Chapter XIX: Curious Methods Employed by Secret Poisoners

Of the various methods employed by criminal poisoners, administration through the medium of food or drink has been more common than any other. The poisoned cake or wine recurs with monotonous frequency in the history of poisoning from the earliest times down to the present. Women especially seem to have had a predilection for this method of administering a lethal dose, a fact probably due to their control and direction of domestic matters, which renders the introduction of a poisonous substance into the food or drink an easy matter.

In early times some fell victims to their own evil designs, as instanced in the case of Rosamond, the wife of Alboin, King of Lombardy, in A.D. 573. It is stated that, wishing to rid herself of her husband, she gave him a cup of poisoned wine when he was coming from his bath. The king drank part, but suspecting its nature from the strange effect it produced, wisely insisted that she should drink the remainder, with the result that both died shortly afterwards.

Reginald Scot, who wrote _The Discovery of Witchcraft_ in 1584, quaintly states his belief that “women were the first inventors and the greatest practisers of poysoning and more materially addicted and given thereunto than men.”

Throughout the history of criminal poisoning there has always been a high percentage of women implicated and numerous cases could be cited of female lunatics with whom the use of poison for criminal purposes amounted to an obsession. With these types, not infrequently met with, there is no suggestion of a motive, the object being apparently to destroy life without any sane reason.

Women of this kind have lived in various periods from the time of Locusta to de Brinvilliers. There was also Van der Linden, a Dutch woman who poisoned one hundred and two people, and Hélène Jegado, who apparently regarded poisoning as a pastime and whose victims were estimated to number twenty-six.

Some poisoners, not content with introducing the substance into wine or other drink, essayed to improve on this method by preparing a goblet or cup in such a way that it would impregnate any liquid that was placed in it. There is record of one François Belot, a Frenchman, who made a speciality of this method, and, it is said, derived a considerable income therefrom; but he fitly ended his days by being broken on the wheel on June 10, 1679.

According to a contemporary writer, Belot’s special method consisted in cramming a toad with arsenic, placing it in a silver goblet, and after pricking its head, crushing it in the vessel. Whilst this operation was being performed he recited certain charms. According to his own account, which is still on record, of treating a cup with a toad in this way, “I know a secret,” he says, “such that, in doctoring a cup with a toad, and what I put into it, if fifty persons chanced to drink from it afterwards, even if it were washed and rinsed, they would all be done for, and the cup could only be purified by throwing it into a hot fire. After having thus poisoned the cup, I should not try it upon a human being, but upon a dog, and I should entrust the cup to nobody.” Belot’s statements were evidently believed in his time, and he enjoyed a considerable reputation.

Another individual named Blessis flourished about the same period, and who, claiming to practise sorcery and magic, went so far as to declare to the world that he had discovered a method of manipulating mirrors in such a way that whoever looked into them would meet his death.

According to tradition, boots, gloves and other articles of wearing apparel have been utilized by poisoners for carrying out their evil plans, and although many of these tales are purely legendary, it is quite possible that others have some substratum of truth. Tissot states that John, King of Castille, owed his death to wearing a pair of boots which were supposed to have been impregnated with poison by a Turk. Henry VI is said to have succumbed through wearing poisoned gloves, and Louis XIV and Pope Clement VII through the fumes of a poisoned candle.

The stories of the poisoned shirts which, if contemporary records are to be believed, were not infrequently employed by poisoners in the seventeenth century, are within the bounds of possibility. Apparently corrosive sublimate, arsenic and cantharides were employed for this purpose. The shirt is said to have been prepared by soaking it in a strong solution of one of these poisons, the idea being to produce a violent dermatitis with ulceration, which would force the victim to take to his bed. The physician would then be sent for, and would probably diagnose the case as due to syphilis, and prescribe mercury, with the effect of killing the patient in the end.

Such a case is recorded by Dr. Lucian Nass, who relates the story of Madame de Poulaillon, the wife of a wealthy man who was a good deal her senior. Desirous of ridding herself of her husband, she sought the counsel of one Marie Bosse, who told Madame that she should try the method of the poisoned shirt, which she herself would prepare. She then took one of her husband’s shirts, together with a piece of arsenic “as big as an egg,” to La Bosse. She first washed it and then soaked the tail in a strong solution of arsenic, so that it only looked “a little rusty,” as if it had been ill-washed, and was stiffer than usual. La Bosse told her that only the lower part of the shirt had been thus prepared, and the effect would be to produce violent inflammation and intense pain.

