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Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Who was the Husband Poisoner of Renaissance Italy?
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- [00:00]
Kate Lister
Hi, I'm your host Kate Lister. If you would like betwixt the sheets ad free and get early access. Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
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Catherine Kemp
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- [01:54]
Kate Lister
Hello my lovely bird. Twixters, it's me, Cade Lister. How are you? Nice to see you again. Pull up a chair, pull up a chair. Let's make some room at the back for everyone else. But before we can go any further, I do have to tell you this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. Today is a particularly spicy episode because we're talking about the history of poisoning husbands. So don't be getting any bright ideas you lot. I know what you like like right on with the show. We are in rome in the 1650s and ugh. There are so many people around. Don't they know there's just been a plague. Shouldn't they all be at home self isolating? There's quite a queue for the bakers. They seem to be up early for mass and they're chattering quietly beside the doors of the Chiesa de Santa Maria. There are families, couples, old maids, young women. Lots of young women, actually. Lots of widows. Why are there so many widows here? Is there some kind of widow festival on that I am unaware of? But all of these women have one other woman in common, the notorious Juliana Tafana. And quite how this woman has been responsible for making as many widows as I'm seeing around here is the subject of today's episode. Let's get out of here. Betwixters. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. History of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. In early modern Europe, dying young was alarmingly common. Oh, it just was, you know that it was. But 600 deaths would raise suspicion. Huh? 600 deaths of men, 600 deaths of married men, no less, are going to raise an eyebrow. Even at a time when death and disease, war and famine were pretty everyday occurrences. And in rome in the 1650s, this is exactly what happened. And things got so out of control that the Pope himself had to get involved. So what happened to these men? And why? How exactly does Julia Tafana fit into this picture? I am joined by Catherine Kemp, who spent a long time searching for Julia and her network of poisoners while researching her novel, A Poisoner's Tale. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Catherine Kemp. How are you doing?
- [04:51]
Catherine Kemp
I am very well. Kate Lister, how are you?
- [04:53]
Kate Lister
I am thrilled to be talking to you. That's how I am. This is actually quite a requested episode. I get this one quite a lot. Could you do something on Aqua Tofana? And you, having written about this notorious and fascinating case, are the person to talk to. So I'm thrilled that's how I'm doing.
- [05:13]
Catherine Kemp
Well, I'm absolutely delighted to be here. I mean, Julia has been an obsession of mine for the last 10 years, so any opportunity to speak about her, I'm absolutely delighted to.
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Kate Lister
Do you remember when you first heard about her, what started the obsession?
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Catherine Kemp
Yeah, so my son was very young. He's 12 now. I was literally up overnight with him when he was very small. And it's one of those, you know, times when you just kind of go down the rabbit hole of Internet research. And for some reason, I was researching arsenic, for reasons I can't disclose on here as You. You do?
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Kate Lister
Whilst feeding a small child.
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Catherine Kemp
Researching a small child, of course. And she kind of popped into my computer screen, and I was like, oh, my gosh. And then, of course, I started researching her, and I saw that there. There'd been nothing meaningful written about her. There were lots of kind of, you know, email sites and people talking about her, but there was nothing actually very meaty. There was nothing that really got into who she was and how she behaved and the whole thing. So I thought, well, okay, it has to be me. You know, I need to write this. So I kind of started. I mean, I've been a ghostwriter for a really long time, and at that time, I was still just doing nonfiction for publishers and for authors. So I kind of thought, okay, well, I'll make a nonfiction book about Julia Tofana. You know, I mean, that would be the obvious choice. And so I spent months and possibly years, like, trying to research her and trying to find primary sources, you know, that evidenced her. And it was so patchy, and there was really nothing very substantial. There has since been stuff that's come to light. At the time, it was like, okay, well, this is where a novelist goes to work in these spaces created by the fact that women weren't documented back in those times, you know, the fact that their lives were largely unrepresented. You might have a birth certificate or a death certificate, but that's really it if it's not a woman from a high class sort of family. So at that point, I decided that I was going to write Julia for.
- [07:09]
Kate Lister
Anyone who's listening, who maybe hasn't heard this name before, that there may be some people out there going, who, Who, Julia? Who can you get? Just give us an overview of who this woman is and perhaps why she's so notorious.
- [07:22]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, so Julia Tofana, or the legend of Julia Tofana, was that she was a 17th century Italian poisoner. And along with her circle of poisoners that included other kind of outcast women healers and herbalists and midwives. They created an undetectable poison that they would dispense to the downtrodden women of Naples and Rome in order for those women to cure their bad marriages by getting rid of their abusive husbands. Because these. These were the days when women had, you know, no agency, no choice, very often about who they were married to. And, you know, domestic abuse wasn't illegal. So women were treated pretty appallingly. I mean, Italy at the time was renowned for its poison, for supplying, you know, it was the kind of where poison was crafted, and it was called an Italian divorce. You know, there was that. But Julia herself became someone that women went to for that very specific purpose, to get rid of their husbands.
