Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool people, get cool stuff. My
Speaker 1: name is Margaret Kiljoy. And I will not continue the
Speaker 1: bit where I set up the expectation that I will
Speaker 1: tell a new joke eating introduction, because if I do,
Speaker 1: my life will get so much worse and I don't
Speaker 1: have enough jokes. Sophie, you got joke, Sharen, anyone.
Speaker 2: SuRie is like the funniest person right now. Hey, no pressure.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I have a joke right now.
Speaker 2: A lot of my jokes are like annoyingly visual, Like
Speaker 2: my go to is like the daddiest joke, not Daddy's Like.
Speaker 1: Daddy joke is very different joke.
Speaker 2: But let me think. I mean I just explaining to
Speaker 2: you can use yourragination. But basically you put your hand
Speaker 2: up as like a little cup, like you're making your
Speaker 2: hand into a U shape. Uh, and you ask people
Speaker 2: what is that? What is this? And they're like, what
Speaker 2: are you doing? You're a weirdo. And then you put
Speaker 2: your upper forearm from the other arm on it and
Speaker 2: you're like, it's a gun.
Speaker 1: Rack.
Speaker 2: I love that joke.
Speaker 1: Because muscles are guns.
Speaker 2: Hellya guns?
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: I think it's funny because that's the only gun that
Speaker 2: I approve of. Everybody knock who's there? Eats too me?
Speaker 1: Okay, Sophie, Okay, I got a knock knock joke. Ea,
Speaker 1: start knock, knock, who's there?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is your joke. That's the point of the joke.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is your bit, Like you know, I got nothing. Okay.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Sharene Shreen. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm good. I actually am excited about the
Speaker 2: continuation of the story because you've definitely got me intrigued,
Speaker 2: and not much can do that these days.
Speaker 1: So hell yeah, cliffhangers for the wind. Yes, Sophie is
Speaker 1: our producer, Hi.
Speaker 2: Sophie, him Margaret, Hi Scheren. I like this little trio.
Speaker 1: I like, hey, this is fun. And Ian is our editor.
Speaker 1: He's in charge of editing. Now the parts where Sophie
Speaker 1: reveals the secret of the Alchemist's Stone and unwoman wrote
Speaker 1: our theme music. So this is part two of our
Speaker 1: two part series of women who murdered their husbands, or
Speaker 1: rather well the people who provided the poison. Good times
Speaker 1: were had by all, except potentially the husbands.
Speaker 2: Which deserved it probably, So yeah.
Speaker 1: Many of them. So we heard about the legend of
Speaker 1: Aqua tafauna, the cosmetic poison made by one brilliant poison lady.
Speaker 1: So let's figure out what we know of the truth.
Speaker 1: We will start in pal Marrow, a city in southern Italy.
Speaker 1: Well it's in Sicily, which is part of Spain at
Speaker 1: the time, where we meet two aspiring widows, so Fania
Speaker 1: Diadama and Francesca Lasarda. And they were part of a
Speaker 1: thriving scene in Italy which someone describing a similar community
Speaker 1: in Paris referred to as the criminal magical underworld.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: Rome, for example, at the time, had upwards of two
Speaker 1: hundred magical practitioners. We don't actually know how many Palmero had.
Speaker 1: But you know, as a capital of the region.
Speaker 2: What qualifies as magical question?
Speaker 1: Oh, we will tell you.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 1: Did I set that up perfectly? Everyone who couldn't go
Speaker 1: to the proper channels of like doctors with leeches, would
Speaker 1: go to magicians on the street who would sell them
Speaker 1: shit that honestly was probably about as effective as what
Speaker 1: the leech doctors had on offer. There were witches, they
Speaker 1: were sorcerers, and they were priests. The underworld included and
Speaker 1: possibly revolved around these priests who had gone all in
Speaker 1: for evil shit and lived double lives and led black masses.
Speaker 1: And this, okay, I'll get to what I do and
Speaker 1: don't believe of this particular part. But these evil priests
Speaker 1: would live double lives, lead black masses with naked women
Speaker 1: as the altar in order to imbue different potions and
Speaker 1: saves and shit with magic. And they chanted in a
Speaker 1: made up mystical language that they all came both together,
Speaker 1: that was just Latin and Greek and Hebrew while stuck
Speaker 1: together basically like all the old timy languages they had
Speaker 1: access to.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 1: And they weren't quite like Satanists. Their magic supposedly came
Speaker 1: from God, just in really weird ways. They would use
Speaker 1: blessed wands to make potions in the shadow of a
Speaker 1: cross that contained a fragment of the true Cross, while
Speaker 1: like leading black masses with naked ladies as the altar.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't sure I believed any of this shit,
Speaker 1: uh huh, But there are a ton of documents from
Speaker 1: the time attesting to it and lots of confessions. Although
Speaker 1: come on, witch huns and inquisitions. I don't trust the confessions,
Speaker 1: but I think some of the shit was actually real.
Speaker 1: I believe it. Yeah, to quote the historian Mike dash
Speaker 1: this quote, just because it's fucking cool. Raids conducted by
Speaker 1: the police on the Paris underworld of the sixteen eighties
Speaker 1: uncombed quantities of Grimour's incense, wands, and a rich vervariety
Speaker 1: of ingredients used in sexual magic, including breast milk and
Speaker 1: bags of powdered menstrual blood.
Speaker 2: Humm, how do you make that into a powder? I
Speaker 2: guess it's like you just dry it out and crush
Speaker 2: it up. That's interesting. Well, I also we still do
Speaker 2: not everybody, but the culture of witchiness is still alive
Speaker 2: and well, whether it comes to like crystals or even
Speaker 2: like even meditation, in my opinion, can be a form
Speaker 2: of that kind of energetic change. So are even like,
Speaker 2: I don't know it, just I think it's very interesting
Speaker 2: how it's evolved, but it's still here.
Speaker 1: Very much, totally opinion, And like a lot of it
Speaker 1: is super legit and a lot of it's not. And
Speaker 1: it's impossible to tell who's a grifter and who's legit,
Speaker 1: just like back then. Mm hmmm, Because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the shit that people did probably fucking worked, right,
Speaker 1: because you could go to the magical underworld and get
Speaker 1: an abortion, and you could get poison and you get
Speaker 1: general heat, you could get fortunes and horoscopes, you could
Speaker 1: get love charms, you could get cures for your bad breath.
Speaker 1: Whatever ailed you, they'd take care of you, no questions asked.
Speaker 1: They would sell stillborn fetuses to gamblers who used them
Speaker 1: as good luck charms.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 1: They also dealt with quote unwanted babies, and I don't
Speaker 1: know whether that means abortion and fanticide or selling children
Speaker 1: through underground adoption services or to slave traders. I have
Speaker 1: no idea, Honestly, I kind of think it was all
Speaker 1: of the above at the time. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you have this magical not underworld that was flourishing, right
Speaker 1: because science and magic are fucking at the time, and
Speaker 1: Royalty was dumping tons of money on alchemists, who the
Speaker 1: most famous thing that alchemists were trying to do was
Speaker 1: like transmute base metals into gold. They were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: turn lead into gold or whatever. But then they were
Speaker 1: also trying to cure disease and live forever and improve
Speaker 1: crop yields and basically just like do science and magic
Speaker 1: all put together. And while not everyone involved in madge
Speaker 1: alchemy were up to the poison thing, these two women
Speaker 1: they They might have done some other shit. They probably
Speaker 1: sold charms and potions or whatever, but they also sold poison.
