says I believe and Sophie, then that will help
Speaker 1: lift Sophie's curse. If everyone who listens to this does that, yeah,
Speaker 1: please let me know or if you know how to
Speaker 1: lift a curse? Um, you know? Yeah? Thanks Ian as
Speaker 1: our editor and on women wrote our theme music. So
Speaker 1: Sharine Margaret, I want to talk to you today about
Speaker 1: that sacred bond between two people the bond of marriage. No,
Speaker 1: in particular, we're going to talk about the most important
Speaker 1: part of any successful marriage, which is to say, today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about women who have murdered their husbands. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's better, Okay, cool, I'm doubt. I'm doubt. I'm doubt.
Speaker 1: I like that twist. I told Serene that we we
Speaker 1: picked this episode specifically for her, so it would have
Speaker 1: been particularly cruel. Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean the
Speaker 1: context behind that is that I do not like marriage,
Speaker 1: and that's all you need to know. Like, oh great, Well,
Speaker 1: today we are going to talk about a multi generational
Speaker 1: crew of which is roughly we'll call them, which is
Speaker 1: in seventeenth century Rome, who sold poison to anywhere between
Speaker 1: forty six and six women so that those women could
Speaker 1: murder their abuse of husbands during an arrow. And I
Speaker 1: know this is during an arrow where divorced wasn't a
Speaker 1: thing and where women were basically the legal property of men.
Speaker 1: And we're also going to talk about the the real
Speaker 1: and yet also mythical concoction that they came up with
Speaker 1: called aqua to fauna. And along the way, we're going
Speaker 1: o to also talk about skincare routines like bathing in
Speaker 1: the Blood of innocence. I do love skincare. All right, well,
Speaker 1: this is some good stuff for you today. So everyone
Speaker 1: buckle up for the How to Kill Your Husband episode,
Speaker 1: which we're going to call the how to Kill your Husband.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna call it how to Kill your Husband
Speaker 1: and see if we get in trouble. M cool. Cool,
Speaker 1: So first we have to talk about whenever we talk
Speaker 1: about the cool things people did, we have to talk
Speaker 1: about the bad things that they're going against. Right, So
Speaker 1: marriage m hm, the history of marriage in Europe, really
Speaker 1: anywhere that's been controlled by Catholicism or even more importantly, patriarchy.
Speaker 1: But the research I did for this episode was primarily
Speaker 1: about Europe. It's dark as fun, it's so dark. The
Speaker 1: history of marriage is so bad. Italy didn't legalize divorce
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy. What, Yeah, it was way late three
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, No, it feels like thirty years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like yeah, you know what I mean, the
Speaker 1: real ones now, okay, yeah, Spain didn't legalize it until what.
Speaker 1: Ireland didn't legalize marriage until nine six. I was alive
Speaker 1: in both of them. Wait, what was the second one,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm spring Chicken, but that was way to nineties
Speaker 1: six and and the reason for I mean the reason
Speaker 1: for those three is all Catholicism, but but Ireland in particular,
Speaker 1: because they the Catholic Church that is very clever thing
Speaker 1: where they position themselves as like the anti colonial choice
Speaker 1: for the Irish rebels right against that damnable Protestant England.
Speaker 1: And so when Ireland got it's like kind of independence,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church was like, hell, yeah, now you're free
Speaker 1: from England and you can just serve the pope and
Speaker 1: no one's allowed to enjoy sex anymore. Um, and kind
Speaker 1: of instituted a theocracy, which is not what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. But I always want to get that off
Speaker 1: my chest. Yeah, yeah, I I I don't like marriage
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. One of them is that
Speaker 1: it's usually really based in religion and control and it's
Speaker 1: just become this archaic thing we've gotten used to in
Speaker 1: my opinion. But um, that's just my two cents. Because
Speaker 1: also not all of the hashtag all religions, Um, but
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't really believe in anything, but I
Speaker 1: will say that in the Muslim faith, the woman keeps
Speaker 1: her name because she's not necessary, because why would you
Speaker 1: take your name if she's not related to you? Is
Speaker 1: the logic behind that, Like she's not your sister, she's
Speaker 1: not your mom, So she's going to keep her maiden
Speaker 1: name or her just her name, and she can divorce
Speaker 1: anytime she wants. Like it's in the it's in, it's allowed,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm not saying every religion is that way.
Speaker 1: I think it's become. I think the institution of marriage
Speaker 1: itself has become something really out of our control, regardless
Speaker 1: of religion. Yeah, totally. I started trying to look up more,
Speaker 1: you know, like I was looking up divorce in Islam,
Speaker 1: and you know, finding overall a much better history than
Speaker 1: divorce into various Christian faiths. Although ironically, the Puritans, who
Speaker 1: hated sex and all this other ship, they were more
Speaker 1: pro divorce then the Catholics. Maybe hating sex has something
Speaker 1: to do with that, I wonder, Oh yeah, maybe, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh yeah, I get divorced, you can't funk anymore. Totally. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so divorce hard. In a lot of times in places
Speaker 1: and a lot of places, men were allowed to divorce
Speaker 1: their their wives but not vice versa. So like, because
Speaker 1: the woman is property, the man can be like I'm
Speaker 1: done with this property, but the property can't be like
Speaker 1: I'm done with my owner, you know. M hmm makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, so okay, throughout history you've got this
Speaker 1: this ship that says wives of the legal property their husbands.
Speaker 1: In medieval England it was called coverture, which means that
Speaker 1: the wife's legal identity is subsumed by her husband's and
Speaker 1: so an unmarried woman could own property, but a married
Speaker 1: woman couldn't because if once you're married at all goes
Speaker 1: to the husband. Wow, that is backwards as ship, I know.
Speaker 1: So it's like, why the funk would anyone get married?
Speaker 1: And mostly it's because of arranged marriages and being forced to.
Speaker 1: So there wasn't any like benefit. There wasn't the excuse
Speaker 1: of like tax breaks, right like back then, there wasn't
Speaker 1: really like why wouldn't woman get married if she had
Speaker 1: the choice? I you know, everything that I was reading
Speaker 1: just basically had the like you kind of like couldn't.
Speaker 1: It was very hard to Also in many ways it's
Speaker 1: very hard to go through life as an unmarried woman.
Speaker 1: And I think this, I think it does change like
Speaker 1: century to century and like country to country, like exactly
Speaker 1: how free people are kind of in the same way
Speaker 1: that I feel like whenever I read about like historical gayness,
Speaker 1: it's so different. It will be like twenty years of
Speaker 1: awesome on this island and then everyone dies and that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like and I feel like the rights
Speaker 1: of women, um, as best as I can tell, in
Speaker 1: medieval Europe would would fluctuate a lot. But I think
Speaker 1: people were getting married because they're you're like fucking told to. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's just like the path of life that was laid
Speaker 1: out for you. Yeah. And I think you also literally
Speaker 1: don't have a choice in a lot of cases. Um.