- [08:17]
Kate Lister
I'm not advocating this right to anyone listening. I'm not saying. But I am. I am just gonna say I can understand how this particular demand arose, because you've got a situation where, as you say, women very often don't have a choice, whether they're being. The marriage is arranged or even if it's not. Like, you kind of have to get married because you can't possibly earn your own money on your own. And then once you're there, you're married, usually very young. You're not going anywhere. You can't get divorced at this point. I mean, I think perhaps divorce was a possibility, but you had to be rich enough, and the Pope had to say, it's just not happening for normal people. There's no rights in law. Domestic abuse is completely common. I mean, you'd have to be really, really extreme for people to even notice it at the time. So where are you gonna go if you're married to an absolute who's making your life an utter, utter, utter misery? Hello, Julia.
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Catherine Kemp
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
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Kate Lister
I'm not condoning it.
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Catherine Kemp
No, of course. And we live in a different age now where we hope there are resources and there is support there for women who need it. And in those days, that simply wasn't there. As you say, you had to marry for some kind of protection and also for money to be able to live. And often that went terribly, wrongly, and, you know, there was no other way out. So what do you do? I mean, Julia's circle was actually called the savior of women. That's how women kind of referred to this group of women.
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Kate Lister
Wow.
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Catherine Kemp
Yeah. So what was really interesting about them, and. And you've got Giovanna de Grande, you've got Graziozza Farina, you've got Laura Crispalta, you've got Girolamo Spanner, who was said to be Julia's daughter, though there isn't really any evidence linking them. And Spinola and, of course, the legend of Julia Tofana, that these women, they were dealing with women from all strata of society, from the very highest, you know, Anna Maria Aldobrandini, who was a duchess, was supplied with the poison. And washer women at the washing streams were supplied with the poison. And the way they did their business was there's a place in Rome that legend says was an apothecary shop for the circle of poisoners. And they by day would give out simple herbal remedies. And of course, it only takes a few times to say, well, actually, what are those bruises? And, you know, and to see women in a great deal of distress. So they kind of had connections across the whole of the sort of social sphere of Rome in those days. And that's what really fascinates me, that this isn't just a kind of women at the very bottom who were doing this. You know, it went all the way up to a duchess.
- [10:44]
Kate Lister
So you alluded just earlier there to the legend of Julia Tofana. And I suppose a story like this, trying to unpick fact from fiction must be incredibly difficult. So what do we even know, in terms of hard facts of who this woman was? She definitely existed. That much there is truth to this story. It's not complete fantasy.
- [11:07]
Catherine Kemp
Not. Well, not necessarily. There are theories that Julia was actually a composite of those five women who were executed as witches and poisoners in 1659 in Campo de Fiori in Rome. And if you go on any of the night tours in Rome, and I went on a few as part of the research, you know, there are different tales from Romans about their own legends, that she was an old woman who lived in the hills, that she was this and that. And there's very little evidence to show that someone called Julia Tofana existed. Except there was an American academic called Craig monson, who in 2020, published a book. He got access to the actual trial records that have been hidden by the Vatican since the 18th century, because obviously, they didn't want to know that these women had sort of threatened society in the way they had with their kind of Nefari deeds. So these secret records sort of revealed a huge kind of network of women involved in this. And there's no one actually called Julia Tofana in those records. So there was a woman called Julia Mangiardi, who they say died in 1651. So that would have predated the trial. And really, there were so many gaps and so many assumptions. And even the Sicilian notaries at the time, some say that she existed, and some say she arrived in Rome. Even there are diarists saying that she walked into Rome with her daughter Diralama, but, you know, we don't actually know. And that's the point at which the novel came alive for me, actually, because these are the gaps that we need in imagination. And I could then create the character of Julia as my own.
- [12:42]
Kate Lister
So it could be that Julia Tofana is like a brand name, like Ann Summers or like Ashley Madison, that. That's. It's that big of an industry, that this was a brand name they were operating under.
