Themed Set: Arsenic
March 22nd, 2014 Headsman
One of this site’s recurring themes and criminology’s iconic trappings, the poison arsenic carried off many a soul.
Poison has been around forever, of course, but “inheritance powder” was a slow-motion moral panic in the Victorian years — when a man on the make could be imperceptibly nudged into an early grave by a friend or a spouse or a maid using a product that could be had for pennies from the local apothecary.
Who can feel safe, when little old ladies could make a murder spree of afternoon tea?
For the next several days, we’ll remember a few of the arsenic era’s more notable nudges … and a few of the distinct minority of poisoners who found that stealthy powder equally fatal to the hand that stirred it.
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March 22: Hannah Bocking, 16-year-old poisoner
March 23: Ann Bilansky, the only woman hanged by Minnesota
March 24: Mary Ann Cotton, serial poisoner
March 25: Sarah Chesham
March 26: Henry Lovell William Clark, Raj poisoner
March 27: The Brassell boys
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Arsenic photo (cc) image from Curious Expeditions.
On this day..
- Feast Day of Saint Octavian, martyred by the Arian Vandals - 2020
- 1540: Hans Kohlhase, horse wild - 2019
- 1844: Samuel Mohawk - 2018
- 1945: Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim, Lord Moyne's assassins - 2017
- Themed Set: More like Drop-shire - 2016
- 1824: Richard Overfield, wicked stepfather - 2016
- 1864: Kastus Kalinouski, Belarus revolutionary - 2015
- 1819: Hannah Bocking, 16-year-old poisoner - 2014
- 1881: George Parrott, future footwear - 2013
- 1686: A man and a woman broken on the wheel in Hamburg - 2012
- 1733: John Julian, pirate and slave - 2011
- 1803: Thomas Hilliker, teen machine wrecker - 2010
- 1699: William Chaloner, Isaac Newton's prey - 2009
- 1796: Mastro Titta's first execution of many - 2008
Entry Filed under: Themed Sets
Tags: arsenic
