The Murder Network That Terrified Versailles

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode Summary: "The Murder Network That Terrified Versailles"

Host: Anthony Delaney | Guest Co-Host: Dr. Kate Lister

Release Date: June 25, 2026

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Overview & Main Theme

This episode dives into one of 17th-century France’s most chilling scandals: the network of female poisoners whose crimes reached from the backstreets of Paris all the way to the glittering court of Louis XIV. Beginning with the serial killer Marie Madeleine Marguerite d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, the hosts explore how her deadly deeds sparked panic, led to mass investigations and executions, and exposed the infamous “Affair of the Poisons,” implicating everyone from fortune tellers to the King’s own mistress.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: Women, Poison, and Power

• Historical Context: 17th-century Europe—an era plagued by superstition, intrigue, and limited rights for women, making poison both a tool of desperation and subversion.
• Stereotype Explored: The trope of “poison as a woman’s weapon” is dissected, revealing both societal anxieties and practical realities. Poison offered a means of redress in a world without divorce or autonomy for women.
  • Quote (Kate, 06:44):
    “There is this really, really long history of women getting out of terrible, terrible marriages by poisoning their husbands...there is a really long history of women poisoning their husbands.”
• Poison Syndicates: The hosts discuss networks like those led by Julia Tofana in Italy—early criminal enterprises providing women with lethal means to escape miserable fates.

Marie d’Aubray: The Marquise de Brinvilliers

• Her Crimes: An aristocrat who poisoned her father and brothers for inheritance, hiring servants to carry out the murders.
• Method & Motive: Driven by greed, dependency, and frustration with societal restrictions.
  • Quote (Anthony, 12:21):
    "She looks around at her family and she thinks, I need more money...If my dad died, I’d inherit."
• The Cover Blown: Physical evidence and confession under torture tie her to the murders. The public execution is shocking because of her wealth and status.
  • Quote (Kate, 19:00):
    “She goes to her death basically saying, ‘I don’t know why I’m in trouble. Everybody does this.’”

The Scandal Spreads: The Affair of the Poisons

• Origins: Following d’Aubray’s exposure, fear and rumor ferment into hysteria.
• Network Revealed: Arrests of fortune tellers and herbalists—women like La Voisin (Catherine Monvoisin), Marie Bosse, and Marie Vigoreux—reveal a criminal web selling poisons, charms, abortions, and magic.
• Superstition vs. Enlightenment: Paris houses both rational philosophers and citizens obsessed with mysticism and folk remedies.
  • Quote (Kate, 20:47):
    "If you are in the slums of Paris...there is a lot of superstition. There’s a lot of belief in magic and witchcraft and potions."
• Sensational Allegations: As confessions are extracted under torture, stories escalate—child sacrifice, black masses, Satanic rituals—mirroring the era’s witch trial mania.

The Poison Rings Reach Versailles

• Implicating the Elite: Names of aristocrats and courtiers, including the King's mistress, Madame de Montespan, are dropped, sending shockwaves through courtly society.
  • Quote (Kate, 25:57):
    "The biggest name that gets dropped into this is Madame de Montespan. She is the favorite mistress of Louis XIV. So we’ve gone right to the top..."
• Political Fallout: The king intervenes to shield his circle, redacting records—paralleling modern cover-ups of elite scandals.
• Justice (and Injustice): Most victims of execution or torture are poor, often fortune tellers or associated men. High-status figures escape with their reputations tarnished but lives intact.

Public Outrage, Fear, and Legacy

• Mass Arrests and Executions: Hundreds are rounded up; at least 30 are executed, two die under torture, and many flee into exile or languish in jail (see [36:00–38:00]).
  • Quote (Kate, 37:12):
    "There’s a culture of fear now...Who is this mysterious cabal of poisoners who go all the way up to high society?"
• Societal Impact: The mass hysteria blends legitimate concern with paranoia; centuries-old folk magic and women’s networks are retargeted as criminal.
• Enduring Lessons: The affair reveals court society's fragility and hypocrisy and casts a long shadow over French perceptions of women, crime, and occult practice.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Poison as a Means of Escape:
  (Kate, 08:32) “If he dies, I would get all of the money, I would get everything, and then I would be a widow...So you can see how that rather horrendous trade in poisons arose.”

• On the Scandal’s Reach to Versailles:
  (Kate, 30:13) “Now they start naming big names, big names, like right up to Madame de Montespan...he starts having to bring them in.”

• On Justice for the Elite:
  (Kate, 31:31) “He tries to get all records relating to her name taken out, like, redacted...imagine a huge scandal...very, very rich people are at the heart of this, and instead of releasing all the information, they release heavily redacted files and just try to move on.”

• Social Commentary—Modern Parallels:
  (Anthony, 35:23) “This is the taint you're talking about. It undermines you make that mistake, you hang out with that person...that’s the position Louis, even as an absolute monarch, is in.”

• On Life and Death in the 17th Century:
  (Kate, 42:08) “You would have been surrounded by death. You would certainly have known people that died. Siblings probably would have died. And now today we are much more compassionate...Not in 17th century France.”

• End Note—Why This Matters:
  (Kate, 39:29) “There’s something in that people were doing this. So you've got this half mixture of truth, but also like nonsense and paranoia and fear, but a culture of palmistry and like folkloric stuff...which now all of a sudden looks like witchcraft.”

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Notable Timestamps for Key Segments

• 06:44 — The roots of “poison as a woman’s weapon” and the realities of historical female murderers
• 09:55 — The rise and fall of Marquise de Brinvilliers
• 19:00 — Public execution and the scandal’s ripple effect
• 20:47 — Everyday magic, superstition, and the social climate of Paris
• 23:30 — La Voisin’s network and the witch hunt atmosphere
• 25:57 — The court is implicated: Madame de Montespan
• 31:31–32:35 — The King intervenes; justice for the poor, cover-up for the aristocracy
• 36:00–38:00 — Mass arrests, the scale of the investigation, and court life statistics
• 42:08–43:36 — Discussions about attitudes toward death and the fragility of life/social order

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Tone & Language

The episode balances a lively, colloquial tone with historical rigor and macabre humor. The hosts approach dark history with both empathy and irreverence, inviting listeners to reflect on past and present scandals, justice, and gender.