Speaker 1: And so so English law does this thing. And there's
Speaker 1: this problem where if English law does this thing, then
Speaker 1: the rest of the fucking world's law does this thing.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know if you knew this shream, but
Speaker 1: England hasn't always stayed on its island, Oh really, has
Speaker 1: it go other places? English people been places they don't belong. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and they showed up as tourists and took
Speaker 1: some pictures and went home and then um, for some
Speaker 1: weird reason, when they showed up as tourists. All the
Speaker 1: other countries swore allegiance to their monarchy and um anyway
Speaker 1: with all colonization and ship their bullshit legal institutions get
Speaker 1: inherited by legal systems all around the world, including the US.
Speaker 1: And in the US all coverture wasn't really challenged until
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and it lingers in legal codes today
Speaker 1: still in various places, but state by state, each state
Speaker 1: slowly got rid of coverture. Louisiana, I'm the stand in
Speaker 1: for the dummies in the room. What is coverture? Oh? Sorry,
Speaker 1: So that's the the idea that the wife's legal identity
Speaker 1: is absumed by the husband. Okay, got it. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a little bit like because the wife
Speaker 1: is the property, but it's a little bit like the
Speaker 1: wife doesn't exist like legally, you know, it kind of disappears. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Louisiana was the last state to get rid of coverture. Nine.
Speaker 1: They finally got rid of it and in the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruled it federally unconstitutional. And I'm currently I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that the current Supreme Court is not listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast at getting any ideas. Yes, I hope not, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Can we add a legal disclaimer that anyone who is
Speaker 1: currently serving on the Supreme Court or who determines what
Speaker 1: cases are heard by the Supreme Court isn't allowed to
Speaker 1: listen to this episode. I think you just did all right.
Speaker 1: If you are listening and you are on the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: you have broken the law and you should report directly
Speaker 1: to jail. Also, most of you fuck off. Yeah. Non
Speaker 1: English conquered areas also managed to have similar ship because
Speaker 1: of other like kind of internal colonization of Europe. You
Speaker 1: have the Napoleonic Code which spread throughout Europe, which may
Speaker 1: women the property of husbands as it went. Ironically, the
Speaker 1: Napoleonic Code, I think also like spread legalization of homosexuality,
Speaker 1: but it also spread anyway, makes bag double edged. French
Speaker 1: women didn't get the right to work outside the home
Speaker 1: without their husband's permission until nineteen wow, famously liberal or
Speaker 1: I guess famously neutral. Switzerland didn't offer marriage equality until
Speaker 1: with like a super narrow vote that is unsettling. I know,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like fifty three or fifty
Speaker 1: six percent of the population was like, yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: make women equal in marriage. Yeah, we're always just like, oh,
Speaker 1: that place is fine, they're neutral, nothing bad happens over there.
Speaker 1: They make pocket knives, yeah, exactly, and hide all the money. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: So in the US, women didn't have the right to
Speaker 1: open credit card accounts, or rather, they could be denied
Speaker 1: open credit card accounts if they don't have their husband's
Speaker 1: permission or whatever until guess what year I mean at
Speaker 1: this point Okay, well, well it was actually I kind
Speaker 1: of set you up. I was really thinking the worst
Speaker 1: of humanity, which is fine usually usually that's true. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In n seventy four, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prevents
Speaker 1: creditors from discriminating against people based on race, sex, or
Speaker 1: marital status. And even then, the thing about sex and
Speaker 1: marital status was literally slipped into the bill at the
Speaker 1: last minute. There was a congress person named Lyndy Boggs
Speaker 1: who hand wrote it onto the bill and made photo
Speaker 1: copies to pass out and was like, oh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: this was just an oversight that you made this Credit
Speaker 1: Opportunity Act and didn't include women in marital status in it, right,
Speaker 1: And they were like okay, fine, and they passed the bill. Wow.
Speaker 1: Interesting critical support for someone I know nothing else about
Speaker 1: bog BLUs. So most of the past thousand years or
Speaker 1: so Western women again, at least Western women. That's what
Speaker 1: I've looked at in the context of this particular episode
Speaker 1: ship run of It. When it comes to marriage, there's
Speaker 1: this essay that I think you Sharene would like. It's
Speaker 1: from nineteen o seven and it's by Voltering Declaire, and
Speaker 1: it's called those who marry do ill Oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds sick. Yeah, And it was a response to there
Speaker 1: was like this like debate and someone else presented those
Speaker 1: who marry do Well, and so she was like, Nah,
Speaker 1: those who marry do ill well Epic seven. That's that's
Speaker 1: a good Who's it by Vulturing Declare one Future Friend
Speaker 1: of the Pod Vulturing Declaire. She wants um. She's like
Speaker 1: against the prison system, and so when someone tries to
Speaker 1: assassinate her, she like doesn't call the cops on him
Speaker 1: even though he shot her, and then like gets handled
Speaker 1: in other ways and all this ship Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think he disappears or anything. Anyway. I don't know enough
Speaker 1: about that story yet because I haven't researched that episode yet.
Speaker 1: But Future Friend of the Yeah, that's a little crumb
Speaker 1: for later. Okay, And so if you know this show,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's a bad set of laws and
Speaker 1: social practices, there are people fighting against it. And how
Speaker 1: do you think people fought against marriage shrine when divorce
Speaker 1: wasn't an option assuming they're already married or like, I mean,
Speaker 1: the only logical like solution seems like they would have
Speaker 1: to kill their husbands. Yeah, poison. Poison is a really
Speaker 1: um women solve the problem of marriage with poison. Hell yeah. So,
Speaker 1: but like, honestly, like really think about it. What was
Speaker 1: the choice? There wasn't like not all murder. Actually I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say that, but I think, uh, when you push
Speaker 1: people against the wall, this isn't in context of so
Speaker 1: many things, so many things, but people will do things
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't normally do. Uh, And everyone's capable of
Speaker 1: the same amount of things. You know, no one's like
Speaker 1: born unless it's like actually like a chemical thing. But
Speaker 1: I think anything that you see someone do and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you can also do that because you're
Speaker 1: like you're the same species and you have the capability
Speaker 1: of like, in my opinion, anything can push you to
Speaker 1: the edge. Yeah, you know, so my point is I
Speaker 1: support this kind of murder. Yeah, and that's all I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say. I mean, I I am putting them on
Speaker 1: my show, cool people who did cool stuff. So no,
Speaker 1: but that that makes a lot of sense. And even
Speaker 1: that point about anyone can do any of these things
Speaker 1: is worth thinking about also from the other point of
Speaker 1: view of like, you know, when when we do episodes
Speaker 1: that are about like people who like organized and did
Speaker 1: all this crazy ship that is a little bit more
Speaker 1: above boord and a little bit less murder. Um, that's
Speaker 1: stuff we can do, you know, And I like, I
Speaker 1: do a history podcast not to be like all the
Speaker 1: cool people are dead and everyone to listen as this sucks,
Speaker 1: you know. But like I mean, it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to remember that even like I just said it out loud,
Speaker 1: like soundly, like I really believe that I was saying.