Speaker 1: It's likely that Tofania was who invented aqua tafauna named
Speaker 1: after herself. It's also possible they just sold people arsenic
Speaker 1: and I suspect that they were breaking the law by
Speaker 1: working without their husband's permission, which is just terrible. I
Speaker 1: bet their husbands and even what they were doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they did. They reached their main aspiration, which was
Speaker 1: to become widows. As best as I could tell, they
Speaker 1: both off their husbands in order to return to the
Speaker 1: status of free people. But it didn't go well for
Speaker 1: these two particular women. First Francesca and then Tofania went
Speaker 1: down for the magic trick of turning their husbands into corpses.
Speaker 1: So the state pulled the magic trick of turning them
Speaker 1: into corpses by a bit more gruesome of a method.
Speaker 1: So for all of the like, oh, these like evil poisoners,
Speaker 1: like the shit that happens to people is from the
Speaker 1: state is so much worse than what these fucking poisoners
Speaker 1: are doing. So Fanio was either hang drawled, and quartered,
Speaker 1: or one account at the time says that she was
Speaker 1: sewn up alive into a canvas sack and then thrown
Speaker 1: from the roof of the bishop's palace into the street
Speaker 1: in front of a large crowd. Well that's brutal, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think they pulled off being poisoners for a
Speaker 1: long time though, and maybe had a good run of
Speaker 1: it before they got thrown from sacks from the bishop's roof,
Speaker 1: so maybe it was all worth it. And most everything
Speaker 1: focuses on this other woman, Julia Tufana, who was born
Speaker 1: Julia Mangiarti and legend hazrus to Fania's daughter who learned
Speaker 1: the trade from Mom and then after Mom's execution, took
Speaker 1: off to Rome with some of the other students to
Speaker 1: set up a poison shop in the big city. And
Speaker 1: apparently it was a vaguely normal thing at the time
Speaker 1: in Italy or Sicily or whatever for a woman to
Speaker 1: take her mother's first name as her own last name.
Speaker 1: It seems just as likely that she took the name
Speaker 1: Tafauna as a last name because she was selling Aqua tafauna.
Speaker 1: It also seems possible that she never went by Tafauna
Speaker 1: and this is the name that folklore has described to her,
Speaker 1: and she spent her whole life going by Menngiarti. There's
Speaker 1: no evidence that she was Tefani's kid Tefania's kid, but
Speaker 1: there is also no evidence that she wasn't whatever. It's
Speaker 1: also possible she left for Rome before any of that. Okay, whatever, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but aqua tafauna. The symptoms, according to a public notice
Speaker 1: that was put out later once everyone got busted, were,
Speaker 1: to quote the book Toxicology in the Middle Ages and
Speaker 1: Renaissance in a chapter by Mike dash the symptoms were
Speaker 1: a burning pain in the throat and stomach, vomiting, extreme thirst,
Speaker 1: and diarrhea, all of which point to arsenic as the
Speaker 1: active ingredient of the poison. The suggested antidote was lemon
Speaker 1: juice and vinegar, and to continue the quote, Aqua tafana
Speaker 1: was described as clear and tasteless, suggesting that a key
Speaker 1: part of the manufacturing process was masking the character as
Speaker 1: stick metallic taste of arsenic. It was also considered to
Speaker 1: be a relatively gentle poison which did not produce so
Speaker 1: much vomiting as and hence aroused less suspicious than other
Speaker 1: preparations known at the time. So basically all of the
Speaker 1: different poisons that you would get in on the street
Speaker 1: that were any good were just different concoctions of arsenic
Speaker 1: and it was just like people figuring out different ways
Speaker 1: to like prepare the arsenic, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is interesting. I wonder how they did
Speaker 2: mask that taste, because that's impressive.
Speaker 1: I know, And I think that there's some suspicion that
Speaker 1: they like did some masking to the taste, but not
Speaker 1: actually as much as people claim. It was not as
Speaker 1: perfect of a poisonous people claim it was a very
Speaker 1: good poison. But mostly it was added to wine because wine.
Speaker 2: Exactly, I was gonna say, like, if you had like
Speaker 2: a couple drops to wine, it's probably not even traced, yeah,
Speaker 2: or like you can't taste it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so Tafana wasn't alone. Her stepdaughter who just
Speaker 1: happened to be a widow surprised there named Jialamas, Spara
Speaker 1: or Spawna, depending on which book you read. Both books
Speaker 1: are people are very committed to these different spellings, and
Speaker 1: they're very legitimate seeming sources. Spara sold to the aristocratic
Speaker 1: circles that she worked in as a professional astrologer, right,
Speaker 1: so she would get hired to predict the future and
Speaker 1: find missing objects and tell people about themselves and shit. Well,
Speaker 1: Giovanna de Grandie sold to working class women. Mostly she
Speaker 1: was a beggar, and she would hang out outside churches,
Speaker 1: because churches where women could gather and talk. And there's
Speaker 1: all these like cartoons at the time about how like
Speaker 1: when women talk at church, it's the devil talking through them,
Speaker 1: which most of the time is bullshit. But I guess
Speaker 1: sometimes they were conspiring to kill all their husbands or whatever,
Speaker 1: so whatever.
Speaker 2: Every joke they say is a layer of truth.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and they also sold other shit, right. They
Speaker 1: weren't just poisoners. They worked as cunning women or sometimes
Speaker 1: wise women or divine arresses, and they were selling charms
Speaker 1: and you know, telling portions and shit. Started exporting poison
Speaker 1: to other cities too, through women they trusted, and they
Speaker 1: had this whole regional distribution network for husband killing poison.
Speaker 1: They found their clients not by you'll be shocked to
Speaker 1: know this. They don't just like hang up a sign
Speaker 1: and that like the you know, just like go into
Speaker 1: an alley and there's a sign that it's like kill
Speaker 1: your husband five dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were fortune tellers and likely abortionists and all of that,
Speaker 1: and so they would slowly learn who they could trust,
Speaker 1: and they also learned who was stuck in unhappy marriages.
Speaker 2: So it's like they're they're witches and tarot readers and
Speaker 2: fortune tellers and therapists.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, no, I mean it's
Speaker 1: like it's a necessary thing for society to have or
Speaker 1: these people who provide all of these services. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: to make their poison, they needed arsenic and then actually,
Speaker 1: theoretically the best guesses about Aqua tafauna is that it
Speaker 1: had antinomy and lead and maybe mercuric chloride, which was
Speaker 1: a treatment for venereal disease at the time, and my
Speaker 1: guess what killed Bathory's husband, but I don't know, rather
Speaker 1: than Bella Donna, which is what was like rumored to
Speaker 1: be in it, because Bella Donna's a poison and it
Speaker 1: you know, has a romantic sounding name, right right. There
Speaker 1: are other things that were rumored to be in it,
Speaker 1: including many of which I've never heard of before toad, flax,
Speaker 1: Spanish fly, snap dragon, penny wart, and the spittle of
Speaker 1: mad men.
Speaker 2: The spittle of mad men.
Speaker 1: I know, Like imagine being like someone whose job it
Speaker 1: is to be like the madman who sells his spittle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what if you went to therapy and you were
Speaker 1: like feeling better, b to be like, no, I got
Speaker 1: to keep it up. I might. My job depends on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also because I am a dummy sometimes I
Speaker 2: wanted to make sure I want. I don't know exactly
Speaker 2: or I didn't know before I read it right now,
Speaker 2: like where arsenic actually comes from? Okay, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Well it sounds like okay. Inorganic arsenic compounds, they're found
Speaker 2: in soils, sediments, and groundwater. They either occur naturally or
Speaker 2: as a result of mining or smelting and industrial use
Speaker 2: of arsenic. Organic arsenic compounds are mainly found also in
Speaker 2: fish and in shellfish. So I'm wondering, like how did
Speaker 2: these women procure Ah?