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode deftly interweaves the personal and political: from individual acts of murder for inheritance, through mass paranoia and show trials, to elite cover-ups and a society unraveling at the seams. It raises enduring questions about power, gender, social order, and collective fear—while offering grisly tales and sharp-witted banter.

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Further Listening

• Previous After Dark episodes on famous poisoners (Julia Tofana, Poison in the Tower of London)
• Kate Lister's "Betwixt the Sheets" for more on sex, scandal, and power through history

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Contact & Socials:
Find Anthony at @antilynadelaneyhistory (Instagram)
Find Kate Lister at @rkatelister (Instagram) or K8Lister (TikTok)
Suggest episodes: [e-mail]
Watch on YouTube for visuals and extra content

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Transcript

[A]

It's 1663. Beautiful and wealthy Marie Daubre has been experimenting with the dosage of her poison for months. She leans over a patient at the hospital in Paris. Two deadly drops find their way into the water on the bedside table. Marie is a serial killer in 17th century France. She murdered her father and her brother, her servants and more. But when her crimes were exposed, they uncovered a network of poisoners across Paris that reached all the way to the court of Louis xiv. Even his mistress, Madame de Montespan, was implicated in what became known as the Affair of the poisons. More than 400 people were investigated and dozens were executed. So now, from the poisonous world of 17th century Paris, this is After Dark. Well, hello and welcome to After Dark. I am Anthony and of course I'm not joined by Maddie because she is currently trying to investigate the inclusion of fluoride for Key Stage 1 children all across the north of England. Once she's that solved, she will be back. But for now we've been joined by a plethora of guest co hosts and I'm going to wait for just a second to reveal who my current guest co host is. Because you may have noticed that over my left should there is a charming addition to the After Dark family. And this is Theresa. And Theresa has been sent to us by a listener called Shannon and she lives in Canada and she sent this to us all on her own back and it is, I mean not physically, she didn't actually carry it on her back. There is post nowadays and it is from Shan's creepy Creations. Go and check her out. We've also have like a hand in a skull thing over there. You'll see that in a minute, in another shot when we reveal the co host. But it is so brilliant. We are so grateful for this, Shannon. Thank you so much for sending it in. It's so perfect for After Dark. And now she has pride of place in the shot on YouTube. So if you're not watching on YouTube and you're just listening on the podcast, go and watch on YouTube and you'll see our new Theresa doll in the background. Right, guest co host reveal time. A few weeks ago I was teasing who we might have come in to After Dark as the guest co host and I felt a little bit bad because I posted a picture going who do you think this might be? Now it was a brilliant co host that went down an absolute stream with all of you guys but everybody guessed wrong and they guessed consistently wrong and the same person the entire time and that was who the Guest co host is this month the one and only Dr. Kate Lister.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Hello. After Darkers, I have blackmailed her into joining the dark side and now here she is, that she has no choice but to be here. She is, of course, as you bloody well know, the host of Betwixt the Sheets, also here on After Dark. I was gonna say no history hit. We don't own the whole network. We just. It's our own podcast. That's it. But she also a really incredible new book out called Flick A History of Female Pleasure. Have I said the whole title correctly?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yes. And we are. And I know you're gonna be so excited that Kate is here for the next four episodes and we're gonna be discussing all kinds of sex history. Yes. But also dark history. We're gonna be melding. It's the perfect crossover episode between After Dark and Betwixt. Thanks for coming, babe.

[B]

Anytime. It's a pleasure to be here. I was frankly a little insulted I wasn't invited earlier, but.

[A]

Well, I was just about to say, well, we saved the best till last because you are the last one before Maddy comes back. But then if I say that, that's insulting to everybody else. So we saved the best for now. No, we saved the. Yeah, everyone's the best.

[B]

Everyone's the best.

[A]

And you're here now. That's how that's gonna work. Nicely handled. Thank you. I think I should have been a politician. That's just that.

[B]

Let's move past this.

[A]

Let's go. That's what politicians say.

[B]

We want to move past this now.

[A]

And this one always if this hand, whatever that is. And the thumb. The thumb on the hand. Kamir. I was nearly going to wear what you wore a very similar. And in other YouTube episodes, you'll see even the red tie, that's a weird coincidence, but just I went for this instead. I went for like, just, you know,

[B]

that would have freaked people out if we were twinning. It'd be too weird.

[A]

Actually. That was a missed opportunity. We should have coordinated to be like, exactly the same. Not even just kind of. Right. Okay, enough preamble. Tittle tattle. Poison, poison, poison is afoot. Now give me a little bit of an introduction as to what I can expect from this episode because I was looking over the briefing notes last night and it is twists, turns, ins, outs, loads of names. And I was surprised at you because the last time we did something on betwixt together, you did not like having to use the French names. There's a lot of French names.

[B]

No, that's something I need to apologize to. Apologize to everybody at the start of this is I am gonna butcher the French language. It's my Achilles heel. I'm better with Icelandic than I am with French.

[A]

Also coming up, by the way.

[B]

Also coming up, just. You know that episode of Friends where Joey's trying to speak French? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm so sorry. You don't need to correct me in the comments. I'm awful at it.

[A]

I was just about to say we're showing our age by referencing Friends, but actually loads of everyone watches Friends now because it's on. Whatever. I mean, I haven't seen it in years, but it was sad when it ended. I was there for the original ending of that as well. Right. 17th century Europe. We are in an age of poisons. I am going to throw back to another After Dark episode, which I never remember any of them, but my notes tell me that Julia Tofana is also an After Dark episode.

[B]

Aqua Tofana? Yeah, the woman who is selling poisons in Italy.

[A]

That's her.

[B]

For wives to get out of unhappy marriages. Quite conveniently, you'd go to her, say, could you give me something? She.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then suddenly you're free of all of your problems.