Speaker 1: But it's hard for me to believe that like real
Speaker 1: change can happen because you hear about all these revolutionaries
Speaker 1: and you hear about people that were like fighting in
Speaker 1: a much more impressive time, and you're like, wow, those
Speaker 1: are badasses, and you forget that you can do the
Speaker 1: same thing. Um, I forget anyway for myself because I
Speaker 1: think we get a little bit complacent. And also I
Speaker 1: think like history in general makes things seem really romantic
Speaker 1: and like far away. So yeah, I think reminding ourselves
Speaker 1: that we are just as capable, if not more so,
Speaker 1: if we wanted to be. But it's just about wanting
Speaker 1: to be, and it's about executing executing that want, executing
Speaker 1: something something. Wow, I did not even set that up. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: and it's such a I don't know. That's an important point.
Speaker 1: And and I will say the institution of marriage is
Speaker 1: still not inherently great, but is a different structure than
Speaker 1: it was before, and divorce is available to more people.
Speaker 1: Um So I'm not advocating. I'm just describing what people
Speaker 1: who had their backs up against the wall I chose
Speaker 1: to do. So. Medieval Italy had this reputation that may
Speaker 1: or may not have been deserved, of being fucking obsessed
Speaker 1: with poison. Supposedly, Medieval and Renaissance Italy had in whole
Speaker 1: poison factories. The authorities were like constantly testing poison and
Speaker 1: antidotes on prisoners and animals. Italian perfumers had side gigs
Speaker 1: making poison. Wait, so what was this? What was most
Speaker 1: of this poison comprised of like was there like a
Speaker 1: hot one. Yeah. Well, we'll actually talk about a lot
Speaker 1: of what people used to poison people in detail on
Speaker 1: this episode. Um, but the big new poison on the
Speaker 1: scene for most of what we're talking about is Arsenic Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I was I was gonna say that. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, smart suggestion, but I'm glad in my
Speaker 1: mind was on the in the right trap. Yeah, yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 1: And so Italians had this reputation of being these master poisoners,
Speaker 1: and so they would get hired by courts all over
Speaker 1: Europe to be like, oh, we need a court poison er,
Speaker 1: come on over, or like at one point supposedly, and
Speaker 1: but all of this is wrapped up in myth right,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that some too, But supposedly at
Speaker 1: one point, like you know, some monarch is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need fifty poisoners to win this war for me
Speaker 1: by going and poisoning all the wells over you know,
Speaker 1: enemy land or whatever. That's crazy. One English guy wrote
Speaker 1: at the time, the Italians, above all other nations most
Speaker 1: practiced revenge by treasons and are especially and especially are
Speaker 1: skillful in making and giving poisons. Um, and so it's
Speaker 1: kind of this like oh those sketchy Italians, right, but
Speaker 1: you know whatever, that's so interesting. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it kind of it makes sense. Like I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there are movies or whatever, all the stories you hear
Speaker 1: about that time. There is a lot of poison involved.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like assassinations involving poison or like whatever,
Speaker 1: and so I guess I for I forget that that
Speaker 1: that's like an actual thing that makes sense, yeah, because
Speaker 1: it seems like like a like a wizard spell or yeah, totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dragon came or the court poison or slipped their
Speaker 1: ring open and poison the king drank the wine and
Speaker 1: then fell over and whatever. Yeah. Oh no, And I
Speaker 1: actually didn't write this in the script, but the kings
Speaker 1: and ship were fucking obsessed and paranoid where they would
Speaker 1: have like food testers, and the food testers would like
Speaker 1: like the kings ate ship because like the food tester
Speaker 1: would come and eat a little bit of everything, but
Speaker 1: sometimes we just stir it all up to other and
Speaker 1: like and so the food by the time it is
Speaker 1: ready for the king to eat is like cold and
Speaker 1: like take like just destroyed and also strong flavors would
Speaker 1: mask the scent and taste of poison, so they would
Speaker 1: avoid the like strong flavors. And their concept of strong
Speaker 1: flavors was like onions and garlic. Maybe not explains English cuisine.
Speaker 1: I know, That's what I was trying to figure out.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a direct link, but it seems because
Speaker 1: it's like, well, we don't know about those. But then
Speaker 1: I'm like, but I bet the peasants, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: already like turnips and ship, right, so the peasants are
Speaker 1: probably eating some spicy ship. Yeah, I mean the solution
Speaker 1: to that, Mr King's whoever you are, is to make
Speaker 1: your own fucking food, totally. Yeah, And and they would
Speaker 1: like eat alone, and then they would like, like one king,
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one because again it didn't make
Speaker 1: it in the script, he would like wet all of
Speaker 1: his napkins and have his like testers lick the napkins,
Speaker 1: and so the like the fucking handkership is cleaning his
Speaker 1: face with or whatever is like wet and covered in
Speaker 1: someone else's spittle. Well, why in case there's poison on
Speaker 1: doesn't happen? Oh my gosh, that's a little bit too far.
Speaker 1: And the best part is none of it worked, because
Speaker 1: these these poisons don't take five minutes to show up.
Speaker 1: They take take a couple of hours at least, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so poison times, ye oldie poison times. But a lot
Speaker 1: of it was fake. But there was like everyone was
Speaker 1: like freaked out about it, and it's hard to tell
Speaker 1: how much was real or not. One Italian poison of
Speaker 1: note was used by the Borgia family to murder a
Speaker 1: ton of political folks like bishops and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And it was cantarella or thought and it might have
Speaker 1: been copper arsenic and phosphorus prepared in the decaying carcass
Speaker 1: of a hog. Because what's cool, And we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to more of this. This is the time when science
Speaker 1: and magic are just fucking science and magic are just
Speaker 1: in bed, just fucking I I appreciate that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say that sounds kind of witchy. Yeah, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why I think that's a
Speaker 1: lot of this is exaggerated. There's so many things to say. Yes,
Speaker 1: Italy was obsessed with poison, there's all these poisons, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. But then like for example, Palmero,
Speaker 1: Paul Armo, Palmaro. You'd think I would have spelled it
Speaker 1: right when I wrote it down into my script. The
Speaker 1: town in Sicily that a lot of this story takes
Speaker 1: place in it only had over like a three hundred
Speaker 1: year period, there was only seven executions for poison. So, like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of this is this sort of
Speaker 1: moral panic where basically anytime anyone important dies, people like
Speaker 1: it was poison. You know, Yeah, they've just like perpetuated
Speaker 1: this like fearful rumor, I mean more than it probably was. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like what we do now, So it checks out.
Speaker 1: But people definitely fucked with poison. Killing people never goes
Speaker 1: out of style. Poison has always also been a weapon
Speaker 1: of those who don't have access to more direct means
Speaker 1: of violence, which is to say, a woman's weapon again
Speaker 1: or has it been? Who knows? Because women kill people, right,
Speaker 1: Obviously we're gonna talk about some women who absolutely kill
Speaker 1: some people. Um, but patriarchal society condemns women in what
Speaker 1: amounts to which trials over and over again. Also, and
Speaker 1: everyone loves a good moral panic. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the killing we're going to talk about this week of
Speaker 1: women and by women was actually about robbing property, and
Speaker 1: so I want to talk I'm gonna go on this
Speaker 1: like little side quest before we get back to the
Speaker 1: main question. I really excited about side quest. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about Countess Elizabeth but Torri, which I always
Speaker 1: thought was pronounced Bathory. Have you ever heard of this person?