Speaker 1: This is perfect? That is literally the next sentence in
Speaker 1: the script.
Speaker 2: Oh hell, like see it was worth the little flip
Speaker 2: fumble there, but like, yeah, it says arsenic is found
Speaker 2: in the natural environment in some abundance in the Earth's
Speaker 2: crust and in small quantities in rock, soil, water and
Speaker 2: air like that is that's wild.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just a yeah, something to think about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they needed arsenic. So they found a priest. They
Speaker 1: found one of these sort of fallen priests that was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier in the Magical Underworld. His name was
Speaker 1: Father Girolama and his brother was an apothecary, and so
Speaker 1: he hooked them up and this religious overlap continued. They
Speaker 1: didn't always sell it as Aqua Tafauna, and it's actually
Speaker 1: possible they never sold as Aqua tafauna, and that's just
Speaker 1: like the myth name that gets attached to it. But
Speaker 1: they definitely sold it for a while under the name
Speaker 1: Mana of Saint Nicholas. And because when I first started
Speaker 1: researching this, it would talk about how sold as holy
Speaker 1: water or cosmetics. But the wacky thing is that it
Speaker 1: was both at once. Speaking of skincare routines, Mana of
Speaker 1: Saint Nicholas was meant to be the oil that dropped
Speaker 1: from Saint Nicholas's bones where it was held in a church,
Speaker 1: or maybe they like pour the oil over his bones.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, and this holy oil got sold in
Speaker 1: the street as not as poison as a as a
Speaker 1: kind of regular scam. So this holy oil when it
Speaker 1: wasn't just poisonous, regular scam and it was sold for
Speaker 1: the purpose of fighting acne and other facial blemishes. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So this is what they labeled their poison as because
Speaker 1: basically it's like the woman will have all of the
Speaker 1: different you know, cosmetics on the shelf and the man
Speaker 1: never touches any of it whatever, Right, so it's a
Speaker 1: safe place to put it. And so they labeled it
Speaker 1: in these like vials that look very holy and they
Speaker 1: have Saint Nicholas on them or whatever. But it's just
Speaker 1: meant to be this like fucking you know, face blemish
Speaker 1: cream oil whatever.
Speaker 2: Hey, facial oils are still used today. Oh yeah, people
Speaker 2: stand by them. So it's like you're onto something again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't use an oil, use a cream. But
Speaker 1: I also but I'm like, I like my crow's feet.
Speaker 1: I want everything else to stay youthful, but.
Speaker 2: I like my crows feet is like a sign of
Speaker 2: like you've lived happy time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I get out in the sun enough the
Speaker 1: forehead wrinkles. I would take some oil that dropped off
Speaker 1: of Saint Nicholas's bones. Maybe the blood of innocence, especially billionaires,
Speaker 1: the blood of Yeah, can we can, Sophie, can we
Speaker 1: be sponsored by the blood of billionaires?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 1: Hell? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Wow, she's the best?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, it is it is that time? It's
Speaker 1: that time. Well that you did that without even trying.
Speaker 1: Do you have a husband, is he a great person?
Speaker 1: If he's not a great person, are you living in
Speaker 1: a time when divorce is not an option? Well, aqua
Speaker 1: tafauna four drops administered to wine over the course of
Speaker 1: four months, and you will be a widow. Here's some
Speaker 1: other ads. We are back and speaking of people who
Speaker 1: are mostly in it for the money, these women were
Speaker 1: mostly in it for the money, right, that's you know,
Speaker 1: their whole thing, which is like people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're in it for the money. I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're in it for the like means by which they
Speaker 1: feed themselves and take care of their families, like win
Speaker 1: a bunch of fucking monsters, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, because but I mean it's like freedom in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, like freedom from their husbands, but
Speaker 2: also like money will give you freedom as.
Speaker 1: Well, and in a lot of ways too right, totally,
Speaker 1: it's the it's it's a agency in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: The problem is that people have too much agency and
Speaker 1: other people too little agency. But they did have some
Speaker 1: altruistic moments, and in particular, they would give the poison
Speaker 1: out for free to women who couldn't afford it, who
Speaker 1: really needed to reach widowhood. Decades into her poisonous career,
Speaker 1: at least twenty one years into it, probably longer than that.
Speaker 1: Juliet Tafana died peacefully in her bed in sixteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: She was like seventy years old. She didn't die from poison.
Speaker 1: She'd never been caught. She lived her whole fucking life
Speaker 1: as fucking and she's Actually it's possible she invented to
Speaker 1: fauna and then like named it after her mentor you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and her friends, including possibly her stepdaughter,
Speaker 1: carried on without her. And I tried really hard. I
Speaker 1: think that I think this is enough of a pop
Speaker 1: culture reference that I'll get Sophie's attention and love, which
Speaker 1: is why I make this podcast.
Speaker 2: I you get that for free.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks. So I tried to find an earl killed
Speaker 1: by the gang because of the country song about killing
Speaker 1: earl or almost die. Yeah, yeah, thanks, because I want
Speaker 1: to make an earl's got to die doike. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I didn't find an earl, but I did find a duke.
Speaker 1: Francesco Ses, the Duke of Siri, was thirty years older
Speaker 1: than his wife when he suddenly died, and she was
Speaker 1: suddenly doing way better in life. But in sixteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight the Poisoner's gang came to the attention of the authorities.
Speaker 1: And I that's the way it's always phrased, right, I
Speaker 1: struggle to imagine that they kept it up for thirty
Speaker 1: years unnoticed. I bet they were paying someone off. They
Speaker 1: were protected by some kind of crime syndicate or just
Speaker 1: I don't know the Catholic Church, which was basically the
Speaker 1: biggest crime syndicate in Rome at the time, because why
Speaker 1: would they protect them, though I presume money is my
Speaker 1: main guess. I presume that they were paying someone off
Speaker 1: or power, right right, right, yeah, like giving them poison,
Speaker 1: I you know, of providing abortions for their mistresses.
Speaker 2: Like hmmm.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, because the magical underworld was an
Speaker 1: open secret. And the reason we know this is that
Speaker 1: the women who are selling this poison shit. They like
Speaker 1: kept receipts, and they like would like issue written promises
Speaker 1: of payment like wow. And I think it wasn't like
Speaker 1: payment for services rendered, dead husband or whatever. But they
Speaker 1: were like being very above ground about how they handled
Speaker 1: a lot of their finances. M But history doesn't like
Speaker 1: talking about whether or not they were in the bed
Speaker 1: with Catholic Church or some other crime syndicate or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know exactly, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like an open secret and I doubt that they were
Speaker 1: doing this for thirty years unnoticed. Right how did they
Speaker 1: get caught? Multiple versions of the story you will be
Speaker 1: shocked to know. One version of the story is that
Speaker 1: so many people were fessing up in confessional that the
Speaker 1: pope decided had to do something about it because I
Speaker 1: guess the people, you know, the priests would like to
Speaker 1: turn around and tell the confessions to the pope or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that one.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that de Grandis, the lower class poisoner,
Speaker 1: got entrapped by a woman working for the police who
Speaker 1: showed up with a sob story and desired to kill
Speaker 1: her husband. My guess, m H. And this is I'm
Speaker 1: not a historian. I'm not allowed to make whatever I'm
Speaker 1: making his guess. I think they went down because they
Speaker 1: killed that earl because he died a year before the
Speaker 1: investigation into them started, right the duke. They didn't kill
Speaker 1: an earl, only killed a duke. Interesting, And because when
Speaker 1: you're helping random people kill people like whatever, but then
Speaker 1: when you when you get to a duke, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a step two.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but I guess like if you're if they're
Speaker 2: doing pro bono poison poison services, then the earth the
Speaker 2: duke client must have been a good It's like there
Speaker 2: was probably money and that how do you turn that down?