- [12:53]
Catherine Kemp
That's really interesting because. Yes. And there could be some facts among this, that a woman called Teophania d' Adamo was executed in July 1633 in Palermo in Sicily, and she is said to be the mother of Julia Tofana. And the link being the fact that you would very often take your mother's maiden name as your surname, particularly if it was an unusual one. And of course, we have Acqua Tofana, which was the name of the poison, and they all kind of link back. And so this brand was already there with Aqua Trifada, and in some ways that may be the source of the branding kind of coming through. But even so, in the trial records in Rome, it was called Aqueta, like little water. So it wasn't actually referred to by anybody during the trial as Aqua Tofana. So, you know, I love this mystery around all of this that, you know, we can't be sure about anything. And that's when it becomes about more than the details of the story. It becomes about this kind of story of defiance and sort of rebelling against, you know, their social strictures and rebelling against the natural order, which was men are above women and then above men is God, and that's that. And you don't mess around with that. It became such a threat that the Pope, Alessandro vii, actually got involved. Wow.
- [14:09]
Kate Lister
What did he get involved in? Was he the one involved in taking all the documents and. Because there were trials, weren't there?
- [14:15]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, that's right. Leading up to 1659, there were trials and there were 46 other women who were supposedly interred or banished, which is.
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Kate Lister
Quite a lot, isn't it?
- [14:24]
Catherine Kemp
It's a lot of women involved. But the only women who were killed were the ones that dispensed the poison. They weren't the actual. The ones who actually killed the men. So they went right to the heart of it. And Alessandro vii, he was an inquisitor. He was the Inquisitor of Malta and he had a pretty scary reputation. He had a thing about witches and heretics, because the whole thing, they were all mixed up together. So it was both a secular and a religious crime. And it all sort of this kind of melting pot of sin, really. And so he had the governor of Rome, Stefano Bracchi, personally hunt these women down, you know, into the stews and the brothels and the back streets of 17th century Rome, finding these women so.
- [15:06]
Kate Lister
Talk to me about who some of these women were, because we're not sure if Julia actually exists. Maybe she does. Maybe she's a brand name, maybe she's several people, we're not entirely sure, but who were arrested and what do we know about what they were doing? So I'm fascinated in, like, how, as a business, how on earth did this operate? So who were they?
- [15:25]
Catherine Kemp
Well, they were incredibly entrepreneurial and, you know, obviously business women weren't really a thing back then. So there's a lot to be said for men hating the fact that women had this kind of economic agency. So we have Maria Spinola, who. And these are the women who definitely existed. And she was from Sicily. And I really loved writing her character because she was described in some of the evidence as having kind of contact with the spirit and with, you know, you walk out with the sort of fairies and the elves. She was a very. A prolific thief and a sex worker, as any outcast. Women were kind of forced into that role, literally to feed themselves. She had a few husbands and she had a daughter who she had to put into an orphanage because she couldn't afford to feed her. And that daughter died in that convent orphanage. So, you know, Maria was a really kind of tragic character, actually. And then alongside her we have Giovanna de Grandis. To me, she felt like a very sympathetic character in that she was quite. She was one of the women who dealt with the more kind of lower class, as they would have said, women. She went to the washing streams, she met women at mass. She was a midwife, but she was mostly a washerwoman. And she had, I think it was four marriages, if I'm remembering correctly. And, you know, the same kind of treatment from men. So you kind of get the feeling that these women all had histories with men. They had not been treated very well. And then we have Graziozza Farina. And she was an absolute pleasure to write because she was an older woman with this flame red hair that she used to henna herself. And she was obsessed with pilgrimage. She used to sleep on the steps of the churches rather than in her hovel or anywhere, because she said she was closer to God and at the same time she was dispensing poison.
- [17:09]
Kate Lister
Interesting take.
- [17:12]
Catherine Kemp
They're really complex characters, and I think that's what's so interesting about them.
- [17:16]
Kate Lister
They don't sound very rich. They sound. They're quite poor women. So I'm wondering how lucrative this old poisoning business was, because if I was going to knock up a poison that someone was going to use to off their husband. I would be charging top dollar for.
- [17:30]
Catherine Kemp
That, quite frankly, I think with a duchess. Yes, absolutely. You charge top dollar. And for most of the women that they saw, they were poor women, you know, that these are women who don't and who can't get money from the husbands because their husbands command the money. So if they do have any, their husbands take it anyway. And so I think a great deal of it was way actually, you know, I mean, obviously Julia, they ran out of the goodness of their hearts. Yeah. And there was Duralama as well. So just to add to those women, Diralama Spanner, who was called astrologer. I have her as Julia's daughter and that sort of seems to be the connection, potentially her stepdaughter or daughter. And she was really interesting because she used to party with nobility, that she was invited as this kind of curiosity to read people's cards, to look into horoscopes. Obviously it was banned by the Catholic church, so it. It was a case of, you know, the nobility sort of flirting with heresy.