Speaker 1: Just that not I have not heard of the tor Okay,
Speaker 1: So so this just to be clear listeners. Also, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a content warning than usual
Speaker 1: on this episode because I'm not going to linger on
Speaker 1: anything in graphic detail. But there's some torture and murder
Speaker 1: and sexual assault and ship in this week's topic. It's
Speaker 1: very medieval, and I'm sort of making a pun but
Speaker 1: also realizing that's just where the fucking word medieval, meaning
Speaker 1: torture and ship comes from. Guess that's yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: that's the root meaning of that word. Yeah. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the story goes there was this woman, Countess Elizabeth Pattory,
Speaker 1: the Blood Countess, the alleged inspiration for Dracula. She's been
Speaker 1: claimed to be the most successful serial killer in history,
Speaker 1: with upwards of six fifty bodies. And I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: um I'm going to tell the most commonly heard version first.
Speaker 1: But first before we do that, I want to know
Speaker 1: so normally we're sponsored by very positive things. Um. I
Speaker 1: think this time we're sponsored by Arsenic. But I'm wondering, um, uh, Sharine,
Speaker 1: if you have anyone that you would like this show
Speaker 1: to be sponsored by something that's just like a pure,
Speaker 1: unadulterated positive thing for the world, like potatoes or arsenic,
Speaker 1: a positive thing for the world. Uh. I mean I
Speaker 1: need more of this. Uh. This is sponsored by my
Speaker 1: will to live because it's running out and I need more.
Speaker 1: So if I can buy some, that'd be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you purchase the products and services that we advertise,
Speaker 1: you will have more will to live. That is the
Speaker 1: promise and trap of consumer capitalism. Here's some ads, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the commonly heard version of that. Tori. She was
Speaker 1: born in fifteen sixty royalty in the Kingdom of Hungary.
Speaker 1: She wasn't born in Transylvania, but which was a region
Speaker 1: and Hungry at the time now Romania. But her uncle
Speaker 1: was in charge of Transylvania and she was She was
Speaker 1: an epileptic child, or what got called at the time
Speaker 1: the more metal name falling sickness and how do you
Speaker 1: treat falling sickness? Well, Sharine, you should try rubbing the
Speaker 1: blood of someone without falling sickness on your lips or
Speaker 1: just drink that mixed up with powdered skull. Oh, I
Speaker 1: mean they do do that like plasma facial these days,
Speaker 1: the vampire facial where they like literally take plasma out
Speaker 1: of you and put your your face. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to like do wonders for keeping you young
Speaker 1: forever and like skin rejuvenation. So it sounds like she
Speaker 1: was onto something then. But Torre is definitely ahead of
Speaker 1: her time because we're going to get to even more
Speaker 1: of her skin care rotine. Hell, yeah, she probably looked
Speaker 1: so good. So her family was in bread as hell
Speaker 1: because their royalty and falling sickness and insanity ran in
Speaker 1: her family. Again, this is the sort of legend version
Speaker 1: of all this. Her family raised her up to be cruel,
Speaker 1: as rulers were at the time, so she grew up
Speaker 1: watching brutal torture and executions at the hands of her family.
Speaker 1: She watched one Roma woman who was accused of stealing
Speaker 1: and selling children into slavery, which was almost certainly like
Speaker 1: a racist attack on the Roma woman, because Roma people
Speaker 1: get accused of that kind of ship. This woman was
Speaker 1: sewn into a horse's stomach. Yeah we alive, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Not for that long though. Mm hmmm yeah,
Speaker 1: m I'm sorry. There's going to be some yep. The
Speaker 1: medieval ship. She watched her own cousin cut out the
Speaker 1: ears and noses off rebellious peasants. Mm hmm. Now I
Speaker 1: feel bad. I feel like I've done a bastards. No,
Speaker 1: you have not notice. Notice how I'm not flinching so
Speaker 1: used to the sewing of the inside of the horse.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that, and if I have, I blocked
Speaker 1: it out my memory. That is that is sick. There
Speaker 1: are numerous types of torture and execution in this episode
Speaker 1: that I had never heard of, and I have been
Speaker 1: reading fantasy books since before I knew how to read.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that worked, but I was probably
Speaker 1: doing it. Her family was Calvinist on paper her, but
Speaker 1: they practiced Satanism and witchcraft at home. She spoke Hungarian, Slovak, Greek, Latin,
Speaker 1: and German, and was one of the most educated people,
Speaker 1: let alone women, of her era. When she was thirteen,
Speaker 1: she bore her first child, who was fathered by a
Speaker 1: peasant boy. The child was whisked away and never seen again,
Speaker 1: and the peasant boy was castrated for having dared. And
Speaker 1: then the same year she was married off to a
Speaker 1: baron named friend Dadsi, who was about five years older
Speaker 1: than her and was from a family that supposedly wasn't
Speaker 1: all fucked up like the Batteries. And this joined like
Speaker 1: two of the most powerful families in the country, right,
Speaker 1: because women don't have any fucking choice and they're married,
Speaker 1: especially if you're fucking royalty and your Yeah, totally, she
Speaker 1: did get given a castle that she didn't even have
Speaker 1: to live in. She had a different castle to live in.
Speaker 1: She got like her own extra castle and seventeen villages
Speaker 1: to own, because feudalism is fucking weird. Her husband was
Speaker 1: a noble on a soul journey, was always away from home,
Speaker 1: which I think probably suited her just fine. They didn't
Speaker 1: conceive their first child until they've been married for like
Speaker 1: ten years. He fought mainly against the Ottomans, because I
Speaker 1: think everyone who was an Ottoman was fighting against the
Speaker 1: Ottomans at that point, and he was a brutally effective
Speaker 1: leader and a monster to his prisoners. He would impale
Speaker 1: them for fun. The Black Knight of Hungary, leader of
Speaker 1: the Hungarian troops. And yeah, it's pretty cool. I can't
Speaker 1: deny that it's kind of metal. I know. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this whole there's multiple metal bands that I mean. One
Speaker 1: of them is just called Bathory or maybe but Tory.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's pronounced correctly. I'm not sure. He teaches his
Speaker 1: wife even more cruelty. At one point, he punishes a
Speaker 1: girl by smearing her with honey so insects bite her.
Speaker 1: He has this whole game called kicking the Stars. I
Speaker 1: don't understand this game. To quote Alexandra Bartoswitz is right
Speaker 1: up of this legend. It consisted of putting a piece
Speaker 1: of oil soaked paper between the fingers of a disobedient
Speaker 1: servant and setting it on fire. What was it, king
Speaker 1: called kicking the stars? I don't know. If it was
Speaker 1: between the toes, it would make a little bit more sense.