Speaker 1: I know? And like maybe the duchess was like, sh
Speaker 1: it's really bad, right, and she's married to some thirty
Speaker 1: year old older than her dude that like yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean whatever, maybe there's a happy no, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, if you are forty and your date a
Speaker 1: seventy year old, I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Also around that time they might have been stepping
Speaker 1: up their murders around the time that they started to
Speaker 1: get caught, because there was a plague going through Rome
Speaker 1: at the time, which was a particularly good time for
Speaker 1: men to die unnoticed, So either they were stepping up
Speaker 1: their murders or suspicion of them being murderers was going
Speaker 1: through the roof, because all of these people were dying right.
Speaker 1: Either way, the poisoner's ring goes down. After at least
Speaker 1: thirty years, easily fifty years, five poisoners are put up
Speaker 1: on trial, mostly poor women. Several of them are are beggars.
Speaker 1: One of them Maria Spinola. Her nickname is Griffola, which
Speaker 1: is a type of mushroom more commonly known as head
Speaker 1: of the woods. And it's just a sick name, and
Speaker 1: anyone out there is looking for a new name. Yeah, yeah, Griffola,
Speaker 1: you know the yeah. And not all of the five
Speaker 1: who went down were widows. Two of them were happily married,
Speaker 1: although one was married to her like fourth husband. I
Speaker 1: wonder what happened to the first three.
Speaker 2: I know she really, I don't know, had some trial runs.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Tefana herself had remarried and stayed remarried. And
Speaker 1: actually it was like her husband's daughter who continued on
Speaker 1: the gang after she died. And I would say, the
Speaker 1: kind of man who is willingly married to a crime
Speaker 1: lord poisoner who helps people murder their husbands. Is a
Speaker 1: keeper mm hmmm, he's an ally. Yeah, that man is
Speaker 1: an ally.
Speaker 2: Yeah man. Yeah, God bless whoever whoever those people are.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he knows, he's he knows he's part of
Speaker 2: the problem or is his type you know?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and I suspect it would never occur to
Speaker 1: him to do anything abusive or cruel to his wife.
Speaker 2: That's yes, exactly, But you hear that that's how you
Speaker 2: become an ally everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first poisoner who got arrested
Speaker 1: de Grandis. She named names, presumably after torture m Spawna
Speaker 1: or Spara. The astrologer she held out for months of
Speaker 1: torture before she confessed, and the torture they faced was
Speaker 1: another one I'd never heard of, called strepato, where your
Speaker 1: wrists are tied together behind your back and you're hung
Speaker 1: from your arms while your shoulders slowly dislocate. What the
Speaker 1: fuck medieval era? No that I don't like that either, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not sticky, I know.
Speaker 2: I hate the people that like made these up, like right,
Speaker 2: it's just like what not into it?
Speaker 1: Right? And then they turn around and they're like that
Speaker 1: woman is an evil murderous as they're like, how else
Speaker 1: do you think we could make people unhappy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I want to hear them scream more to hear
Speaker 2: my migraine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that's what it was. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: migraines going around from like the smoke in the air, burning.
Speaker 2: Trash, yeah, air pollution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, can you blame them? Yes, the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: but worth noting for any listeners today. A couple of
Speaker 1: the women named names right away, and they were hanged
Speaker 1: with the rest because snitching doesn't pay. Only for yeah,
Speaker 1: only starting off rich pays unfortunately when it comes to crime.
Speaker 1: Based on who survived this sort deal, I mean also
Speaker 1: true today. So yepomp forty six murders get hurt out
Speaker 1: in court and the five woman women plus one of
Speaker 1: their clients were hanged in front of a huge crowd
Speaker 1: in sixteen fifty nine, and before her execution, Spanna said,
Speaker 1: I've given this liquid to more people than I've got
Speaker 1: hairs on my head, which fucking.
Speaker 2: Hell Yeah that rules. I love that. Also, just like
Speaker 2: even if they got caught, they helped so many women
Speaker 2: probably you know what I mean, they like not all
Speaker 2: those women that their clients like, their clients didn't get caught.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, right, Yeah, many of them did, but about
Speaker 1: forty of them got put on trial. But out of
Speaker 1: six hundred, yeah, no more than forty. Lower class widows
Speaker 1: get put on trial. Most of them get life in prison.
Speaker 1: One of them got hanged. And Okay, the fucked up
Speaker 1: thing we know. The men who were killed were pretty
Speaker 1: monstrous because of the court record, because all of their
Speaker 1: abuse against their wives was heard in court as evidence,
Speaker 1: but it was evidence for the prosecution because the fact
Speaker 1: that the men like beat their wives and shit was
Speaker 1: considered not as justification but as motive.
Speaker 2: Mm.
Speaker 1: So it would be like, how do you know this
Speaker 1: woman you know murdered her husband and someone would be like, well,
Speaker 1: her husband used to beat her, and so they'd be like, aha,
Speaker 1: she's the murderous.
Speaker 2: Interesting and cruel I know. Well, also, I guess it
Speaker 2: was like legal right to be your wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I presume so. Yeah, damn the a complicated part.
Speaker 1: To complicate no one's perfect. A few of the husbands
Speaker 1: were murdered, maybe for being gay, basically like he was
Speaker 1: fucking boys instead of me. But at least in one
Speaker 1: of the cases, it was he was bringing home boys
Speaker 1: and making me watch and I don't know what is
Speaker 1: meant by boys in this context, and also forcing someone
Speaker 1: to watch as fucked up, so like maybe deserved a murdering.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's I guess you can't just sell poison and
Speaker 1: expect it to only be used in good ways as
Speaker 1: another moral of the story, unfortunately. But you know who
Speaker 1: didn't have to go on trial? Streen? They're rich clients.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, so the duke's the duke's person, wife
Speaker 2: person probably just had a great rich life after that.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, like basically, okay, so the priests that hooked
Speaker 1: them up with the arsenic and the clients weren't put
Speaker 1: on trial. The Pope himself intervened to keep the names
Speaker 1: of the rich ladies out of the trial. They were
Speaker 1: interrogated separately for information, but not dragged in front of
Speaker 1: the judge, and faced no charges. So basically they were
Speaker 1: just like turn state's evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and assumably like they paid off, like they were
Speaker 2: like they bribed them or something like.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it was a bribe thing or
Speaker 1: whether it was a like we don't want to look
Speaker 1: bad and these women matter and these other women don't.
Speaker 1: But I'm not I'm not sure. I mean it was
Speaker 1: you know, I think you could buy indulgences from the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church at the time, where you'd be like I
Speaker 1: did a sin, they'd be like, all right, a hundred bucks, right,
Speaker 1: you know, because they definitely had bucks. Dollars was the
Speaker 1: currency of choices.
Speaker 2: Mhm.