[A]

It was an After Dark episode. I don't remember. But she. That's. Now that you've said that I remember. But yeah, that was it. Then. We also did an episode with Blessing Adams, Poisoned fish episode.

[B]

I can't help you with that. I don't know what that is.

[A]

I know who Blessing Adams is. She's great. But poison Fish, I would say it's probably great and you should go and listen to it. And then. Oh, Poison in the Tower of London with Misha Yu. And yes, I do remember that one because we love Misha on After Dark. We've had her back a couple of times, but we're not talking about any of those things today. Those are some old episodes.

[B]

Thank God, because we don't remember any of them.

[A]

I don't remember. I don't know what you're about to talk about either. I just wing my way through these things. Kate just comes to me as it happens. But we are talking about poison. We are talking about women and poison and why there is such a historical link between those two. Like, why is it when we think about historical female murderers, poison really comes into the frame pretty quickly?

[B]

I think it was Agatha Christie who coined the phrase that poison is a woman's weapon. And I don't think that's actually borne out by the evidence. Criminologists can weigh in. I think that it's very much an accessible, inclusive murder weapon is poison. But it's known as being a woman's weapon for a few reasons. I think that, number one, there is this really, really long history of women getting out of terrible, terrible marriages by poisoning their husbands that you see that cropping up all over the place. In fact, poisoning syndicates were discovered all over Europe right up into the 20th century. They were big in Hungary.

[A]

That's a poisoning syndicate.

[B]

A poisoning syndicate. That's where there would be a central poisoner like Juliana Tofana, who would sell poison for women to kill their husbands.

[A]

Oh, I see.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah. So it's not like they're all colluding together. No, it's coming from this. It's like a pyramid scheme.

[B]

Yeah, it's like. Yeah. Basically a weird poisoning pyramid scheme. Yeah. And it was big in Hungary, and you've got them cropping up well into the 20th century. And they were known as angel makers, but like that. Not that I would advocate poisoning anybody. Please don't do that. It's a bad idea. But you can kind of see how that would happen in a system where women have to get married. Their security and financial security is dependent on them getting married. And there's no way of getting divorced. And you're gonna lose all of your rights, all of your money, your access to your children, everything. As soon as that's happened, there is no way out. Or is there?

[A]

And I do think that's really. That's such a good point. Because it is your entire life. And if you are in 17th century England or Italy or Hungary, as you're saying there, it's like, well, do I sit here again, not advocating that anybody's doing this, but I'm just saying you can kind of see the mindset we're going. Do I just sit here and accept this for literally the rest of my life?

[B]

Or if he dies, I would get all of the money, I would get everything, and then I would be a widow and I don't have to deal with this. So you can see how that rather horrendous trade in poisons arose. And there is a really long history of women poisoning their husbands. Then you've got the fact that poison is quite an intimate method of killing. And it's put in food, which is historically read as being a feminine thing. The preparing of food, the cooking of food, the serving of food. And there's something particularly nasty about, like, the weapon is striking right at that place where you should feel the most comfortable and the most trusting because we eat food from people that we trust. So I think that's where it comes from. And also, you don't have to use physical strength to be able to use poison. You can do it and then you can run away.

[A]

So if I was going to have to murder somebody, it would be poison because I am very physically weak.

[B]

I don't think you're as weak as you think you are. I think. I think you could smother somebody if you really wanted to.

[A]

I mean, maybe. Maybe at some point we should have an arm wrestle and I can show you how weak I am.

[B]

Okay, that's fine.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Come back after the break and we'll be like, no, it would be poisoned. That was awful.

[A]

No, he actually fell on the ground. As soon as I touched him, he was gone. That was it. So I'm gonna introduce now one of the main protagonists for this episode. It is Marie Madeleine Marguerite Daubre. She is born in 1630. I know that. To the Daubre family. Tell me why she is important in this episode.

[B]

All right, so this is all leading up to the infamous. It was called the Affair of the Poisons. And it was this huge scandal that rocked French society right from the very, very top down to the absolute bottom. Marie d' Arbry wasn't in that scandal. She was the precursor to it. She lit the touch paper. What was particularly shocking about her is that she was an aristocrat. She was born to wealth, she was born to money. Her father was like the prefect of Paris. He's really high up in the law courts. He's got loads of money. And she would marry a guy who became a marquise and she becomes the Marquise de Brinvilliers. And she. There was not a lot of love. There was not a lot of love in this marriage. It was set up for financial convenience. The guy's name was Goblin. Goblin.

[A]

Antoine. Antoine Gobelin.

[B]

Goblin. Yes. Again, sorry, French people, but listen, Goblin's in there. Goblin is in the. His name is Goblin, right? So she has a typically well to do childhood. Later on, things come out that suggest that she was being sexually abused from about the age of seven. She never says she's done it. She's also accused of incest with her brothers. So there's some weird stuff going on. She marries this guy. He's awful with money. He's terrible with money. And he's having affairs. So he's spending all of her money. She starts an affair as well. With a soldier. With a handsome young soldier.

[A]

Fair play.

[B]

Fair play. By the name of Sainte Croix, his name is. Right. So I'm not too bad on that one. So Sangkwa is also not good with money. And Madeleine Marie realizes one thing very, very quickly, which is that a sugar baby is quite expensive. Yeah. Like, they cost a lot of money.

[A]

That's why I don't have one. The only reason.

[B]

Maxed out, quite frankly. More of a. More of a splendor infant. No, that sounded awful. Sorry. I don't know where that went.

[A]

Leave it in. But nothing got to do with me. I mean, Shane is four years younger than me, so, you know. Yeah, yeah, right.

[B]

Okay. A splendid teenager.

[A]

So anyway, no way to redeem that. I just.

[B]

Not.

[A]

We'll just leave that and move on.

[B]

Moving on. Right. Okay. So she's got this. This expensive lover. She looks around at her family and she thinks, I need more money. Yeah, I need more money. Like, I've got this loser husband who's spending all my money and is spending footing away on his mistresses. I've got this sugar baby who's spending. Get money from. I'm only a woman.