Speaker 1: That sounds way more pleasant than it is. I don't
Speaker 1: know totally. Hey kid, you want to play kicks in
Speaker 1: the stars. Yeah, it's where I sent some stuff on
Speaker 1: fire in your hand. That's interesting and strange. I never
Speaker 1: heard of that from the same I know, from the
Speaker 1: same source. He also presented Elizabeth with a pair of
Speaker 1: gloves that ended in claws, which she used to punish
Speaker 1: her servants, the original Wolverine and Dracula. Well, she really
Speaker 1: had had had layers absolutely like like Shrek. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: also just like a side note that I haven't forgotten
Speaker 1: since you said it. I forget that Transylvania was a
Speaker 1: real place, and I know there are people out there
Speaker 1: that do the same thing. So that's already wild to me,
Speaker 1: Like it's already set in this fantasy reality time. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: I have a friend of mine gave me a necklace
Speaker 1: that's a little vial of dirt from Transylvania. That's cool,
Speaker 1: that's okay. And so meanwhile, while her brave and cruel
Speaker 1: husband is off at war, Lizzie Bettore is at home
Speaker 1: and she's getting into the evil ship all of her own. Now.
Speaker 1: She's making potions and casting spells and fucking people, even women.
Speaker 1: She travels around and has lesbian orgies. She invites witches
Speaker 1: and wizards to court. She keeps a guy who looks
Speaker 1: like a vampire around. He's pale and has sharp teeth
Speaker 1: and wears all black, and she gets the name the
Speaker 1: Beast of Setcha, which is the name of her castle.
Speaker 1: It was. I mean, this is definitely not something you
Speaker 1: need to know, But when did the vampire myths start? Like,
Speaker 1: when when did that being first get introduced into lore?
Speaker 1: I wonder. I used to know the answer to this
Speaker 1: better I got. I fell into a vampire rabbit hole
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, I want to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: historically versions of it have kind of existed forever. It's
Speaker 1: kind of from the like we thought someone was dead,
Speaker 1: so we buried them, but they weren't dead, so then
Speaker 1: they came back and it scared us, right. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's around this time period that you start getting more
Speaker 1: and more folkloric vampires, and they're kind of interesting. In
Speaker 1: the old vampire stories, some of them are like, um, aristocrats,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of this like fear of the aristocratic,
Speaker 1: but then some of them are also like all kinds
Speaker 1: of other ship. I should do a vampire episode at
Speaker 1: some point when I actually know the off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, you're atively sucking the blood of the people. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Um,
Speaker 1: like staying young forever by you know. Um, and so
Speaker 1: by her mid twenties, again, supposedly, she's torturing people, mostly
Speaker 1: peasant women in her castle because you see, Sharine, have
Speaker 1: you ever had a migraine? Yeah? Yeah, they suck. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well what if I told you that nothing cures a
Speaker 1: migraine like the screams of your victims? Mm hmm I do.
Speaker 1: I am pausing for a moment of thought. Um oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be hard to turn down if it was really
Speaker 1: bad migraine. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, fair enough. So
Speaker 1: so she starts torturing people to cure her migraines. And
Speaker 1: that's that's that's what she believed, Like my my, that
Speaker 1: is if my victim screaming. Yes, this is what the
Speaker 1: legend about her has right, right right, allegedly all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's doing all kinds of ship according to this
Speaker 1: legend that I'm not going to get into details about.
Speaker 1: By the time she's forty one, she's got a which
Speaker 1: best friend who moves in with her. Um just a
Speaker 1: gal pal named Anna Darvoulia, who is described as a
Speaker 1: wild beast in a female body, which is objectively cool.
Speaker 1: So with Anna around, but Torre gets crueler and starts
Speaker 1: killing her victims. She claims that there's a aller outbreak,
Speaker 1: and that excuses all the dead people, including now the
Speaker 1: daughters of the gentry who have come to learn manners
Speaker 1: at her court. So she's like, oh, send your daughters
Speaker 1: to learn manners. They will live as prey in my
Speaker 1: castle and I will hunt them. She probably leaves that
Speaker 1: part out of the letters Interesting and most Famous, so
Speaker 1: she's not just killing peasants at that point the right
Speaker 1: she moves on to the royalty or the gentry. Most famously,
Speaker 1: she's known to bathe in their her victim's blood to
Speaker 1: stay young forever, which is why it's a shame it's
Speaker 1: pronounce batory instead of bathroing um. Supposedly she put other
Speaker 1: girls and women into iron maidens with drains at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the iron maiden and like attached it to
Speaker 1: a chain that swings above her takes showers and blood
Speaker 1: h and I know. And the way that she learned
Speaker 1: that blood is good skincare, much like century has learned
Speaker 1: that blood is good skincare, is that whenever maids would
Speaker 1: suck up while doing her hair for she would massacre
Speaker 1: them and noticed that their blood was good for her skin,
Speaker 1: but the blood of aristocrats works better. So I would
Speaker 1: say that basically, the blood of billionaires will keep you
Speaker 1: young forever. I would say that as a fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In case anyone's wondering, is this is this where the
Speaker 1: problematic vampire facial thing comes from? I was, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that. I don't know, there's no way this
Speaker 1: is how it started. Maybe, but like the the modern
Speaker 1: version of that is definitely interesting to think about because
Speaker 1: a lot of people dismissed it, but apparently it's actually
Speaker 1: a very um it works like because I mean what
Speaker 1: what the first thing you have to do is though,
Speaker 1: is like you have to like micro needle your skin,
Speaker 1: so you're you're you're wounding your skin and then the
Speaker 1: blood over it your your face is apparently like the
Speaker 1: act of your face healing the wound and like generating
Speaker 1: new skin. That's what it used. It used to be.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it was um. Where there was
Speaker 1: primarily the issues is they were using not your own blood.
Speaker 1: That was the thing. I didn't do that. That was
Speaker 1: a thing. Um, But I can't create market for blood.
Speaker 1: Where does the blood come from? Great question? And there
Speaker 1: was all kinds of you know, as you can imagine
Speaker 1: health and sanitary issues there. Um that is that is bad.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, no, but what I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, which is you know, he or like
Speaker 1: it's and it's done by like board certified like dermatologists.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's like. But no, this other thing,
Speaker 1: you just can't create a market for blood, that's the
Speaker 1: bad thing. Yeah, yeah, I did not realize that, but
Speaker 1: um that yeah, it was in fact a thing. I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering if this is the original source of it.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like which would be kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And what Margaret saying is you're remperencing something from pop
Speaker 1: culture Sharena and Sophie. I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Yes, that is what's happening, fair enough, Um,
Speaker 1: please continue. Yeah, but I mean, you know, sixteenth and
Speaker 1: seventeenth century vampires. I have a little bit more knowledge about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank god, I will say I I if I had
Speaker 1: the money. I don't think I'm above the real, like
Speaker 1: the actual version of the PRP plasma facial thing, because
Speaker 1: collagen your body can't create college and once it's gone,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna get more hollow and sad. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with the hollow and sad. But but the thing is,
Speaker 1: if something works, regardless of how weird it is, you
Speaker 1: will do it. And I think this lady is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing, you know, like it's working for her,
Speaker 1: and so she's gonna keep doing it fair enough and sick.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and so yeah, so she she doing this
Speaker 1: bathing of blood, and she also keeps girls as prey
Speaker 1: in her castle to be hunted at a whim. Why girls?