Speaker 1: Renaissance in vidioid Lane. Yeah, George Washington, Yeah, totally yeah,
Speaker 1: Like who is this guy? Oh, you'll know one day
Speaker 1: h m hm. And the priest guy, no one knows
Speaker 1: why he wasn't put on trial. He could have honestly
Speaker 1: been dead by then, or the church could have taken
Speaker 1: care of their own. Who fucking knows. But while only
Speaker 1: forty six of the murders were heard in court, the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth later had legaled the
Speaker 1: papers describing the death of six hundred people caused by
Speaker 1: that particular poison. So that's where we get the six
Speaker 1: hundred head count from them, and the court records from
Speaker 1: the whole trial were locked up in a castle because
Speaker 1: the pope didn't want anyone knowing how to make the poison.
Speaker 1: They weren't uncovered until eighteen eighty, So there was two
Speaker 1: hundred years of like myth making in folklore that muddy
Speaker 1: to historic waters and are part of why we have
Speaker 1: such a hard time like tracking what happened the name aquaitafauna.
Speaker 1: It lived on. It became a folkloric term alongside water
Speaker 1: from Palmero Rennie quote slow poison, and for centuries men
Speaker 1: lived in fear of this slow poison. Mozart when he
Speaker 1: died admittedly kind of suddenly thirty five years old, which
Speaker 1: is like one hundred years later or whatever, he's like,
Speaker 1: I have been poisoned by aqua tafauna, he said, And
Speaker 1: no one actually knows how he died. It could have
Speaker 1: been poison. It could have been syphilis, it could have
Speaker 1: been food poisoning poisons like young though, I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like one as like maybe it was like undercook
Speaker 1: pork chops or whatever.
Speaker 2: It could have been a variety of things.
Speaker 1: You're right at that time, Yeah, And actually one of
Speaker 1: the main things that people thought was poisoning but wasn't
Speaker 1: was friend of the pod tuberculosis. Anytime anyone died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: people will be like it was poison. Like no, honey,
Speaker 1: you're just living in the pre antibiotic era.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I mean I guess it's like if you
Speaker 2: have no way of knowing how someone dies and then
Speaker 2: you assume it's like this magical or like out of
Speaker 2: nowhere thing and you can't exactly like prove otherwise, then
Speaker 2: I don't know, poison seems likely if it's like also
Speaker 2: this like fear mongering, like big rumor right.
Speaker 1: Totally, like yeah, yeah, everyone's afraid that there's all of
Speaker 1: these you know, women run around poisoning everything, and some
Speaker 1: of them are right, Like hundreds of men you know,
Speaker 1: met their end because of this. But was kind of
Speaker 1: interesting is that there were ways to find out. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you could tell an autopsy if someone had been poisoned,
Speaker 1: and you know, you cut them up and you look
Speaker 1: to see what happened to their intestines and guts and
Speaker 1: stomach and shit, see if there's like different kinds of damage.
Speaker 1: But the thing about aquatafauna that became sort of magical,
Speaker 1: it was this poison that defied autopsy and shit. And
Speaker 1: it's like yes and no, this concept of the slow
Speaker 1: poison that you could if you control it just right,
Speaker 1: you could poison someone one drop of time over months
Speaker 1: and they die of natural causes months later. That's not real,
Speaker 1: or at least it wasn't real then and I think
Speaker 1: it's not real now. And it was basically this like
Speaker 1: boogeyman moral panic thing help men become more afraid of
Speaker 1: women because they're like, oh, I'm slowly getting sick and
Speaker 1: then died. I've been slow poisoned by my wife. Like
Speaker 1: most poisons that kill people at the time, including arsenic
Speaker 1: and probably including the actualk with tafauna, you put some
Speaker 1: drops in someone's food or wine or whatever and then
Speaker 1: they fucking die. Like yeah, and awkward to Fana was
Speaker 1: really good and that you didn't vomit all over the place,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was like a it was a
Speaker 1: better poison, but and it was like harder to detect
Speaker 1: the damage to the organs and shit.
Speaker 2: Also, have you seen the movie Phantom Thread.
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 2: This is I mean, I guess I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's spoiler alert if I mean, if you want to
Speaker 2: go watch it, go watch it. But essentially the couple,
Speaker 2: the woman is poisoning her husband over time because she
Speaker 2: wants him to like need her so she can take
Speaker 2: care of him. Oh yeah, totally, So maybe like there
Speaker 2: was love behind all these motives, you know, like they
Speaker 2: just wanted to the men to be like little babies
Speaker 2: that they should take care of. But I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and he deserves to
Speaker 2: be in jail solely because of how he treated you
Speaker 2: on Apple. But that's another story.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's another I mean, okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know that particular story, but in some ways, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's another story because I think that's a
Speaker 1: misogynist take. This concept of the woman who is poisoning
Speaker 1: the husband, whether it's a literal poison or whether it's
Speaker 1: the like draining his soul to make him reliant on
Speaker 1: her or whatever, is this misogynist myth and it kind
Speaker 1: of has the roots in that's very true.
Speaker 2: Well in the movie too, it's very much romanticized because
Speaker 2: he eventually finds out and he just keeps going along
Speaker 2: with it because it's like she loves me or whatever
Speaker 2: the moral that was. But yeah, wow, but I guess
Speaker 2: that's a really good point. That is also a misoge
Speaker 2: take to be like, oh, she wants his attention so bad,
Speaker 2: or like she like is so desperately wanting to seem
Speaker 2: valuable to someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm I am sure there is someone in
Speaker 1: history who has done something like this, you know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: just like concept. But the one upside, right, so you
Speaker 1: have all of these these women, so these men now
Speaker 1: like if men die, people are like it was the wife, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure like a lot of got people got
Speaker 1: murdered for being poisoners who weren't poisoners. The one upside
Speaker 1: is I bet a lot of men stayed their hand
Speaker 1: because they realized the power that women had because of
Speaker 1: the existence of Aqua tafanna.
Speaker 2: Yeah, put them in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so as as this thing became a legend, right,
Speaker 1: more poisoners took the name Tofauna. At least one that
Speaker 1: we have a record of as a prisoner in seventeen
Speaker 1: thirty one hundred years after the Heyday, she took the
Speaker 1: name Tofuna. Another Italian poisoner, which who was still in Palmaro,
Speaker 1: was Giovanna Bana and her nickname and I'm literally including
Speaker 1: her in this because I like her nickname was the
Speaker 1: old vinegar Lady, oh which ruled her poison got called
Speaker 1: vinegar and it was a mixture of arsenic white wine
Speaker 1: and vinegar. And she worked as a beggar and a poisoner,
Speaker 1: and she was hanged in seventeen eighty nine because I
Speaker 1: guess being a poisoner is illegal for some reason. Yeah, weird,
Speaker 1: But old Vinegar Lady also a sick name might not
Speaker 1: be as good of a choice for someone who's looking
Speaker 1: for a new name. Up to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but has a bite.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. No, no, no, twenty years there's
Speaker 1: more poison hell, yeah, twenty years.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel maybe I'm maybe I'm too
Speaker 2: excited about this, okay.
Speaker 1: Goo, no, no, whatever, like this is cool. People do
Speaker 1: cool stuff, like like it's complicated, right, but like overall,
Speaker 1: like what do you fucking want you create a society
Speaker 1: where women the only way that they can have freedom
Speaker 1: is to poison people. They're gonna fucking poison people, and
Speaker 1: that's on fucking you. Women did not create that society.
Speaker 2: If anything, equality at that point would have helped the men,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like if they want killing
Speaker 2: to stop happening, they can just treat women like human beings,
Speaker 2: you know, but that they would rather not have, like
Speaker 2: they would rather the casualties than actual freedom for women,
Speaker 2: which is another interesting shitty thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of us will die so that we can
Speaker 1: all hold our power over our lives. That makes us
Speaker 1: miserable too, because the fucking patriarchy's a prison for everyone.