[A]

Only a woman.

[B]

Only a woman. And then she thinks, hang on, hang on. If my dad died.

[A]

Oh, she's going after her dad. I thought you were gonna say she was gonna go after Antoine. Goblin.

[B]

No, if my dad dies, I'll inherit.

[A]

So she's no brothers.

[B]

Oh, she has brothers. We'll get to them.

[A]

Okay, Go on.

[B]

Yeah, right. Okay.

[A]

She'll inherit something, though. Yeah, okay.

[B]

She'll inherit something. So the money will come down to her. She'll get something. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And this is a really weird quirk of the French aristocr this time is they're so rich and they're so dependent on servants. They rare. They don't seem to poison people themselves. They hire servants to do it. Which seems like a real weak link in this chain.

[A]

Telling somebody you're gonna murder, it's like hiring somebody else.

[B]

But that's what she does. She hires a servant and places the servant, and his name is Gascoigne, and places him in her father's house and he slowly poisons him.

[A]

Now, I will say it does say something about. Because we talked at the outset of this about women and access to domestic goods, but actually, although she would have had access to those domestic goods, it also says something about her status as an aristocrat. She's going, yeah, I mean, sure, there's access to food here, but I ain't prepping the food.

[B]

I'm not going to do it.

[A]

Just go and get Gaston.

[B]

It would look very weird if I suddenly started cooking.

[A]

Yeah, but Gaston's in there with his kneading all the dough and whatever people do and then. So if we get him. Although, I mean, you talked about affairs and that she was taking lovers as well. She would need to have been trusting Gaston very explicitly in order be like, here, kill. Who is essentially your master as well.

[B]

Yeah, she would have done. But that's what happens. And he poisons the father over a long period of time. He dies. Oh. I should probably say that the father did know about her affair with Sang Croix, and at one point he has him arrested and put into the Bastille to try and stop the affair. So she was also. It might have been motivated by revenge as well. She was really angry at him. Dad dies, she gets a bit of money.

[A]

Because of the poisoning.

[B]

Because of the poisoning.

[A]

Right, Okay.

[B]

I think it's like they say that he died of gout. I think that that's what written. That kind of normal 17th century where they're like, I don't know. Gout.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Consumption.

[B]

Could be anything. Could be anything. Poison. So she gets some money, but burns through it pretty quick. And then she realizes the reason she hasn't got all the money is because she has two brothers.

[A]

Oh, now I see where this is going.

[B]

You see? And then she goes, God damn it, I need more money. I need more money. If they were dead, then I would get the rest of it. So she now hires more servants.

[A]

Not Gaston again.

[B]

I think it is Gaston, but there's another guy called Hamlin who goes. And she's got two brothers. One's called Anton and one's called Francois. And she places a servant in their house and again, poisons them.

[A]

Can I just say, the most stereotypically French names, really?

[B]

That's how I remember them.

[A]

Anton, Francois.

[B]

Pierre is gonna make an appearance.

[A]

Good. I'm delighted. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Right. So she's going after the brothers. They die. But now it looks a bit weird now, even by the standards of the time, people are going, I don't think that's gout.

[A]

Right. Jesus. Gout is running through that family like I never saw before.

[B]

It's weird. Like they've all died br. Really close together. I don't think it's gout, especially the brothers, because they had this really long drawn out and, like, all the symptoms are really.

[A]

They're probably not that old, right? Not the brothers. She was 24.

[B]

And she's sort of sat there just like, what? What? It's gout. It's terrible.

[A]

It's plagued the family for generations.

[B]

So now people are starting to ask questions and they arrest the servant Hamlin, who cracks. There's a lot of torture in this story. Oh, okay, right, okay. So the French don't fuck about, like, here. No, they don't. Like, in this country, it was like, torture sanctioned, only in very cases. And then it's like to try and extract information, which is dodgy anyway. The French just go, let's torture everyone.

[A]

Take their fingernails.

[B]

But they do. And they torture people as punishment as well. So you can't even tell them something to stop. They just go for it. Right. So Hamlin cracks and explains that he was hired to poison people eventually. And the other thing that happens around this time is Sankwa Ups and Diesel. Oh, the. The sugar baby. Right.

[A]

Now, is that suspicious?

[B]

It's weird, but it doesn't seem to be that suspicious, right? It seems like he might have died fucking about with his own poisons, but we don't know. It's just one of those many. Just. He died. Yeah, he just died.

[A]

And she's not gonna benefit from him dying because they're legally tied.

[B]

She liked him, so we don't think there's anything suspicious about that. But he just does the dumbest thing. She must have just been sat there, just like you. You had one job. He was horribly in debt. The bailiffs go round to the house. Things were already a bit hot because of all these brothers and people dying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They find a case that he is written on. If I die, this has to go to Madeleine Dawbry. It belongs to her. Don't look in it. That's basically what it says.

[A]

Don't look in it.

[B]

Don't look in it. The bailiffs do look in it and find it's full of poison. Right? And, like, basically, like, notes and instructions

[A]

how to poison your dad, you absolute idiot.

[B]

So he's. So now it's completely linked to her. And I think this was the point. They started to torture Hamlin and he just gives up everything. And she's legged it. Maria. Madeleine has legged it.

[A]

Where's she gone?

[B]

She goes to England at one point, and then she's moving around Europe. They catch her eventually when she's hiding out in a convent.

[A]

So she's kind of like, in England terms, she's coming in, in the restoration kind of time, 1660s. This is when there's a royal family back in England. And she's just plodding around doing business.

[B]

She's on the run. She is getting money from her sister. She comes back to France and finally get her and arrest her. And then they torture her as well. And it's really nasty. They basically do, like, water torture. And they strap her down and they force her to drink buckets and buckets of water with, like, a funnel. It's awful. It's horrible. And so she does confess, but the confession is sort of like. Well, you'd say anything, wouldn't you, really, at this point? And then we get all of these crazy rumors that start to swirl around that she was actually trying to poison her children and she was trying to poison her actual husband. And then stories emerged that she was volunteering at the hospital and she was experimenting on the patients there.