Madame de Poulaillon is said to have given La Bosse a sum of money, equal to £800 at the present day, for her services. The husband was, however, warned of the evil intended to him and had his wife arrested. The lady is said to have so fascinated her judges that a contemporary writer states “they were touched by her wit and by her grace and by the tones in which she spoke of her misfortunes and her crime, and though she confessed her guilt, and pronounced herself worthy of death, she was acquitted with applause.”

A few years ago, Dr. Nass, with a view to ascertaining the truth of the assertions connected with the poisoned shirt, made some interesting experiments on a guinea-pig. He carefully shaved a portion of the left lumbar region and gently rubbed the skin with a paste containing arsenic in the proportion of one in ten. He repeated the operation several times during the day. Shortly afterwards the animal became prostrate, the eyes became dull, it assumed a cholera-like aspect and in forty-eight hours died. The skin on which the paste had been applied remained unchanged and unbroken, and showed no sign of ulceration. On examining the internal organs after death, fatty degeneration of the viscera was found and several marked symptoms of arsenical poisoning. This experiment does not, of course, prove the fact that a shirt impregnated with arsenic worn in direct contact with the skin would prove fatal, but it shows that arsenic may be introduced into the body simply by gentle friction on an unbroken skin, and that the effect of the poisoned shirt was possible.

The Duke of Savoy is said to have been one of the last victims of this method, and it is stated that when a shirt could not be procured a slipper was used, although it did not prove so effective. Apparently the primary object in this method was not to kill but to prostrate the patient in bed where he could be despatched at leisure under pretence of treatment.

Similar to the method of treating the shirt there is a legendary story in India of the Queen of Ganore, who is said to have killed Rajah Bukht by impregnating his marriage robes with poison. Chevers, who relates the story,[8] affirms that this form of poisoning is possible. “Anyone,” he writes, “who has noticed how freely a robust person in India perspires through a thin garment, can understand that if the cloth were thoroughly impregnated with the cantharadine of that very powerful vesicant, the Telini, the result would be as dangerous as that of an extensive burn.” He further states that Mr. Todd has published ample evidence in support of the idea that the deaths of several historical personages in India were caused by poisoned robes.

Footnote 8:

_Manual of Medical Jurisprudence in India._ Norman Chevers.

A curious case in which the poisoner attempted to prove that the medical treatment was responsible for the crime happened in France a few years ago, when a woman was charged at the Paris Court of Assizes with attempting to murder her husband. It was known that the couple had lived unhappily together, and arrangements had been made for a divorce.

One morning the husband complained of a severe headache and his wife suggested a dose of antipyrine, which she gave him in some mineral water. He remarked to her at the time that the draught had a peculiar taste. Later in the day she administered sundry cups of coffee to him, but he grew rapidly worse and at night a doctor was summoned. He failed to diagnose the complaint, and called in other medical men, who were equally puzzled. One thing which they all noticed, was a peculiar dilatation of the pupils of the patient’s eyes.

A consultation was held the next day, and shortly afterwards one of the medical men received a note from the lady in which she stated that her husband was “black.” “He was dead, more dead than any man I ever saw.”

The doctor at once went to see the patient, and found him in a state of collapse. He bled him twice and injected caffeine, but he still remained motionless. After a time it occurred to the doctor that the patient’s symptoms resembled those of atropine poisoning, and, resorting to other measures, he eventually brought him round. Then he remembered that the lady had previously asked him for some morphine for herself, and when he had refused it she requested some atropine for her dog’s eyes. He wrote her a prescription for a solution of atropine, containing ten per cent. of the drug, and took it to the chemist himself. On further inquiries it was proved that the lady had procured atropine upon various other occasions by copying the doctor’s prescription and forging his signature.

At the trial the medical evidence was very conflicting, but the consensus of opinion was in favour of the theory that atropine had been administered in small, repeated doses. The accused woman declared in her defence that atropine had been put into the medicine for her husband in mistake by the chemist who had dispensed it. There was no evidence to support this theory, and she was found guilty and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.