Speaker 1: Twenty years after the main circle of poisoners from sixteenth
Speaker 1: seventy to sixteen eighty two, King Louis the fourteenth Court
Speaker 1: in France was rocked by a scandal called the Affair
Speaker 1: of Poisons that was kind of just a moral panic,
Speaker 1: but with some actual poison involved.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: It started with an aristocratic lady, Madame de Brenvillier, who
Speaker 1: killed her father and two brothers and tried to kill
Speaker 1: her husband. And she theoretically did this to get all
Speaker 1: their shit, like if they're a dates or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: that's the easy answer of why she did it. The
Speaker 1: real answer is we shocked to know patriarchy. She supposedly
Speaker 1: and I think this part is not true, but the
Speaker 1: legend against her claims that she practiced her poison by
Speaker 1: poisoning poor people in the hospital. First, like she killed
Speaker 1: thirty peasants in the hospital, and she was accused of
Speaker 1: the murder of her brothers and dad, which was true.
Speaker 1: She murdered them, She fled, she got arrested, and then
Speaker 1: she was tortured, because let's be real, fucking whatever.
Speaker 2: That feels like, there's no death without torture.
Speaker 1: At this Yeah, there's one historian who claims that she
Speaker 1: wasn't tortured. This whole thing became a bigger deal because
Speaker 1: it goes all the way up in the court. But
Speaker 1: the torture it gets now called the water cure. At
Speaker 1: the time it was called being put to the question
Speaker 1: in France, and basically she was forced to drink sixteen
Speaker 1: pints of water, drew gallons of water. She confessed, and
Speaker 1: she was beheaded. Wow, but so she probably did it.
Speaker 1: But when she confessed, it came out that she'd been
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted, probably by her dad, as a kid. When
Speaker 1: she was seven, she had been sexually assaulted, she didn't
Speaker 1: say by whom, and also that she started sleeping with
Speaker 1: one of her younger brothers who she later murdered. And
Speaker 1: I have no idea what age that happened or what
Speaker 1: direction the abuse went in that setup. Then she grew
Speaker 1: up and got married, even though she didn't want to
Speaker 1: get married. She wanted a divorce because she liked fucking
Speaker 1: around and she liked being a free person who was
Speaker 1: in charge of herself, and specifically, she knew a divorce
Speaker 1: wasn't possible, so she tried to separate her money from
Speaker 1: her husband's money. And this pisses off her dad because
Speaker 1: it would ruin his reputation because royalty is fucking dumb.
Speaker 1: So her dad had her lover, a captain in the army,
Speaker 1: thrown into prison. In that prison, her boyfriend meantime Italian
Speaker 1: poisoner named Aksilli, who had been the court the court
Speaker 1: poisoner for a bunch of royalty in a bunch of countries,
Speaker 1: and he teaches boyfriend the art of poison. And boyfriend
Speaker 1: gets out of prison and he becomes a licensed alchemist
Speaker 1: so he can get arsenic and all that shit, and
Speaker 1: starts making poisons. And the cool thread is that Axilly
Speaker 1: might have gotten his information. Who might have gotten his information?
Speaker 1: I read this whole article tracing the lineage between Tofauna
Speaker 1: are our heroes from last time, right and Exsilly and
Speaker 1: therefore all of these other murders. So this whole long line,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her boyfriend gets pretty good at making poisons, or maybe
Speaker 1: he just bought the poisons. Fucking stories change.
Speaker 2: I have a question. Yeah, alchemists, they're there are legal
Speaker 2: profession back.
Speaker 1: Then, apparently what are they?
Speaker 2: What are they doing? So what are what is alchemy?
Speaker 2: As far as like, if they're not killing people, are
Speaker 2: you like having little potions that heal you?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Is that the like? What is what is it?
Speaker 1: So alchemy was like in some ways was it kind
Speaker 1: of the word for science before science? And so it
Speaker 1: was like people who were like studying shit and trying
Speaker 1: to invent different chemical shit again with the theoretical long
Speaker 1: lineage of trying to create the Philosopher's stone and make
Speaker 1: gold out of lead or whatever. But mostly alchemists, I
Speaker 1: believe at the time were essentially apothecaries and were like
Speaker 1: druggists and you can go to essentially Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly how the licensing thing worked in France
Speaker 1: at the time, but apparently he was able to get
Speaker 1: his license to be an alchemist in the same way
Speaker 1: that the arsenic that the other people got was through
Speaker 1: an apothecary, you know, someone who had legal access to
Speaker 1: it who then turned around and sold it on the side.
Speaker 1: And the suspected poison this time was arsenic, and the
Speaker 1: essence of toads, And it really seems like all the
Speaker 1: poison at the time was just arsenic with something for flavor.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, what if you mix arsenic with this,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, yeah, it's going to kill someone
Speaker 1: because it's fucking arsenic. It's like the fucking I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like your style, your brand. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that is interesting, she actually killed her husband, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry her. She didn't kill her husband. She tried
Speaker 1: to kill her husband. She killed her brothers and her
Speaker 1: dad with like a super basic poison that was like
Speaker 1: really obvious when they like cut open, cut them open
Speaker 1: and looked at their organs. And when they found her,
Speaker 1: they found super basic, shitty poison which I don't even
Speaker 1: think was arsenic based. I can't remember what it was
Speaker 1: based on. And they also found clear vials of a
Speaker 1: suspected arsenic based one, and in order to test it,
Speaker 1: they gave it to stray dogs and killed those dogs. Wow,
Speaker 1: which happened a lot at the time. But did you
Speaker 1: know that aquatafana would never kill a dog. Aquatafana only
Speaker 1: kills husbands. It will kill one hundred percent of husbands
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the time. It is available for
Speaker 1: purchase where ever you get your magical charms. Any person
Speaker 1: you meet on the street who will give your fortune. Actually,
Speaker 1: don't go accost actual fortune tellers asking them for poison.
Speaker 2: But they can get twenty percent off, right, Yes, with
Speaker 2: the with the code cool people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you go in and say I'm with cool people,
Speaker 1: and you get twenty percent off your aqua tafauna. Remember
Speaker 1: to ask for aqua tafauna. Margaret Kiljoyce sent you, and
Speaker 1: then murder your huh Nope, Okay, Sophie is shaking her head.
Speaker 1: Advice ADS. We are back from ADS and we are
Speaker 1: talking about how some poison shit poisoned. But the husband
Speaker 1: may have been making sorry, the boyfriend may or may
Speaker 1: not have been. I'm just using boyfriend and shit because
Speaker 1: if I started writing it all out with all their
Speaker 1: names used every time, and then I was like, I
Speaker 1: can't keep track of this many names, and if I
Speaker 1: was a listener, I would also not keep track of
Speaker 1: this many names, and so I'm just going with boyfriend.