[A]

Stop.

[B]

We don't know if that's true, but it's definitely a rumor at the time.

[A]

Tabloid journalism, it could.

[B]

It seems like she was working at the hospital and I don't know. I don't know as well.

[A]

Like a kind of a patrony nurse.

[B]

Yeah. As a patron.

[A]

Richard Aristocratic.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I'm being a benevolent person here,

[A]

but also, maybe poisons also.

[B]

I might be testing the poisons. Don't know if that's true, but that's certainly a rumor that was flying around at the time. She confesses. The story gets way out of control. She's sentenced to be tortured and then executed. She's gonna. She's gonna be beheaded in public, then her body's gonna be burned. And she goes to her death basically saying, I don't know why I'm in trouble. Everybody does. This is one of the things that she says, and she alludes to the fact that the poisoning is a much, much bigger issue than just her. Like, she's kind of genuinely perplexed of just like. But everybody's doing this. Why am I in so much trouble? But the whole of Paris is scandalized because she's rich. This is a rich woman, a member of the aristocracy. Poor people, they just do this shit all the time. We don't really care about them. But a rich person doing it, that was so, so shocking. And watching a marquise be beheaded and then publicly burnt, it was absolutely. People were terrified. So then it starts off this, like, fear that poisoning is widespread in Paris, and they've always thought of it as more of an Italian thing. That's what the Italians did. Oh, what we do.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

But it kind of goes away after she's executed, but it doesn't go all the way away.

[A]

I love this because basically, I love a bit of a camp bitch in one sense, because she gives a spoiler before she dies going, as you just said, you think this is bad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wait till you see what everybody else is doing now. Take the head. Thanks very much. That's pretty camp, that is. She is giving you story, she's giving you backstory, she's giving you legacy, and then she's giving you death. And I'm like, I'm here for it all. But what is fascinating about this is that this is only the tip of a very dark iceberg. That could be the episode in itself.

[B]

That could be it, couldn't it?

[A]

But it's not. So join us after this break where we'll talk about the affair of the poisons. Right, so you mentioned there that it kind of dies away for a little bit after she's, you know, she leaves this cliffhanger and then it's like, okay, she mentioned something a bit weird. But then some of those things start to percolate a little bit and start to come to the surface. Talk us through what happens there.

[B]

Right, so the first thing that you need to know is that this is Paris, France, 1670. And if you are, in many ways, it is a place of culture and it is the Enlightenment. And we've got philosophers coming in and artists and moving, but they're a very small percentage of it. By the time you get to how actually people live their lives in the slums of Paris, there is a lot of superstition. There's a lot of belief in magic and witchcraft and potions. And so it's not everybody was having an Enlightenment moment. These kind of beliefs are still absolutely there. So this all comes crashing down. So a woman called Magdalene Delassange gets busted having faked a marriage and then poisoned the guy she said that she was married to.

[A]

Oh, for money.

[B]

For money, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely for money. For poison. And she gets arrested. And this should just be a sort of an open and shut case of just. It's somebody doing something. Crap. She's not particularly rich, but she is a fortune teller. She makes her money, as lots of people do at this time, telling fortunes, predicting the future, a bit of herbalism on the side, all that kind of stuff. She gets arrested. And the problem that the French authorities have, in fact, anyone that uses this kind of method of torture is that people will say anything to stop you doing that or to delay their execution. So she starts to say that, no, no, don't kill me. I can tell you things. I've got more things. And then she says that there's a plot. There's a big poisoner plot to kill the king. And then the chief of the police, a guy called Le Reigny, is really interested in this, and he's like, oh, my God. Like, there's a huge, huge plot. And that seems to corroborate an anonymous letter that has been found that said that there was a poisonous plot, a random letter. So to him, he's like, oh, my God, this is it. So she's talking all kinds of crap to try and save her skin, and she starts mentioning other fortune tellers and other. They're like, they're abortionists and they are wise women and they are magicians, people that you would go to if you wanted a love spell or, like, your palm red. She starts to mention all of these names and. And then it starts to sound like there is a real network in Paris. And the one that's really central to this is a woman who's called Catherine Mon Voisin, but she's known as La Voisin, and she is at the center of it. And she's somebody that you would go to if you wanted a love spell or if you wanted an abortion or your palm read or all this kind of stuff. And this kind of thing's been going on in Paris and indeed Europe for hundreds, hundreds of years.

[A]

It's almost like a trade.

[B]

Yeah. And for the longest time, it was just like. It's not. It's nothing harmful. It's just, you know, people, folklore, magic, that kind of stuff. But now, in the grip of this, it starts to seem like it's a poisoning syndicate. And worse than that, it's witchcraft.

[A]

And women.

[B]

And women. Right. So there's another woman called Marie Bossay and another one called Marie Vigoro, and they're also brought in. They're sort of in the same trade as La Voisin. And now all these women are being pitted against one another and they start blaming each other. She did it, she did it, she did it. And the stories are getting madder and madder. The stories are about how, like, La Vwisana's got a thousand aborted fetuses buried in her garden, and that she would burn children alive, and that there was satanistic ritual sacrifices and that baby's blood was drunk and that people would. People wanted to poison. People go to her wanting poisons. And, like, the stories are getting madder and madder and madder.

[A]

And all these women are saying, this it's very Salem witch trials. It is, yeah. And more dramatic.