A modern instance of the poisoned boot came to light a few years ago in a case of death by the absorption of a poisonous boot-blacking. The victim, a young man, had been to a dance, and shortly afterwards became unconscious and died in four hours. For some time the cause of his death was a complete mystery, when a few days later a bottle of blacking was found in his room, with which it was discovered he had blacked his shoes on the evening of his death. The colouring had penetrated his socks and stained his feet and ankles. On analysis the solvent in the blacking was found to consist of nitro-benzene, an extremely poisonous liquid, largely used in the manufacture of the cheap, strong-smelling perfumes and soaps so frequently used. This was no doubt rapidly absorbed by his feet when dancing, and so caused his death.

A great deal of fiction has been written concerning the so-called poison rings of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, which are generally taken to mean a finger ring containing a secret receptacle for carrying some poisonous substance. In the majority of cases it has been found that these receptacles were originally intended for hair kept as a “memento mori” or for fragments of religious relics.

Rings have been described as being fitted with a tiny envenomed spike by means of which the wearer could inoculate his victim by a grasp of the hand, as described in the following story published a few years ago in a Paris journal.

It stated that when examining an ancient ring he had picked up in the shop of an antiquity dealer in the Rue St. Honoré, a customer scratched his hand with the sharp part of it. While still talking to the dealer, in a few moments he suddenly felt an indescribable feeling, as if his whole body were paralysed to the finger-tips, and he became so ill that it was found necessary to send for a medical man. The doctor diagnosed it as a case of poisoning and after the prompt administration of an emetic the patient recovered. The medical man is then said to have examined the ring and found attached to it inside, two lions’ claws made of sharp steel, with grooves in them which contained the poison. Having long resided in Venice, he recognized it as being what was formerly called the “annelo della morte,” or “death ring,” often used by Italians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Outside the realm of romance, however, there is little doubt that rings were used in ancient times as a medium for carrying poisons. This was originally done for the purpose of self-destruction, or at a later period may have been found useful as a lethal weapon against an enemy. There are several specimens of these rings with traditions attached to them which bear the evidence of authenticity.

In the troublous times of the Roman Emperors, when those who took a prominent part in public affairs were liable to be suddenly thrown into prison at the word of a capricious monarch, rings containing receptacles for poison are said to have been often worn, so that the contents could be swallowed to save their wearer from torture, imprisonment or an ignominious death.

Rings of the Roman period are always wrought with the hammer, and never cast; they were thus hollow and would easily afford a convenient receptacle for poison. Pliny records that when Marcus Crassus robbed the Capitol of the gold deposited there by Camillus, the custodian who was responsible for its safety “broke the stone of his ring” and died shortly afterwards.

An interesting Roman gem which might have been used for this purpose is in a London museum. It is an onyx, upon which is engraved the head of a horned fawn. The stone itself has been hollowed out, forming a cavity sufficiently large to carry poison, to take which it would only be necessary to bite through the thin shell of the onyx and swallow the contents of the cavity.

Further mention of these hollowed gems is made with reference to Heliogabalus, to whom it was foretold that he should die a violent death. It is said “he therefore prepared against such an emergency, halters twined with silk, and poison enclosed in rubies, sapphires and emeralds set in his rings to give him a choice of deaths.” It is said of Demosthenes that having given up all hope of escaping from his enemies the Macedonians, he swallowed a poison which he carried about with him concealed in a stylus.

Hannibal also is said to have taken his life in a similar manner, and when hunted and in dread of being delivered into the hands of the Romans by Prusias, King of Bithynia, took the poison which he always carried with him concealed in the hollow of a ring. Juvenal thus alludes to it in his Tenth Satire:

“Nor swords, nor spears, nor stones from engines hurl’d,
Shall quell the man whose frown alarm’d the world;
The vengeance due to Cannæ’s fatal field,
And floods of human gore—a ring shall yield.”

Although these stories describe what happened so long ago, it is curious to note how history repeats itself, when we recall the tragic conclusion to the trial of Whittaker Wright in London a few years ago. Immediately, when found guilty of the charges brought against him, either as he was listening to the judge’s closing words or as he was leaving the scene of the trial, he swallowed, unobserved, some tablets of potassium cyanide which he had secreted about him, and died shortly afterwards within the precincts of the court.

