PROFESSIONAL POISONERS The criminal destruction of life by poison has been practised from ancient times. Very little was known of toxicology in those days, and even the symptoms often passed unrecognised or were attributed to natural causes, and the poisoners' fiendish work was frequently undiscovered and rendered easy. In the early Christian era, poisoning, indeed, became quite a profession, and convenient individuals could be hired with little difficulty to administer a deadly dose to an enemy or rival. Agrippina, in refusing to eat some apples offered to her at table by her father-in-law Tiberius, must have had suspicions of this kind. Locusta, who is said to have supplied the poison by which Agrippina got rid of Claudius, and who also prepared the dose for Britannicus, according to the order of his brother Nero, is the first professional poisoner of whom we have record. In the year B.C. 331 an epidemic broke out in Rome which was supposed to proceed from corrupt air, but it was observed that the principal patricians only were the victims. Their deaths, however, were attributed to infection, for poisoning was then scarcely known in Rome nor was there a law for its punishment. In the general grief, a female slave presented herself to the edile curule Q. Fabius and accused more than twenty Roman ladies of poisoning: designing specially Cornelia, a lady of an illustrious family of that name, and Sergia, another patrician lady. It is recorded that as many as three hundred and sixty-six ladies were similarly accused; but Cornelia and Sergia were detected in compounding their fatal potions. "When led before the popular assembly they maintained their preparations were harmless remedies. The slave, seeing herself accused as a false witness, asked that the ladies should be required to swallow their own potions; which they did, and by so doing avoided a more shameful death." Later, there were, doubtless, many, both men and women of the baser sort, who professed to practise alchemy, and had dealings in the black arts, who for suitable consideration would procure poison for criminal purposes. In mediÆval times a law From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century two great criminal schools arose in Venice and Italy. The Venetian poisoners who first came into notoriety, flourished in the fifteenth century. At that period the mania for poisoning had risen to such a height, that the governments of the states were formally recognizing secret assassination by poison, and considering the removal of emperors, princes, and powerful nobles by this method. The notorious Council of Ten met to consider such plans, and an account and record of their proceedings still exists, giving the number of those who voted for and who voted against the proposed removal, the reasons for the assassination, and the sum to be paid for its execution. Thus these conspirators quietly arranged to take the lives of many prominent individuals; and when the deed was executed, it was registered on the margin of their official record by the significant word "Factum." On December 15, 1543, John of Raguba, a Franciscan brother, offered the Council a selection of poisons, and declared himself ready to remove any person whom they deemed objectionable out of the way. He calmly stated his terms, which for the first successful case were to be a pension of 1,500 ducats a year, to be increased on the execution of future services. The Presidents, Guolando Duoda and Pietro Guiarini, placed this matter before the Council on January 4, 1544, and on a division, it was resolved to accept this patriotic offer, and to experiment first on the Emperor Maximilian. John, who had evidently reduced poisoning to a fine art, submitted afterwards a regular graduated tariff to the Council, which ran as follows—
The school of Italian poisoners became prominent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the magnitude of their operations during that period struck terror into the hearts of the chief nobles and rulers of that country. The mania for secret poisoning seems to have seized on all classes from the highest to the lowest, and no one who made an enemy was safe. Porta, in his work published in 1589, gives some account of the poisons used at the time, and seems to have made a study of the subject. He describes methods for drugging wine (a favourite medium of administration) with belladonna root, and also mentions nux vomica, aconite, and hellebore, in his account of poisonous bodies. He gives the following recipe for compounding a very strong poison, which he calls "Venenum Lupinum": "Take of the powdered leaves of Aconitum lycoctonum, Taxus baccata, with powdered glass, caustic lime, sulphide of arsenic, and bitter almonds. Mix them with honey, and make into pills the size of a hazel nut." He also recommends a curious mixture to poison a sleeping person. It is composed of a mixture of hemlock juice, bruised stramonium, belladonna, and opium. This is to be placed in a leaden box with a perfectly fitting cover, and allowed to ferment for several days; it is then to be opened under the nose of the intended victim while asleep. So long as the individual only got the smell and did not swallow the compound, it certainly would not do him much harm. The most notorious of the Italian poisoners was the woman Toffana or Toffania, who carried on her practices from the latter end of the seventeenth century until she was brought to justice in 1709. Toffana resided first at Palermo, but removed to Naples in 1659 during the pontificate of Alexander VII. This later Circe gained large sums of money by the sale of certain mysterious preparations she compounded, which were afterwards proved to be simply solutions of arsenious acid. These were circulated throughout Italy in small glass phials, bearing the image of a saint, and labelled various names such as "Acquetta di Napoli," or the "Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari," and "Aqua Toffana." Aqua Toffana was reputed to possess some very peculiar