Speaker 1: You can look up the affairs of the poisons if
Speaker 1: you want to learn all of these people's names. He
Speaker 1: wasn't very good at security culture. He might have been
Speaker 1: good at poison, not good at security culture, because he
Speaker 1: saved all of the letters from his girlfriend that said
Speaker 1: things like, oh no, hey, babe, what if I killed
Speaker 1: everyone in my family so we could own more land
Speaker 1: or whatever? He dies, I actually don't know how he dies.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out how he dies. He's a captain
Speaker 1: in the army. It's the seventeenth century, and he had
Speaker 1: just murdered some people. So stabbed with a sword, hanged
Speaker 1: by the state, and tuberculosis are my three guesses. After
Speaker 1: he dies, they found all the letters, and that's how
Speaker 1: she gets found out and tortured and executed.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: During her confession she says, half the people of quality
Speaker 1: are involved in this sort of thing, and it could
Speaker 1: ruin them if I were to talk, and by basically
Speaker 1: hating that, she sent everyone into a panic wow and
Speaker 1: put serious fear into the men at court. And my
Speaker 1: argument would be, if you don't want to be murdered
Speaker 1: by women, then don't create an economic system by which
Speaker 1: women can only inherit wealth that they murder you. But whatever,
Speaker 1: And this is the start of the affair of the poisons,
Speaker 1: because her killing the people isn't the affair of the poisons,
Speaker 1: that's just the actual poison murder. Instead, it's this like
Speaker 1: breakup of the magical underworld scene of Paris. And I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do the whole details of the affair
Speaker 1: of the poisons because it's not actually cool. I think
Speaker 1: the underworld people are super cool, but I don't give
Speaker 1: a shit about royalty. It led to this crackdown of
Speaker 1: the criminal magical underworld of France. All the fortune tellers
Speaker 1: and alchemists. Everyone's selling afrodisiacs and horoscopes and shit, and
Speaker 1: they might have sold poison and called it quote inheritance powder, which.
Speaker 2: Rules they're inventive with these names.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, oh yeah, one woman who gets
Speaker 1: called a witch and fuck it, I don't know she's
Speaker 1: a witch. That's cool. She might have been in charge
Speaker 1: of it all. She might have been in charge of
Speaker 1: this whole poisonous ring, or there might not have been
Speaker 1: a fucking poisonous ring in the magical underworld at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't fucking know. Her name was Levoison, which means
Speaker 1: the neighbor, which is a sick name for a witch.
Speaker 1: Anyone searching for new names whatever, Okay, that one might
Speaker 1: come off oddly. She made her living selling love potions
Speaker 1: made with like afterbirth and shit. She was also maybe
Speaker 1: responsible for poisoning more than a thousand people, And after
Speaker 1: hours of looking into it, I cannot decide whether I
Speaker 1: think it's true. She ends up burned at the stake
Speaker 1: and it I kind of think that the whole thing
Speaker 1: was made up after the woman murdered the husband, the father, right,
Speaker 1: and the brothers. But yeah, the affair of the poisons
Speaker 1: leads to thirty six people being executed, possibly as witch hysteria,
Speaker 1: or there might have been pre with black masses, an
Speaker 1: incestin poison, and a garden with the bones of two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred infants Lavoisen's garden.
Speaker 2: Can you repeat that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so supposedly when they caught Levozen, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say the neighbor because they can't pronounce French. When they
Speaker 1: catch the neighbor in her garden is buried the bones
Speaker 1: of two thousand, five hundred infants. Oh, and here's a
Speaker 1: contemporary description of one of the black masses from from
Speaker 1: the poison affair, which I'm guessing didn't happen, whatever, maybe
Speaker 1: it did. There's a lot of evidence it did. It's
Speaker 1: actually literally my skepticism is the only thing holding me
Speaker 1: from just saying this is true. Everyone else is like,
Speaker 1: this fucking happened, and I'm like, I don't fucking know
Speaker 1: about this. Right, historians say this shit happened. It probably
Speaker 1: fucking happened. Maybe not the Garden of Bones, We're not sure.
Speaker 1: And this is talking about the King's mistress, and who
Speaker 1: was implicated in the whole affair but ended up surviving
Speaker 1: because she was the King's mistress. So here's a contemporary
Speaker 1: description quote. A long black velvet pall was spread over
Speaker 1: the altar, and upon this the Royal Mistress laid herself
Speaker 1: in a state of perfect nudity. Six black candles were lit.
Speaker 1: The celebrant robed himself in a chawsible embroidered with esoteric characters,
Speaker 1: wrought and silver. The gold patten and chalice were placed
Speaker 1: upon the naked belly of the living altar. All was
Speaker 1: silent save for the low, monotonous murmur of the blasphemous liturgy.
Speaker 1: An assistant crept forward, bearing an infant in her arms.
Speaker 1: The child was held over the altar, a sharp gash
Speaker 1: across the neck, a stifled cry and warm drops fell
Speaker 1: into the chalice and streamed upon the white figure beneath.
Speaker 1: The corpse was handed to olivo's in, who flung it
Speaker 1: callously into an oven fashioned for that purpose, which glowed
Speaker 1: white hot in its fierceness. Yeah, the incantation of the priest,
Speaker 1: in case anyone needs the incantation, asked her off as Medeus.
Speaker 1: Princes of friendship and Love, I invoke you to accept
Speaker 1: the sacrifice this child that I offer you for the
Speaker 1: things I ask of you. They are that the friendship
Speaker 1: and love of the King and the Dauphin may be
Speaker 1: assured to me, that I may be honored by all
Speaker 1: the princes and princesses of the court. That the King
Speaker 1: deny me nothing I ask, whether it be for my
Speaker 1: relatives or for any of my household.
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean, first of all, what a pathetic little chant,
Speaker 2: very desperate.
Speaker 1: I know, what if he loves me? What if he
Speaker 1: loves me? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Also, the Princess of friendship in love threw me off,
Speaker 2: like that's assurance has confirmed not a sleigh. But also
Speaker 2: I mean like most of that stuff for me definitely
Speaker 2: sounds kind of made up, Like the he right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's that is I mean this was written
Speaker 1: as a thing that happened at the time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I like the affairs of the poisons, like gets reported
Speaker 1: on is like all this shit happened, and I don't
Speaker 1: really believe a lot of it. I know that the
Speaker 1: I know that people got hanged. I think it was
Speaker 1: witch hysteria. And probably someone listening knows ways truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's probably a starting point of truth.
Speaker 2: And then people get scared and take up a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff and yeah, yeah, just implement misogyny over and over.
Speaker 1: Yea. The infants that were supposedly used in these rituals
Speaker 1: were alleged to have been acquired from sex workers or
Speaker 1: maybe are the fate of the people who come to
Speaker 1: the magical world asking for help getting rid of a baby.
Speaker 1: The priest involved was arrested and confessed, But again that
Speaker 1: means nothing to me, because everyone's gotting fucking tortured, you know.
Speaker 1: But he theoretically confessed to that black mass, and he
Speaker 1: died in prison, and in his confession he claims that
Speaker 1: he sacrificed several of his own newborn children. I I
Speaker 1: don't believe anything people who are confessing saying that's fair,
Speaker 1: But there were several homes for wayward priests around Europe
Speaker 1: for priests who started doing weird shit like that, like
Speaker 1: having black masses and things, so maybe it was actually
Speaker 1: kind of a big problem, or maybe the moral panic
Speaker 1: was everywhere and every priest who seemed a little sketchy,
Speaker 1: throw them in the fucking home for Wayward Priests and
Speaker 1: the whole conspiracy. Right, I'm curious, like, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you can the baby stuff be true?
Speaker 2: Like do they really kill little babies for blood?
Speaker 1: Maybe? Uh? I bet that some of the magical underworld
Speaker 1: shit included killing babies, but also killing of babies and
Speaker 1: shit with blood is like the core of like bullshit
Speaker 1: conspiracy type stuffy and moral panics and things. So like
Speaker 1: I bet mostly there were abortionists and they were like
Speaker 1: you know, love filter people and whatever like mm hmm.