[B]

More dramatic. But the thing is, you know that when. And they will find you guilty of this, you're gonna be sentenced to be horrendously tortured and then burnt to death. Yes, that's what. So. But you also know that if you keep giving them information, it'll probably delay your trial date. It might make you useful to them and also you want to blame other people. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It's la. She was the worst of the worst. And then things start. So it's kind of contained at this point of like, oh, my God. We've got this poisoned syndicate in the slums of Paris. It's terrible. And the police guy, Larry, opens up. It's called the chambre al dente, the burning chamber. And it's bloody blood. Yeah, well, bom, bom bom. And it's like this court that's specially set up to deal with this situation. So at the moment they think that it's just fortune tellers in Paris. Now they start rounding up everybody who is involved in that trade. And as these things happen, to begin with, it was fortune tellers. But then by the time we got to the end of it, it's like somebody who saw somebody who might have had their palms read at one time. It's like getting increasingly. And it might have been contained except for the fact that these women realized if they start dropping. Dropping big names now, we're going to start getting some attention. So when they were going, it was Stacy down the road, or, you know, it was. It was John that I knew from school. That's no good. But now they start dropping names. Marquis, duchesses, countesses. Really, really big names. And now it's freaking Larry Knee out.

[A]

Can I ask.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They start. Yes, you're allowed this. When they start dropping these names, are they saying they're the targets or that they're doing the poisoning?

[B]

Both, both. So they're saying that really, really influential people at court are coming to them, asking for spells, charms, sometimes asking to kill people, asking for love powder. The biggest name that gets dropped into this is Madame de Montespan.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

She is the favorite mistress of Louis xiv. So we've gone right to the top, to the top of this to give her her full name. Are you ready for this?

[A]

Go on.

[B]

Francois Atinais de Rochecoir de Montemart de Marquise de Montespan. Oo. Don't tell me I got that wrong. Don't tell me I got that wrong? Just clap me and be on your way here.

[A]

Can I tell you a little anecdote about Frenchness?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So again, yes. So we are. In 2001, I started university and I was doing history, but my minor degree was French. Right. Oh, but you only do it for a year. And I nearly failed it. I passed it by one or something. I was. Because I was good at the literature and history bit of it. But I was really bad at the grammar. Really, really bad at the grammar. Anyway, but on day one, you have to introduce yourself and you're in a small class and blah, blah, blah. And I was like. Everyone was going around introducing themselves, and I was like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready for this. I'll do my introduction. And I thought I was being, like, immersive in the world of what I was doing here. And I introduced myself as Antoine rather than Anthony. Now, I wasn't trying to make people think my name was Antoine. I just was like, that's the French of my name. Bearing in mind I'm 17 years old. Okay, Just bear that in mind. And then I had to spend the rest of that year in French class just going along with the idea that my name was Antoine and not Anthony. Oh, I know, I know. It was embarrassing.

[B]

You didn't correct anybody.

[A]

I didn't really.

[B]

She did not know the French to be able to collect in it.

[A]

Excuse me, Actuela monger me Anthony, not Antoine or English came in there. Yeah. I was like. But so mortified. Even thinking about it now, I'm sweating. You know that kind of way where you're just like, oh, Jesus, Anthony. You could have just said what your actual name was. But I thought I was being, you know, like, really dedicated to the French tongue.

[B]

Yeah, I can understand that. So there's still people wandering around that think that you're called Antoine.

[A]

I can't imagine they think much about me. I was there for a year. If they do, they need to have a word with themselves. I have an image of la voisin, and if I remember correctly, I think la voisin means the neighbor, maybe or something like that.

[B]

Something. What does it mean?

[A]

I think it might mean the neighbor.

[B]

Right. Okay.

[A]

Again, you can tell me if I'm wrong about that, because I'm not fluent in French. But so here we have in this picture from the time, and she is centered in the image. We'll put this on social media. And she's a very homely looking woman. She doesn't look particularly dangerous. She looks like she's you know, kind of a working woman. She's dressed very simply. Her face looks kind of very penitent, actually, but she's surrounded by what looks like devils and serpents and dragons and all this kind of thing. And there it has it down at the end, almost handwritten. It looks like Catherine DeHayes.

[B]

That was her real name.

[A]

That's her real name, known as La Voisin. Okay, yeah. So what we have here is this idea of. And, you know, there's a winged kind of devil holding up her image. So we have this idea that darkness, devildom, witchcraft, as you're kind of describing there, is taking shape in these everyday women and that they're just walking amongst us, but actually they're trying to bring down the whole thing.

[B]

This was a witch hunt. Yeah, this absolutely was. At one point, the king allows them to be interrogated for witchcraft. So it's brought in and that's what they're prosecuted with. And La Voisin really gets all of the heat on her. She's the one that's blamed for absolutely everything. And she's held up as this awful, despicable, horrendous creature who's doing all these terrible things and is threatening everyone. I don't know, maybe. Maybe she wasn't very nice, but I don't think she was doing the things that she was accused of doing.

[A]

I could nearly guarantee you she didn't know Othello with leather looking wings.

[B]

No, no. Almost certainly.

[A]

Almost certainly. Okay, before we get to the trial or tribunal, more probably, specifically, let's talk a little bit about the French royalty, because you were making a case there before I went off and told you about my French first year lessons, that it was starting to reach royalty aristocrats. And so that starts to change things. How does the scandal got to do with these poisons start to impact that level of society?

[B]

Right. So the thing is, the scandal is already big. People have been rounded up and arrested. And Loreni is taking this really, really seriously and is making a big deal about how he's going to purge Paris of all of these horrendous poisoners and witches. Now they start naming big names, big names, like right up to Madame de Montespan and kind of everybody underneath that as well. And that poses a big problem because he has to go after them as well. He can't not do that. He can't just say, well, because they're rich, I'm gonna let them go. He can't do that. So he starts having to bring them in now, this is very different because they can hire lawyers and things to defend themselves. Some of them freak out. Some of them do stand their ground. And it's like, I absolutely. What the hell are you talking about? And then that makes the court look faintly ridiculous. But once they've got onto Madame de Montespan, the favorite mistress of Louis xiv, now all hell breaks loose, because they've got their big name now, and they start to say things like, she was involved in a rit sacrifice, that there was a magician, a defrocked priest, who cut baby's throats open over her naked body, and that it was like, it's real. Like, it's as extreme as it possibly can be. And obviously, Louis is being told all of this. He knows all of this. And as soon as it hits Montespan, he shuts it down.