Speaker 1: Why just girls? I'm not sure be easier to get Probably,
Speaker 1: so I actually I do have an answer that will
Speaker 1: come in the second half of when I'm talking about her,
Speaker 1: when I when I say what the actual story is,
Speaker 1: and I think that all In sixteen o four, her husband,
Speaker 1: the Black Knight, is off at war again and he's
Speaker 1: forty eight years old, and he either gets slain in
Speaker 1: battle or gets poisoned by his wife, depending on the
Speaker 1: story you read. And with him dead, suddenly his widow
Speaker 1: inherits everything, and rumors are spreading about what's happening in
Speaker 1: the castle at this point, and the king sends his guy.
Speaker 1: His Palatine is the name of the title, basically the
Speaker 1: hand of the King I can make a pop culture
Speaker 1: reference that just has to be about two shows about
Speaker 1: people with swords. The Hand of the King goes to
Speaker 1: go investigate over three witnesses to torture and murder come forward.
Speaker 1: They're exhuming all these bodies and shipped from graveyards to
Speaker 1: find all of the torture. They find other bodies and
Speaker 1: the tunnels under the castle. So on December six ten,
Speaker 1: the Hand of the King goes personally to her castle
Speaker 1: and arrests her and four of her servants accomplices. When
Speaker 1: they arrived, she's covered in blood over the corpse of
Speaker 1: a mutilated girl with another living as prey in the castle.
Speaker 1: And when they searched her castle, they find her journal
Speaker 1: detailing the deaths of six hundred and fifty people. She
Speaker 1: kept a diary about all this. Again, well anything like
Speaker 1: no DNA nothing, you're writing how many people you've killed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I have a question. Sorry, it's okathi about the answer.
Speaker 1: What was the gender of the kid that they had together?
Speaker 1: Was it a boy or a girl? And I don't know?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, you said that they oh they did.
Speaker 1: I think she ended up having like ten of his
Speaker 1: kids in the end. But like I don't remember how
Speaker 1: many of them are vibed. All of these stories are like,
Speaker 1: and then they had seven children, three of whom survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood. I guess my question is, like, would normally
Speaker 1: the air get everything versus the queen. I oh, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting point. I don't know how the inheritance was
Speaker 1: working in this particular setup. I do know that she
Speaker 1: inherited everything from her dead husband. That's pretty I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a cool point to think about, because it's a
Speaker 1: pretty sick deal. Yeah. And it might have been because
Speaker 1: she wasn't a ruler. I mean, she was a ruler,
Speaker 1: you know, not high up, right, or she was high up,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't the fucking queen of Hungary ever. Right.
Speaker 1: So they all get arrested, The accomplices confess, and three
Speaker 1: of them are executed, one is given life in prison,
Speaker 1: and the countess gets convicted of vampiresm sorcery, paganism, and
Speaker 1: it's bricked up in a room in her own castle
Speaker 1: and lived out the rest of her days. And the
Speaker 1: blood Countess was defeated. Wow. Except basically none of that's
Speaker 1: sucking true. Oh, which is like, I know, I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit like I mean she was. She's a terrible
Speaker 1: person if that was true. If that was true, she's
Speaker 1: like a disgusting torturer, serial killer person that had great skid.
Speaker 1: But yeah, interesting. But I find I found a bunch
Speaker 1: of things in this when i'm when I'm finding this
Speaker 1: kind of history where they'll be like a woman who
Speaker 1: is like attacked as this horrible witch or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: and then it'll be like, oh, actually, all that's lies,
Speaker 1: and so then people will be like, actually, she was
Speaker 1: perfectly fine and normal and everything was fine, and she
Speaker 1: was upstanding, and then you go like one step further
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, no, she was really interesting and
Speaker 1: cool in a different way than being a vampire. Okay,
Speaker 1: i'm I'm I'm in. You've hooked me. So. She was
Speaker 1: raised Calvinist, She had falling sickness, she might have been
Speaker 1: treated with blood. She probably witnessed cruelty at the hands
Speaker 1: of her parents. The sewing the woman into the stomach
Speaker 1: of a horse thing it was probably didn't happen, not
Speaker 1: because they didn't do that, but because they did that too.
Speaker 1: They didn't do it to peasants, because a peasant's life
Speaker 1: isn't worth killing a horse for, because a peasant is
Speaker 1: worth less than a horse, so she probably did see
Speaker 1: someone get sewn into a stop horse of whatever stomach
Speaker 1: of a horse. H She certainly married the Black Knight,
Speaker 1: who absolutely was the Black Knight and a cruel, fucking
Speaker 1: terrible person. He likely didn't die valiantly in battle. It's
Speaker 1: also really unlikely that she poisoned him, although I would
Speaker 1: not rule it out. He'd been mysteriously sick for several
Speaker 1: years before he died, and actually had been unable to
Speaker 1: walk the last several years of his life. It was
Speaker 1: likely that he had poisoned himself with the treatment he
Speaker 1: was taking for venereal disease, but some of those same
Speaker 1: treatments were used in popular poisons around that same time,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. She might have been trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of her cruel husband. That's the head canon
Speaker 1: for me, is that she did poison him and he
Speaker 1: deserved it. But the investigation into be tory about want
Speaker 1: and murder and witchcraft. It started at the same time
Speaker 1: as her husband started getting sick, because is when they
Speaker 1: knew that she was going to inherit his wealth um
Speaker 1: and most importantly, the king owed them a funck ton
Speaker 1: of money, and that debt was canceled when she was convicted. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so the whole trial was almost certainly just about money
Speaker 1: and power. And then later the folkloric demonization of this
Speaker 1: Hungarian aristocrat was useful for Slovak nationalism, So so it
Speaker 1: became a useful folklore. Right when she was arrested, she
Speaker 1: was eating dinner and not probably covered in blood. Um.
Speaker 1: The evidence of her journal was that a servant claimed
Speaker 1: to have talked to an investigator who saw the journal,
Speaker 1: but the journal was never entered into um evidence during
Speaker 1: the trial, so it didn't exist. Her three accomplices did
Speaker 1: confess to doing all those things while they were having
Speaker 1: their fingers ripped off with red hot pinchers and being
Speaker 1: burned alive. One who was I think would say, little person,
Speaker 1: he got off lucky and he was just beheaded. Um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't quick. And they never acted as witnesses in court.