Speaker 1: But and I and I bet you the the I
Speaker 1: bet you the evil priests were just like also making
Speaker 1: love potions where they were like hell, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: use my like holy powers of God to like you know,
Speaker 1: make some love potions people or whatever, and and they
Speaker 1: all like had mistresses and were like doing like or misters,
Speaker 1: I guess, and doing all kinds of shit that they
Speaker 1: like weren't supposed to. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I can't. I can't stop thinking about Resputin.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I feel like he's like a
Speaker 2: very famous man, witch or wizard or whatever.
Speaker 1: Mystic, right, I like man, which I'm just saying he's a.
Speaker 2: Man, which that's funny, but it's interesting that I don't know,
Speaker 2: like he was a very public royal, like yeah, mystic
Speaker 2: or essential you're mystic, you know what I mean? Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just very Uh that was like not even that
Speaker 2: long ago. That was like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen
Speaker 2: hundreds or something, so damn yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean like this underworld existed like h and a
Speaker 1: lot of times it was really out in the open.
Speaker 1: And the question for me is just like whether or not,
Speaker 1: because I mean I could imagine, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you came to my house and arrested me, it
Speaker 1: would look real bad some of the shit I keep
Speaker 1: around and the shit that I talk about on this
Speaker 1: podcast and whatever, right, but I don't like sacrifice babies
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know. Yeah, but if they would be
Speaker 1: like it'd be easy to make these jumps with a
Speaker 1: moral panic. Mm hmm. Yeah, the collapse of this whole
Speaker 1: conspiracy of poisoners, this particular new conspiracy of poisoners apparently,
Speaker 1: and this woman probably was a poisoner, right, She probably
Speaker 1: was a selling people poison person. And I think the
Speaker 1: neighbor was too. She she was a widow and a
Speaker 1: fortune teller, and she bragged drunk at a party. It
Speaker 1: was her like girlfriend's party. She bragged drunk at a
Speaker 1: party that she was doing so well in the poison
Speaker 1: game that she could retire soon, which got the cops
Speaker 1: onto her, who were like, hello, I would like to
Speaker 1: buy a poison please, and she was like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. Here's some poison and they were like,
Speaker 1: just kidding, we are the police. And so her whole
Speaker 1: family gets arrested and her and her kids are all
Speaker 1: executed I think, burned at the stake. Oh no, So
Speaker 1: don't brag drunk at parties about felonies are doing and then.
Speaker 2: Maybe good tip.
Speaker 1: Her whole family slept in one bed, all incest style.
Speaker 1: And this is a messier episode that I'm used to doing.
Speaker 1: Her lesbian lover whose party it was died under torture,
Speaker 1: and in the end the state killed thirty six people,
Speaker 1: not including two who died under torture and an unknown
Speaker 1: number who killed themselves. During the repression. Renegade priests were arrested,
Speaker 1: many of whom got life in prison or I think
Speaker 1: that probably translates to scent to those homes for wayward priests.
Speaker 1: But the affair got kind of shut down once it
Speaker 1: reached the King's mistress and she was never put up
Speaker 1: on charges, and the whole thing fucked France's reputation internationally,
Speaker 1: so much so that when the next crew of occultist
Speaker 1: poisoners cropped up a couple decades later, because apparently there's
Speaker 1: a social need. In seventeen oh two, they just kind
Speaker 1: of quietly imprisoned the ring laders and definitely without trial,
Speaker 1: and just were like, we're going to make this problem
Speaker 1: go away. We're not going to make it do another
Speaker 1: big stink. But anyway, men everywhere can rest a little
Speaker 1: bit easier knowing that divorce is legal and their wives
Speaker 1: have an easier way out of a bad relationship than arsenic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why are they complaining? Now? You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Y'all have it easy. Y'all have it so easy.
Speaker 1: Wait too, the men or the men, yeah, men.
Speaker 2: They should There should not be any reason for any
Speaker 2: complaints at this juncture. But I mean, like you brought
Speaker 2: up a good point though about it being in need.
Speaker 2: It kept popping up generation after generation or whatever, right,
Speaker 2: So it's really it's pathetic actually how long it took
Speaker 2: them to even consider making men or women and men
Speaker 2: equal you know what, I mean, to hold on.
Speaker 1: To that power, yeah, or even just able to leave
Speaker 1: each other, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: Like the concept of someone being property was also a
Speaker 2: huge issue obviously, but like.
Speaker 1: No, I never never affected anything else, right now, that's
Speaker 1: not even sure, Yeah no, yeah, absolutely, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And it kept like like white men to be the
Speaker 2: people that can wield power and only them, and so like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, power is a disease, and I don't
Speaker 2: know most people when they get it, they I don't know,
Speaker 2: they'll do anything to keep it. And that's un settled
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Would you say that the cure for the power disease
Speaker 1: is arsenic? Maybe not in a legally binding way, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I would the fact that it's like literally
Speaker 2: in our earth is really magical to me. If you
Speaker 2: want to use that word. It's pretty sick the fact
Speaker 2: that like I mean, a lot of things grow that
Speaker 2: are bad for us, or or even just like real
Speaker 2: is bad for us. Yes, arsen is bad for us.
Speaker 2: There's like certain berries you can't eat. But I mean,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, we are on this
Speaker 2: globe and the Earth is deciding what happens, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. If the Earth wants to have some
Speaker 2: things that float around, it can kill us. Yeah you do,
Speaker 2: you like I support her?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, well, thanks for for coming on my How
Speaker 1: to Kill Your Husband episode. It was fun to do
Speaker 1: something a little bit out of my usual wheelhouse, know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm honored I was chosen for this.
Speaker 2: It was very fun. I learned a lot and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: this is the only I think podcasts or the way
Speaker 2: I learn things now, and so I appreciate when they're good.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I learned a lot from Sharene's history
Speaker 1: episodes on It Could Happen here, And if other people
Speaker 1: want to learn from Sharen, they can do so by
Speaker 1: listening to Shreene on It Can Happen Margaret.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm on that. I am also the co host
Speaker 2: of Ethnically ambiguous, and you can follow me on social
Speaker 2: media if you want, Share Hero, Instagram, Shure, Hero, sixt x'
Speaker 2: six Twitter. Also, after we're going.
Speaker 1: To have a joke to wrap this up, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: my love that blug that you can before you wrap
Speaker 1: it up with a joke, you can also follow me
Speaker 1: on social media. I also wish I wasn't on social media,
Speaker 1: but I feel more hooked into it than I want
Speaker 1: to be. I'm on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy and on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Margret Kiljoy and I have a book called
Speaker 1: We Won't Be Here Tomorrow that is available now in stores.
Speaker 1: Buy it, go buy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, we like kind of shot ourselves in the
Speaker 2: foot because I also don't like social media and hate
Speaker 2: that I'm that connected, but like I feel like if
Speaker 2: you're on a podcast, you kind of have to be
Speaker 2: front facing in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Right, Yep, that's why I love on social media.
Speaker 2: That's called self sabotage. Yeah, are you ready for my joke?
Speaker 1: I am absolutely.
Speaker 2: What kind of tea is hard to swallow?
Speaker 1: Honesty?
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good one, but I's all the answer,
Speaker 2: But I take it. I will take that though. I mean,
Speaker 2: honesty is better I was gonna say reality.
Speaker 1: A true so true.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah, that's that's my joke. Thank you for
Speaker 2: coming to my.
Speaker 1: Joke next week Joke Hour with Jerine. That wasn't a
Speaker 1: very good joke. That's why it's with Serena, not me.
Speaker 2: We'll be We'll be We'll be back next week. We'll
Speaker 2: be back, We'll be bad, and you'll you'll be here too,
Speaker 2: and you'll listen to it because that's what you do.
Speaker 1: We'll be.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: People who did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit
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Speaker 2: Cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
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