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Kate Lister
Was she telling fortunes along the lines of, you're going to die a horrible, horrible death?
- [18:31]
Catherine Kemp
Possibly not to her patrons, but she did predict the Pope's death, which almost got her executed. So, I mean, she was one of the five women at the end who was executed anyway. But yeah, it was a really big deal back then to tell a fortune. You know, you're in the. Literally in the heart of the Catholic sort of state. Yeah.
- [18:52]
Kate Lister
I'll be back with Catherine and Julia after this short break. Whether we like to admit it or not, there are times in all of our lives when we could benefit from using a therapist. Whether that's because work is getting you down or you're struggling with issues at home, or perhaps you could never accept the way your favorite show actually ended. But sometimes it can be very difficult to find the right care and connect with a therapist that is actually available and accepts your insurance. Ruler is on a mission to make high quality online therapy from a licensed professional easy and affordable for everyone. With over 15,000 therapists and psychiatrists, they'll help you find the right therapist for you based on your needs, preferences and requirements. Ruler patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Thousands have already trusted Ruler to support them on their journey towards improved mental health and overall well being. Head on over to ruler.com sheets to get started today. After you sign up, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Support betwixt and tell them that we sent you Go to r u l a.com sheets and take the first step towards better mental health. Today you deserve quality care from someone who cares.
- [20:15]
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- [21:42]
Catherine Kemp
Do.
- [21:42]
Kate Lister
We have any idea what this poison was? It's gone down in in history as Aqua to Fauna the Little Water, a few other names as well. Do we have any idea what it was? I mean it could, I suppose it could have been anything, but do we have anything in the records?
- [21:57]
Catherine Kemp
Generally it was sort of said to be arsenic belladonna, which of course means beautiful woman in Italian. And it was given to sort of women quite routinely to make their pupils bigger and attract, you know, a lover and lead. And the idea was that they were sort of all boiled together to create this kind of odorless and tasteless poison. There's no kind of concrete evidence that it was that combination, but it seems to be the most likely. But at the same time all poison was pretty much undetectable back then. You know, in the 17th century arsenic was undetectable. So but the idea was that it was meant to be a slow acting poison so you could actually almost predict someone's death. So you could stage it very carefully over a few weeks or months, you know, with One drop in their broth or in their wine.
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Kate Lister
Yes.
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Catherine Kemp
Yeah.
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Kate Lister
If you were going to do this, if you were going to be like, right, my husband, he's a hideous, abusive heart, I need to get out of it. Like, you wouldn't want something that works straight away, because that would be too obvious, that if you took a bite of something and keeled over, that everyone's looking at you. So I suppose you would want something that you could get a bit of distance from, something that might look like any one of the hundreds of illnesses doing the rounds at the time.
- [23:03]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was all about, you know, death and disease was commonplace, wasn't it? And particularly with the kind of the symptoms that you had with arsenic poisoning, you know, very thirsty, high fever, dysentery, gastroenteritis or like, all of that kind of, you know, it could have been any number of diseases. But there was one really curious thing that I found in a few sources was that people were saying that when they died with this poison, their corpses looked full of vitality. They had a lovely blush on their cheeks, the sheen of their skin was perfect. And I found that really interesting. And ultimately the recognition of that was what brought them down, because the duke that the Duchess had poisoned, he was laid out in his coffin in one of the cathedrals and one of the great churches, and he looked like he'd just. Just, you know, come back from riding with his horses. He looked so full of vitality and alive, yet, of course, was dead, that that's when the questions started being asked.
- [24:01]
Kate Lister
I was just about to ask you, how did they get caught? Because this. This does seem like it's. It's virtually undetectable. You know, it's like you said, it could have been any cause of death. There's. There's nothing. There's no tests for arsenic. People are dying of these type. Types of stuff all the time. Although maybe looking back, maybe it was always arsenic. Maybe that's why so many people were dying like this. But how did they get caught?
- [24:26]
Catherine Kemp
So there'd been plague in Rome in 1656, so there were a lot of people dying. So for a long time they got away with it because obviously there were lots of corpses and they were hanging about in the streets and they were having to sort of burn them. And, you know, there's all sorts of terrible stuff going on. But then people started to notice that there were lots of young widows, like, literally young widows walking around Rome, and people started to confess in the confessional with their priests, and there's A famous sort of example. Yes. And then people. And so some of these priests were starting to come to the priestly bosses to say, look, you know, women are coming here and saying they're getting hold of this poison. What do we do? And there was then one woman who actually confessed that she'd poured the whole thing into her husband's soup. And she slapped his hand away and kind of saved his life. But also, obviously, her husband realized that she'd been trying to poison him. Him. And she came and they gave her a kind of immunity to tell them all about it. So it was. It kind of happened over time. And they put posters up in the streets of Rome saying, if you know anything about the Sicilian, you know, have you tried? Yeah. Well, these are the symptoms. And if you know anything, you are now obliged in both law and with the church to. To tell us immediately. And. And, you know, they had inquisitors all over Rome, like, working from the churches because they knew that women could meet at mass. That was really one of the main places that women could meet and sort of dispense the vials of aqua tofana or aqueta while they were praying.