Another instance of a similar refuge from persecuting fate is that of Condorcet, who was secretary to the Academy of Sciences of France, and who was proscribed by the Convention at the time of the Revolution in 1792. He took refuge in the house of a Madame Vernet in Paris, but fearing to compromise his protectress by a longer stay, he left his asylum with the intention of taking refuge in the country house of an old friend. Unfortunately, the friend was away and he wandered about sleeping at night in some stone quarries, but was at length arrested and taken to Bourg-la-Reine and lodged in prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead in his cell, having swallowed some poison which he carried about in readiness for an emergency, concealed in his ring. On investigation, the poison was found to consist of opium and stramonium which he kept specially prepared.

Motley records that in the conspiracies against the life of the Prince of Orange about the year 1582, under the influence of the Court of Spain, the young Lamoral Egmont, in return for the kindness shown to him by the Prince, attempted to destroy him at his own table by means of poison which he kept concealed in a ring. Philippe van Marnix, Lord of Saint Aldegonde, was to have been treated in the same way, and a hollow ring containing poison was said to have been found in Egmont’s lodgings.

There are, however, rings of the sixteenth and seventeenth century of Italian workmanship that have traditions from which there is little doubt they were actually used for the purpose of carrying poisons. In examining rings, claimed to have been used for the purpose, it is necessary to note first that the poison must be accessible, and second, that the receptacle must be so constructed that it could be used without the ring being taken from the finger. Rings are often found with cavities and receptacles on the inside of the bezel, and it is difficult to believe that they could have been used for this purpose. There are many ancient rings extant, often called poison rings, with small boxes placed at the back of a stone, but these rings could only have been used for containing a perfume or a small relic. The construction of a ring, claimed to have been used for the purpose, must show reasonable grounds that it could have been so employed. The most interesting ring of the kind known, is one that was formerly in the possession of the late Bishop of Ely. It passed from him to a clergyman in London, who was a well-known antiquary. He claimed that it once belonged to Cæsar Borgia, and from the workmanship there seems to be little doubt it belonged to the period. Made of gold, slightly enamelled, it bears the date of 1503, and round the inside are inscribed the words:—“FAYS CEQUE DOYS AVIEN QUE POURRA.” The bezel forms a hollow receptacle and on the front is engraved the name “Borgia,” and in letters reversed are the words “COR UNUM UNA VIA.” At the side of the bezel is a secret slide, which on being pushed reveals the cavity for holding the poison.

Another gold ring of the late sixteenth century, in the possession of an Italian nobleman, is said to have originally belonged to a member of the family, who was a prince of the Church. The bezel is elaborately wrought, and richly ornamented with dark blue enamel, picked out with red and white. It is apparently made in one piece, but a small portion in the centre has cunningly been made to open on a hinge, revealing a secret receptacle capable of holding quite a sufficient quantity of arsenic or corrosive sublimate to cause the death of two or three people.

Fairholt describes a jewelled ring of curious construction set with two rubies and a pyramidal diamond. The gold setting was richly engraved, and the collet securing the diamond opened with a spring, disclosing a somewhat large receptacle for “such virulent poisons as were concocted by Italian chemists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

One of the most curious rings of this kind was formerly in the possession of an Italian cardinal. It is beautifully wrought in fine gold and dates from the latter part of the sixteenth century. The shanks are partly enamelled in black and the bezel is rectangular; at the side of it is a very minute knob with a groove which could be easily turned with the finger nail without removing the ring from the finger. On turning the knob a cylindrical receptacle is revealed, which was most likely used for carrying some poisonous substance. There is a story told in connection with this ring that the secret receptacle was kept filled with tiny granules prepared from a deadly fungus, specially prepared for the owner. The secret receptacle of this ring is almost unnoticeable even when it has been opened.

In connection with the stories relating to a poisoned pin-prick, the following account which appeared in a London morning daily some time ago, is not without interest. The writer says: “The police are searching for a man who is alleged to have poisoned a girl in London under extraordinary circumstances. The girl, who was a typist employed in a Fleet Street office, said that she was walking to her office when a well-dressed man overtook her and grasped her by the wrist. Directly she reached her office she was overcome by four fainting fits in succession. When she recovered she showed a small punctured wound in her wrist and the police were informed.” Then follows a lengthy description of the wanted man. “In various parts of America,” adds the writer, “similar reports of devices employed by persons connected with the White Slave Traffic have been made known. When the victim faints in the street, the assailant who then passes as a relative or friend, calls a cab and drives off with the girl, the poison having been injected into the wrist by pressure from a poison ring!”