Speaker 1: They just had their confessions before they were tortured to death. Wait,
Speaker 1: so you're saying the killing of the the young girls
Speaker 1: to stay a young thing was true? No, No, so
Speaker 1: they didn't know. They didn't kill anyone as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell. No, So they only confess under torture
Speaker 1: the deal. Yea, and huh interesting. She was never bricked
Speaker 1: into her castle. She was just put under house arrest
Speaker 1: um despite theoretically having like personally murdered more people than
Speaker 1: anyone before since it ever personally murdered. And they just
Speaker 1: were like, whatever, you have to stay in your castle
Speaker 1: because we successfully robbed you. It would also take about
Speaker 1: thirty people's blood to fill a bath, and the detail
Speaker 1: about the blood baths was added to the folklore a
Speaker 1: hundred years after her death. There were probably no lesbian orgies,
Speaker 1: which is the saddest part for report. And she actually
Speaker 1: so she real yes, and I believe in the gal
Speaker 1: pal being gal pals m because and she wasn't accused
Speaker 1: of witchcraft or satanism in court, just the murders. All
Speaker 1: the witchcraft was added later. The Iron Maiden never really
Speaker 1: existed in Europe. Uh, it's an invention. Like the concept
Speaker 1: of the Iron Maiden is like, so we the Victorians
Speaker 1: were like kind of being like it was like a
Speaker 1: Victorian like con artist was like, look at this murder
Speaker 1: thing that the medieval people had pay me a dollar
Speaker 1: to go look at it or whatever. Damn that guy
Speaker 1: really grifted, I know, you know, speaking of more metal
Speaker 1: bands that came out of this um and you know,
Speaker 1: an iron maiden For anyone listening who doesn't listen to
Speaker 1: Iron Maiden, it's an upright human shaped coffin with metal
Speaker 1: spikes that you put the person in your close in
Speaker 1: and they die, right. But it is true that they
Speaker 1: would soep people up into the stomach of horses. Um,
Speaker 1: so maybe they did have spiky boxes. It wouldn't surprise
Speaker 1: me if they had spikey boxes. You know, they also
Speaker 1: had things close to iron maidens. They would like put
Speaker 1: you in like kind of a barrel with spikes, but
Speaker 1: you the spikes don't puncture you unless you move, so
Speaker 1: it's so like, hey, don't move kind of bullshit. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were rolling down a fucking hill, that sounds
Speaker 1: worse than just a quick little snap of the iron maiden,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's true, that's true. And
Speaker 1: where did have an iron maiden was ninth century bag Dad.
Speaker 1: The vizier Ibn al Zayatt made a wooden chest full
Speaker 1: of spikes and would like throw people in it, but
Speaker 1: live by the wooden chest full of spikes, died by
Speaker 1: the wooden chest full of spikes in ety seven, he
Speaker 1: got thrown into his own box and killed. Wow, karma,
Speaker 1: I guess that's what you would call that. But what
Speaker 1: but Tor was is really fucking interesting. She was a
Speaker 1: healer and her accomplices basically were witches. They were midwives
Speaker 1: and healers that she hired and her her She turned
Speaker 1: her castle into a place that taught women in natomy
Speaker 1: and medicine, which of course was all of medieval as
Speaker 1: hell and involved blood letting and like burning people's wounds
Speaker 1: with hot irons and ship um. The like red handed
Speaker 1: that she got caught was well, actually, before I tell
Speaker 1: you that, you know who else will heal you and
Speaker 1: heal your soul and give you the will to live.
Speaker 1: Everything that comes after which we have personally that we
Speaker 1: have not personally bet it the ads that are coming
Speaker 1: after a randomly generated and we are back from those
Speaker 1: ads that we all personally endorse in love because everyone
Speaker 1: who participates in capitalism appreciates their own role in the
Speaker 1: perpetuation of a society that's destroying the entire globe. Yep, okay,
Speaker 1: where were we handed? She was caught red handed, So
Speaker 1: she was caught red handed, which was because yeah, she
Speaker 1: was there. She was in the middle of like I mean,
Speaker 1: she was a mile of eating dinner. But there was
Speaker 1: someone there who was being treated, a young local woman
Speaker 1: who had been attacked by a wild animal and so
Speaker 1: had like been taken to the castle where you know,
Speaker 1: the weird ass countess with all of her like weird
Speaker 1: ass probably lesbian, which friends would heal you up. And
Speaker 1: so that was where like the dead bodies and stuff
Speaker 1: would come from that, and like there were all of
Speaker 1: these you know, disease outbreaks happening at the time. I
Speaker 1: was killing a lot of people. But interesting, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a really unfortunate twist or like way to change
Speaker 1: that story. You know, like she was just because before
Speaker 1: you said, but you described her as very smart, like
Speaker 1: knowing all these languages and like all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: so it makes sense that she would be interested in
Speaker 1: like their version of medicine back then. That's that's a
Speaker 1: I mean, not surprised that I got twisted that way,
Speaker 1: but it's unfortunate and it's just like such a classic
Speaker 1: way that like I mean it all has to do
Speaker 1: with witch hunts and not serial murder, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And also just like that stereotype of like I guess
Speaker 1: it's like a witchy stereotype, like an older like someone
Speaker 1: uh like sucking the life out of a young person
Speaker 1: to stay young because that's what they because like it's
Speaker 1: vanity and like whatever. So in this case it was literal.
Speaker 1: But I mean you can say that about a lot
Speaker 1: of I don't know, shitty people. Yeah, but in my
Speaker 1: head canon version, they're doing blood letting and they're using
Speaker 1: leeches and showing people why not use some of that
Speaker 1: blood for your own skin? So I mean he said
Speaker 1: that when she was younger, her epilepsy was treated that way.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's above that. I think it's especially
Speaker 1: with these vampire facials. I'm calling them that because that's
Speaker 1: essentially what they are. There's blood, but they work apparently,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I don't think she would have had
Speaker 1: to gone gone out of her way if that, if
Speaker 1: she was already doing healing and stuff anyway, like blood living,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean totally yeah, exactly yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, because like people want to be like,
Speaker 1: ah ha, she was actually perfect, right, Like she's still
Speaker 1: like in my head she still might have murdered her husband,
Speaker 1: who might have probably had it coming, you know, and
Speaker 1: she's still like I don't know, like it, like we
Speaker 1: just don't know. Because when things get muddied so completely
Speaker 1: by like misogynist trials and the misogynist folklore, you take
Speaker 1: someone who is probably genuinely really weird, but you don't
Speaker 1: know how you know. Wait, so did you tell me
Speaker 1: how she died yet or no? So she so she
Speaker 1: gets put on house arrest and she kind of just
Speaker 1: like way, so she like doesn't actually live all that
Speaker 1: long after that, but she doesn't die of any like
Speaker 1: particularly notable way. Maybe she don't kill her, just like
Speaker 1: exile her essentially into her own castle. Um, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they banish There is one really interesting end of this story.
Speaker 1: So she was buried at the local church and the
Speaker 1: locals were like, no, what are you fucking doing. She's
Speaker 1: like an evil vampire sorcerers Deamon from Hell, get her
Speaker 1: out of here. So she was moved to the family
Speaker 1: crypt somewhere else in the country. But that crypt was
Speaker 1: open and her body wasn't there. Oh damn, that's cool
Speaker 1: as shit, right, that's so interesting. So maybe she was
Speaker 1: a vampire maybe. Okay, so she's like a healer vampire, right,
Speaker 1: who like occasionally has to cop or whatever, but like
Speaker 1: mostly she's like, yeah, she uses her powers for good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and her husband sucks so away with him. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, where is her body that you have to
Speaker 1: want her? I don't know, Like maybe someone like unearthed
Speaker 1: her to keep the legend alive or something or total
Speaker 1: a lot of effort though to like years and years later,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, and it was before black metal
Speaker 1: kids were really much of a thing. So like, although
Speaker 1: I mean basically black metal kids have always you know,
Speaker 1: the black metal kids in our hearts have been doing
Speaker 1: this kind of ship forever some so they're absolutely were
Speaker 1: some women doing some some poisoning, and like most cool
Speaker 1: things in history, that wasn't done by a single person.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk the main Okay, we finished
Speaker 1: our side quest and we're off to the main quest.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a whole multi generational ring
Speaker 1: of women in seventeenth century Italy. Collectively, they've got upwards
Speaker 1: of six kills, which might make them the most successful
Speaker 1: serial killer group in history. But as you kind of
Speaker 1: pointed out the top of the hour, I think that
Speaker 1: murdering men who legally own you from whom there is
Speaker 1: no divorce should not be a crime, and neither should
Speaker 1: be providing the poison. So I don't really see them
Speaker 1: as serial killers. Yeah, if anything, gets an active self
Speaker 1: defense because who knows what they were experiencing too, to
Speaker 1: like we to have to do that. Oh we we
Speaker 1: unfortunately know what they what they were experienced. I won't
Speaker 1: get into the details about that, but I'm prepared, prepared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And maddeningly, this beautiful, like multi generational group of of
Speaker 1: women gets their complex history has been reduced to a
Speaker 1: legend of a single woman, which is also untrue. It's
Speaker 1: the era of arranged marriages seventeenth century Italy, so not
Speaker 1: only are women in capable of leaving unhappy marriages, they
Speaker 1: don't even get to pick their husbands in the first place.