[A]

Ah.

[B]

What he tries to do is he tries to get all records relating to her name taken out, like, redacted. And it's very difficult for us to imagine today. But imagine that there is a huge scandal in which children are being hurt, and very, very rich people are at the heart of this, and then it goes right up to the very top of government, and instead of releasing all of the information, they release heavily redacted files and then just try to move on.

[A]

Don't know what you're talking about.

[B]

No, it's very, very difficult for us to imagine how hard that would be. And then imagine, like, some big cultural names are being implicated in this as well. People you never thought would be involved in it. Yes, it's very much like that. So now Larennie is angry as well, because he can't properly investigate this if he can't refer to Montespan. Yeah, he can't. And it may have been one of the reasons why these women keep saying her name, because they kind of know that is that he's not going to prosecute them because it's too close to the king. And eventually the king shuts it all down, and eventually all the phials are burnt. But not before, like, 37 people are burnt to death.

[A]

Okay. As witches, we're gonna come to how that process comes about. I think where we find ourselves now is such a pivotal point in this history, because we are essentially at Versailles. Not just Versailles, but we have penetrated the walls of Versailles now. And, of course, in that atmosphere, we have people vying for position to get as close as possible to the absolute monarch. By the way, this is also, you know, you talk about the idea of belief, superstition, and witchcraft. But like, they believed the King was divinely appointed by God, so it's not that weird to think that actually somebody might have other powers elsewhere. And so now they're all vying for these positions. The King is upset that Montespano's been implicated here. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about how those executions came about and what exactly it did to power structures in 17th century France. Right, so you said Louis moves to shut this shit down.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But at the same time, we know that there are executions afoot. So between the shutting down and making this go away, someone. Quite a few people are going to pay a price here. So how does that come about? How do, how do we get investigations, even if it's not into Montespan?

[B]

So it's mostly poor people that are investigated, fortune tellers, anyone who has any connection with that, like. But like I said, by the end of it, the accusations getting increasingly, increasingly tenuous. At the center of this is La Voisin, Marie Bossay and Marie Vigoro, and a few other magicians who are in this as well.

[A]

All women?

[B]

No, no, There were men involved. There was one guy, his name escapes me, and there was another one who was a defrocked priest. But they're all kind of being lumped in together. So it isn't just all women. They are all executed quite horribly as well. They are burnt alive. Some of the methods are really nasty. Hamlin, the servant who kind of kicked this all off with Madame d', Aubry, he got broken on the wheel. It's really, really nasty way to go. So people are paying the price. And then there's. People are just locked in prison, just awaiting trial. Hundreds of them. Like, due process isn't a great thing at this point. So they're just kind of languishing in jails, wondering what the hell is going on. The King moves to shut this down, but now he has to also distance himself from Montespan.

[A]

Right, because she's. The name has been sullied and she's.

[B]

We can see how this stuff works today. Like, I alluded to the Epstein list, but, like, look at how that taint works. Even people like, how many pictures do you see circulating of like, oh, you met Jeffrey Epstein. It's like they may have just met him at party and shaking his hand, but that picture's there, the name is there.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And now there's a taint to it. Isn't there forever people? It doesn't matter if, like, maybe that was the only time you met him is if your name is in that file then there is a mark on you.

[A]

We are recording this in May 20 somethings of May 2026. And at this moment in time the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is clinging on for dear life for various and many reasons. But central to that is his quite tenuous links to the Epstein files. Because he's not in the Epstein files but somebody he appointed to his government was in the past. And so this is the taint you're talking about. It undermines you make that mistake, you hang out with that person.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

That's not. And you don't distance yourself enough from that. Then you kind of get to understand the position that Louis, even as an absolute monarch he is surrounded by these powerful aristocrats and you can understand the tenuous position it puts him in. I love this. I have some stats here from what you're talking about about court life at this time and what's going on in terms of the numbers. And one of the things that's talking about during these investigations is that the court was hung in black, lit by torches. That's so dramatic. But here's some number they had. 442 suspects overall. 367 orders of arrest. About as you're saying, 30 odd people were sentenced to death for witchcraft and poisoning. Two additionally died during torture. Shitload. I think that's the official numerical gauge. Shitload of courtiers flee into exile. Loads of other people are sentenced to hard labor. And, and the numbers, it's not exactly as with all of these things, it's hard to know the exact numbers of all of the things that are being really impacted by it. But certainly the point being with all of these numbers and allusions to numbers is this is widespread. It's all people are talking about across French high society, low and high.

[B]

It's huge. And also there's a culture of fear now as well, of do you believe what's happening? And suddenly it just seemed like anybody could be poisoned, anybody could be a victim. Who is this myster cabal of poisoners who go all the way up to high society. And people are believing the worst conspiracy theories. And it's a really, really frightening and scary time. We can be very blase about the history when we're talking about history, but to watch them are being burnt to death. Holy fuck. It would have been terrifying then, terrifying. Now it's. And they're watching that like quite regularly happen. And these people. And of course they're admitting it as well. That's the. That's the really scary thing, is that they're going, yep, yep, definitely, I did that. Please don't torture me anymore. But they did and they do, and it wrecks French society. And then it just. It has to get shut down by the King. It has to. He can't let this get to him. Montespan is accused of going to buy love spells to keep the King's interest, but also trying to poison his new favorite mistress.

[A]

There's always a new favorite mistress. Now, what is the impact of this, do you think? Like, what does it tell us about that society, courtly society and wider society in the mid to late 17th century in France? What is this letting us see about that period of time, how fragile it

[B]

is, I suppose, is that it can be very crumbled very easily. And also that this is a time that's supposed to be of enlightenment and reason and thought, and then just everything comes. Comes crashing down with these accusations of witchcraft and poison. The thing is, is I think that some of it might have been true. It's very easy for us to look back and go, it was all complete nonsense that never happened. But you do have to remember is that they had a really strong belief in magic and potions and that you could affect the future. They would have been going to palm readers, they would have been going to fortune tellers. It was very fashionable. You might go and get somebody to brew you a love spell. If you wanted to keep the King's attention, people might do that. They might go to somebody to say, could you give me some poison? We know that poisoning syndicates existed. I mean, it was all. I don't think that there were black masses and babies being sacrificed over the King's mistress, but I wouldn't put it past her to have paid for a love potion.