properties, and, among others, that of causing death at any determinate period, after months, for Toffana had many imitators, and some time after her death a similar scheme was attempted with a poisonous solution reputedly sold as a cosmetic, called the "Acquetta di Perugia." It is said to have been prepared by killing a hog, disjointing it, strewing the pieces with white arsenic, which was well rubbed in, and finally collecting the juice which dropped from the meat itself. This preparation was supposed to be much stronger and a more powerful poison than arsenic itself, but doubtless had the same fatal effect. It is a curious fact that most of the notorious poisoners in mediÆval times were women, and, indeed, in later years the frail sex seem to have retained a special predilection for this form of crime. In the year 1659, a secret society of women, most of whom were young wives belonging to some of the best and wealthiest families of Rome, was discovered in that city, the sole or chief object of which was to destroy the lives of the husbands of the members. They met at regular intervals at the house of one Hieronyma Spara, a woman reputed to be a witch, who provided her fellow associates and pupils with the required poison, and planned and instructed them how to use it. Operations had been carried on for some time, when the existence of the society was discovered and, says a chronicler, "the hardened old hag passed the In the seventeenth century the mania for poisoning seems to have spread to France, and great interest was excited by the disclosures which followed the discovery of Exili's conspiracy to poison a number of persons. Madame de Montespan, one of the favourites of Louis XIV, a woman of great beauty, died very suddenly at the age of twenty-six, on June 30, 1672, and it was generally believed she had been poisoned. The rumour seems to have been set on foot by one of her husband's old servants, who professed to know the individual who had administered the fatal dose. "This man," said he, "who was not rich, withdrew immediately afterwards into Normandy, where he bought an estate, on which he lived with grandeur a long time; the poison was powder of diamonds, mixed, instead of sugar, with strawberries." Voltaire, who believed the whole story to be a myth, states: "The court and city believed the princess had been poisoned with a glass of water of succory, after which she felt terrible pains, and soon after was seized with the agonies of death; but the natural malignity of mankind, and a fondness for extraordinary incidents, were the only inducements to this general persuasion. The glass of water could not be poisoned, since Madame de la Fayette and another person drunk what remained without receiving the least injury from it. The princess had been a long time ill of an abscess, which had formed itself in the liver." For some time the young Chevalier De Lorraine, the favourite of the Duke of Orleans, rested under suspicion, it being openly stated that the motive was to revenge the banishment and imprisonment which his misbehaviour to the princess a short time before had drawn upon him. Public opinion was strengthened in the belief that the princess had met her death through poison, by the fact that just at this time the mania for secret poisoning seemed to spread over France. About this date a German apothecary and alchemist, named Glaser, settled in Paris, together with two Italians, one of whom was called Exili. Their professed She was eventually beheaded, and burnt near Notre Dame in July, 1676. St. Croix is said to have accidentally succumbed to the effects of poisonous fumes in his own laboratory. The authorities on examining his effects, as he left no family, came across a The Chambre Ardente, or Burning Court, as it was commonly called, was established at the Arsenal, near the Bastille, and was rarely idle. Persons of the highest rank were cited to appear before it; among others, two nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the Duchess of Bouillon, and the Countess de Soissons, mother of Prince EugÈne. The Countess de Soissons had to retire to Brussels. The Marshal de Luxemburg was the next sensational arrest. He was carried to the Bastille and submitted to a long examination, after which he was allowed to remain fourteen months in prison. La Voisin and his accomplices were eventually condemned and burnt at the stake, which seemed to put a check on this series of abominable crimes which spread throughout France from 1670 to 1680. Maria Louisa, daughter of Louis XIV, who married Charles II, King of Spain, is said to have died from the effects of poison in 1689. Voltaire states: "It The close of the reign of Louis XIV was marked by the sudden deaths of no less than six members of the royal family in close succession. The public sorrow and excitement were great, and rumours and suspicions of poisoning were revived with fury unexampled. The prince had a laboratory, and among other arts studied chemistry. This was considered by the ignorant to be sufficient proof, and the public outcry became terrible. On a visit of the Marquis de Canellae, the prince was found extended on the floor shedding tears, and distracted with despair. His chemist and fellow worker, Homberg, ran to surrender himself at the Bastille, but they refused to receive him without orders. The prince was so beside himself on hearing the public outcry and suspicions that he demanded to be put in prison so that his innocence might be cleared by judicial forms. The lettre de cachet was actually made out, but not signed. The marquis alone kept his head, and prevailed upon the prince's mother to oppose the lettre de cachet. "The monarch who granted it, and his nephew who demanded it, were both equally wretched," says the historian. The "poudre de succession," famous in Paris as a secret poison, was at one time supposed to consist of diamond dust, but, according to Haller, was really composed of sugar of lead. This was used by several notorious criminals during the seventeenth century. |