Speaker 1: They're basically auctioned off. Ah, so your best bet was
Speaker 1: to be a aspiring widow and to get a sense
Speaker 1: for the life of married women. At the time, there
Speaker 1: was a best selling book from the previous century, Rules
Speaker 1: for Married Life, which advised husbands, you must be your
Speaker 1: wife if delights in standing at the window and willingly
Speaker 1: lends a ready ear to any dishonest young men. WOWK, Yeah, sir, what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: them's the rules, sofiae Yeah, okay, gaze like foreloring ly
Speaker 1: or whatever out of window because it's the only thing
Speaker 1: that we could do. There wasn't any TV. They're like window, window,
Speaker 1: not find door. Okay, yeah, no, yeah, it's just such
Speaker 1: a like you can't Yeah, the fact that you can't
Speaker 1: even gaze forlornly at the wind, like oh, you better
Speaker 1: not be looking sad in your life, that I have
Speaker 1: made into a nightmare. Yeah, basically, Yeah, And so this
Speaker 1: is going to be the murkiest story I've ever told
Speaker 1: on this show because it's the one I found the
Speaker 1: greatest variety of versions of. I'd even written a ton
Speaker 1: of this script before I found history book that basically
Speaker 1: through out everything else. And so I'm gonna do my best.
Speaker 1: But I'll say that half the pop retellings of the
Speaker 1: story you'll find on various websites are completely fucking wrong,
Speaker 1: and so mine might be completely fucking wrong. But again,
Speaker 1: I've read a fuctin of sources around this try to
Speaker 1: try to piece it all together. I mean, essentially, all
Speaker 1: of history is made up. You know, no one actually
Speaker 1: knows whatever happened, and books are written by people that
Speaker 1: wanted to write them. That makes sense absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: have so much respect for historians who actually just like
Speaker 1: do the work of trying to piece together all of
Speaker 1: these fucking things and be like, Okay, here's why the
Speaker 1: court record might be biased in the following ways, and
Speaker 1: here's why you know. Um and I'm I'm one of
Speaker 1: these pop historians I'm complaining about because I'm not actually
Speaker 1: a historian. But ah, the story that gets passed into
Speaker 1: legend is that there's a woman in Italy named Julia
Speaker 1: too Fauna. She's a second generation poisoner, and she concocted
Speaker 1: a poison that mixed arsenic lead and belladonna. It was
Speaker 1: odorless and flavorless when put into wine, that would kill
Speaker 1: a man with only four drops over the course of months.
Speaker 1: You do one drop like once a month or so,
Speaker 1: and it made the man appear to die of natural causes.
Speaker 1: She sold this poison to ambitious and evil women who
Speaker 1: wanted to rob their poor, unsuspecting husbands. It was sold
Speaker 1: as awkwate fauna, a cosmetic so as to not arouse suspicion,
Speaker 1: or alternatively, a vial of holy water with St. Nicholas
Speaker 1: on the label. This is a whole con like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get to the an entire operation rest. Juliet Ta
Speaker 1: Fauna supposedly worked for fifty years killing the six hundred
Speaker 1: people before being found out and execute in sixteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: which is an awkward way for her to have to
Speaker 1: work for fifty years because she was born in sixteen
Speaker 1: supposedly born in six thirty nine years before I supposed death.
Speaker 1: Never mind such details. Fifty years six people all by herself.
Speaker 1: When she died, she passed on her legacy to her kid,
Speaker 1: and that version of the story conflates a ton of people,
Speaker 1: Like I was saying, so I'll try my gust to
Speaker 1: get it right, but this isn't like the Elizabeth Patry story.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. They actually did some murder, a lot of
Speaker 1: people getting poisoned, and the lies and the histories are
Speaker 1: around the motives and around who did the poisoning and
Speaker 1: the scope of the world they lived in. But that's
Speaker 1: where I'm going to cliffhanger it, because that's where we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it today. When we come back Wednesday, we're
Speaker 1: going to hear the true story, which is actually cooler,
Speaker 1: like just frankly cooler. And involves a whole underworld of
Speaker 1: magicians and witches and cities, which is cool, which is
Speaker 1: very cool. You're a pro even I'm excited about that
Speaker 1: even there yet, Sue, do you have any thing you'd
Speaker 1: like to plug? Uh? Not particularly. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on the Internet if you want, but to be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't even post on there anymore. I'm very disillusioned
Speaker 1: with the act of posting right now and have been
Speaker 1: for a minute. But you know what followed me anyway.
Speaker 1: It'll give me a little ego boost when I say,
Speaker 1: when I see it on my phone, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: all I need. And you you host a podcast with
Speaker 1: callically ambiguous um, and listeners can also catch you on
Speaker 1: on Clozon Media's Daily show. It could happen here like
Speaker 1: several times a month, right, Yeah, Sophie, can you just
Speaker 1: do all my interests for now? On? I mean, because
Speaker 1: I appreciate that I do. I do Margaret's too, what? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you could? You can follow Margaret on Twitter at
Speaker 1: magpie ki okay, and you can follow her on on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Margaret Killjoy. I knew there was my handles okay, okay.
Speaker 1: You can follow Sharne on Instagram at shiro hero and
Speaker 1: you can follow Shrine on Twitter at sharer hero six
Speaker 1: six six. Hell yeah, okay, I really I really know that. Also, Margaret,
Speaker 1: you have a book coming out? Correct or is it?
Speaker 1: It's out? I'm on tour for it right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Margaret is recording in a in a car vehicle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dedicated to to uh you know, her book and her podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah that too, Margaret. What what's your book called?
Speaker 1: And where can people find it? Well, it's called we
Speaker 1: Won't be Here Tomorrow because we'll be here Wednesday. No,
Speaker 1: I've already made that. Oh my god, that was perfect though. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Book of Short Stories. If you like the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that I tell stories about here, whether it's
Speaker 1: which is or revolutionaries, you will find both in my
Speaker 1: book about people who feed men to mermaids or whatever. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can get from a cake press. Oh yeah, bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heard Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. M HM