[A]

Can I ask as well, just as a way of closing the conversation out, we started talking about Marie Daubre and then we're finishing with La Vosson and the King and all that. Is there ever a direct. That we know of, a direct allusion back to Marie Dobre? Do they ever go. Well, she said this. She kept saying there was a network, or is it just used afterwards as a. Oh, yeah, she actually. And she happened to say, this is a kind of coincidental link, or do they refer back.

[B]

It was the same police officer Larennee who is investigating all of this. So he would have been. I don't think there's anything on record of him going, look, see, she said that. But he investigated all of this. So he'd been hot on the trail, running right from the beginning, from the early days of this. And there's no doubt that the Marquise de Brinvilliers case influenced what went on and as you said, set the stage for this. Look, there's more people doing this and you know what? There probably was. Life was cheap. And as we said right at the beginning, poison is a horrendously effective way to get rid of a lot of problems for you. It was called inheritance powder at the time. There's something in that people were doing this. So you've got this half mixture of truth, but also like nonsense and paranoia and fear, but a culture of palmistry and like folkloric stuff that people have been doing for centuries, which now all of a sudden looks like witchcraft.

[A]

It's very easy I think as well to forget the difference in 17th century France between how we view the correspondence between life and death now and how they viewed it then and how murder and killing and killing, they wouldn't always have associated with murder. How those things were more part of everyday life. People are armed, people are wearing their swords for a reason. There are different expectations of what taking a life could mean than we have today. So we do see this thing of going, oh my God. But you have to sit down and plot the demise, the murderous demise of somebody else. That's a very 21st century mindset on the ending of one's life in many ways. And we, I think that's one of the things that we would find difficult to put ourselves in that mindset. And we can't of going how we as humans could have manipulated the lifespan in the 17th century, there were different parameters. Yeah, murder was still. Murder was still illegal, don't get me wrong. There were still laws in place, place. But the ways in which we relate to death in the 17th century, it's not the same.

[B]

It's not the same at all. You would have been surrounded by death. You would certainly have known people that died. Siblings probably would have died. It'd be absolutely everywhere. And now today we are much more compassionate and we have, you know, like all lives matter and all lives are important. Not in 17th century France. No, no. Talk to an aristocrat, they couldn't give a shit about you. They would unplug your life support machine to charge their phone. They could not give.

[A]

And famously they had phones and life support machines in 17th century France.

[B]

Life is cheap. And as we said right at the beginning, is that there are systems set up where the only way that you might be able to get out of something is to kill somebody. Don't do it.

[A]

No. Again, I think we said that quite a bit.

[B]

The loss is a wonderful thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great. It's a great. Like, I haven't availed of it myself, but at least I know it's there.

[B]

Don't be like going to find fortune tellers and palmists in the Yorkshire area.

[A]

Have you ever been to a Etsy Witch? Not been to. Have you ever employed a Nazi witch?

[B]

I have never employed. Sometimes when I get a bad review, I think about doing it. Because you can't. You can't reply publicly, but you can curse people privately.

[A]

I've never done it, but I hear people all the time now are like a. Go to an Etsy Witch. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Well, you want to be careful because if there's another brouhaha, they'll be the first people called in.

[A]

Oh, yeah, good. We're on very.

[B]

Cursing people.

[A]

We're on very shaky ground at the minute.

[B]

But then things. You'd have to admit it. And then like, maybe this podcast we played back of, like, you were laughing there. You were talking about going to see an Etsy Witch. Is that something. Something that could be evidence. And you can see how this just all snowballs. Ridiculously.

[A]

Listen, they'll go for you before they go for me.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. That is.

[A]

There's no way that they can. They'll. You'll be.

[B]

Do you reckon?

[A]

Yeah, and. And I'll just kind of disappear.

[B]

You'll just play the male privilege card and just be like, excuse me, patriarchy. She's a woman over there.

[A]

There is no way that I will.

[B]

She talks about sex. Get her.

[A]

Yeah. Have you listened to her podcast, the Filth?

[B]

I would stand a chance.

[A]

No, it's not doing it. Right, that's enough of us for this episode. Thank you for joining us on After Dark. If you are not already joining us on YouTube, we now film and broadcast all of these episodes. So if you're only listening on podcast platforms, go over to our YouTube channel and you can find us there. If you have an idea for an episode, you can email us on After Darkistoryhit.com you can find me at Antony Delaneyhistory. Kate, where can they find you?

[B]

Oh, they can find me at the. At Rkatelister, on TikTok and on. Definitely on Instagram. I think TikTok is slightly different. I think it's just K8 Lister, but it's got the blue tick. So you'll know me.

[A]

Find her. She's there on there. And it is the first of four episodes that we're gonna be doing with Kate. You're gonna find far more sexy, dark histories in the coming weeks. Leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people to discover us as well. And if you're in the mood to discover, discover. Have you heard of Betwixt the Sheets? Kay, tell them what they can find on your very own podcast.

[B]

They can find a lot of sex, scandal and the history of society. We have a bit of a giggle rooting around in the pants of history.

[A]

Oh, that's good. You've said that's a thing, isn't it? I'm just not. Yeah, yeah. And also award winning, if you don't mind.

[B]

I am award winning. Yes, yes. Finally. Not award nominated. Endlessly awarded.

[A]

Award nominated. We're still in that rack. And she broke through. She's the pioneer.

[B]

Is there anything worse? It's just I got. We never won. That's.

[A]

But you have now.

[B]

I have now. Yep. Award winning.

[A]

Right. Go and listen to Betwixt the Sheets. Listen to us and watch us on YouTube and I'll see you next time. Thank you,

[B]

Sam.