Probably one of the most curious receptacles ever used for carrying poison was a wooden leg. Some years ago a man named Jasper Reed, who was once a member of a gang of international thieves, lost his leg through amputation while he was in prison for a theft of £480 from a bank in Antwerp. After his release he was lost sight of for a long time, until one day a wooden-legged cripple was arrested in the street in Antwerp in connection with the theft of some bank-notes, and afterwards poisoned himself while in prison. A post-mortem examination of the body showed that he had killed himself with potassium cyanide, and a bottle containing the poison was found concealed in a hollow receptacle in the wooden leg he was wearing.

There is a tradition that Pope Clement VII, one of the Medici, was poisoned in 1534 by the fumes of a torch impregnated with arsenic carried before him in a religious procession. This is quite within the realm of possibility, especially if the torch or candle had been so prepared that it would give off a certain amount of arseniuretted hydrogen while being burnt in a confined space.

The poisoned flowers of mediæval romance, although they have been discredited in the light of modern science, must not be dismissed as entirely improbable, as evidenced from the following curious case which occurred in London a few years ago. A hawker with a barrow filled with bunches of lavender, was noticed talking wildly in a street in Stockwell. In a few minutes he was seen to fall insensible and was removed to Lambeth Infirmary, where he died shortly afterwards. The medical officer of the institution said he found the man was suffering from nitro-benzene poisoning, and in his pockets were discovered seventeen packets of lavender seeds and a bottle of oil of mirbane (nitro-benzene) which he had evidently used to increase the perfume of the lavender he sold. The doctor stated that in his opinion, the man had been overcome by the vapour of the nitro-benzene he had inhaled from the lavender on his barrow.

Probably the most deadly poison known to science to-day exists in the form of an innocent-looking white powder, which is highly dangerous even to handle. It emits a slight vapour even when exposed to the air, which if inhaled would cause instant death. It has been estimated that if three grains were diffused in a roomful of people it would kill every one present. It is hardly necessary to state that poisons of such great virulence as those revealed by modern chemical research, were unknown to the chemists of the Middle Ages, and it is equally certain that the latter knew of few poisonous bodies that are not familiar to chemists of the present day.

In the military poison plot investigated in Austria in 1909, and referred to in detail elsewhere, the gaol authorities were at a loss to account for the prisoner’s constant demand for flowers for pious purposes while he was on remand. It was only discovered by intercepted letters that he wanted them in order to smuggle poison into his cell, which he apparently succeeded in doing. He requested his wife to insert the poison in flowers which he asked for so he could place them on the altar which he had erected in his cell. The letter to his wife in which this was discovered reads: “I should like to commit suicide, but will not, as I must work for you and for the children. You can save me. Get me flowers and have some atropine or hyoscyamine. Victor or —— will obtain it for you, in liquid and solid. Put it carefully in a small quill and seal it up with wax. Put this quill in a carnation, the calyx will hold it well, then tie the calyx round with a thread as they do in florists’ shops.” It appears that some poison actually reached him in this ingenious manner.

A curious case in which a poisoned bed played an important part came to light in America a few years ago, when a woman named Mary Kelliher was tried at Boston on charges of poisoning her husband, three children, a sister and sister-in-law. These people mysteriously died during a period of three years; but after the death of her daughter, in July 1908, suspicion was aroused, and a post-mortem was held which disclosed the presence of arsenic in the body. The bodies of the other five persons were then exhumed, in all of which arsenic was found. There was, however, no evidence connecting the woman with the administration of poison to her victim until it occurred to the District Attorney to examine some of the furniture in the bedroom. The mattress on which all of those of the family who had died had lain was then cut open and carefully examined. In the hair stuffing considerable quantities of arsenic were discovered, which suggested it had been specially impregnated, so the poison could be inhaled during sleep by the person lying on the bed. Ingenious as this suggestion for the prosecution was, as to how the poison came into the bodies of those who had died, Mrs. Kelliher was acquitted after being fifteen months in prison on this charge.