- [25:57]
Kate Lister
Damn it.
- [25:59]
Catherine Kemp
Damn it.
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Kate Lister
It's just people not just talking too much. And I hadn't thought of the confessional. God. Yeah. Imagine being that priest of just woman after woman after woman just coming in, all saying the same thing. I think maybe we need to do something about this. All right, so the posters have gone up. People are talking. I guess. I guess if enough people are doing this, eventually somebody's gonna get nervous, somebody's gonna crack, somebody's gonna confess something, and then are they rounded up pretty quickly? I mean, was this. Was this a group of women who were working together or were they working independently of one another?
- [26:35]
Catherine Kemp
So they were working as a circle of poisoners. So it was a very well organized enterprise. And I think the scale of it became very shocking, you know, to really the whole of Italy and then on into the Europe at the time. But no, what they did was they set up a kind of sting, and they had a fake client come along and say that they had a terrible husband, and they had to go over there. And it was Giovanni De Grandis who got into that mess and then was arrested. She'd been picked up by the Inquisition a couple of times prior to that, but she hadn't had any of the equetta on her, apart from one sort of occasion that's in the book. But they finally kind of had them because, you know, even Though it was a. You know, it was the 17th century, but they still needed evidence, and they actually couldn't execute them without confession, which, of course, is why torture was used. So anyway, they set up this sting. They caught her in the act of handing over this vial of poison. They tested the poison, the dog died, you know, and it sort of went from there. And then they kind of. They had them, but they brought in so many people. I mean, it was a huge operation by Stefano Bracki over many months. You know, I think the trial papers are 1400 pages worth of notes from the notary.
- [27:44]
Kate Lister
Oh, my God. So if they were tortured, could we make the argument that they were tortured into confessing and that they were false confessions, or is there just a lot of other evidence that says, yeah, they definitely did do this?
- [27:57]
Catherine Kemp
I think it's a bit of both. There's no doubt that they were dispensing poison, but whether they wanted to confess to it is another matter, because they knew that they couldn't be executed without confession. In the end, though, the Pope did actually kind of make new rules and just go ahead anyway, because it had become such a huge scandal across Europe that these women were defying, like I said, the natural order of men. And it had gone up to being a duke. And I think also the Pope was like, well, who's to say I'm next? You know, whether I'm next or not? It kind of touched the edges of those in power, and this is why they were just determined to execute them. I believe the Diralama wasn't tortured, but the rest were.
- [28:36]
Kate Lister
There's something so insidious about the use of poison, because you can see why this would frighten the establishment as much as it did. And I think it's the fact that it's poison that. Because they say poison is a woman's weapon, don't they? I mean, really, any woman could. Could murder her husband if she wanted to. You probably get caught, but let's face it, you could do that, but it's. It's the fact that it's. It's put into food, and that's traditionally something that a woman does from it. So it gets right to the heart of that threat to the patriarchy, that at your home, where you're supposed to be your lord and your master, the woman can actually subvert all of that and take you down.
- [29:16]
Catherine Kemp
That's so interesting. And it's the point where you're nurturing and you're in that fully female role and that you're supporting and Nurturing and feeding and nourishing. And actually, it's almost like the Great Betrayal, isn't it? And it's undermining something. Something without having to do it in a way that involves the law or. Or economically or those things that women were shut out of. It was all they had. I mean, that was the only way they could. It was set up that way, wasn't it?
- [29:43]
Kate Lister
Like, if you stab someone too obvious, if you bash them around the head, you have to explain that if they fall down the stairs, there has to be a backstory. Poison is just the perfect. I don't know what happened. I gave him a sandwich. And then later on, I just don't know. But it is. There's something subversive and particularly frightening about it. That the threat is that the call is coming from inside the house is how this one.
- [30:06]
Catherine Kemp
Yes. Feels silent. It's silent, isn't it? It's not raging outside the law courts. It's not trying to bring any kind of legal challenge to the establishment. It's completely hidden and completely silent. And that's kind of. That's. That was the realm of femininity back in those days. It was. It was backstage. And I hope that I've really sort of played that in the book as well. That really working with them, being they' not at the front of the stage. They're not players on the stage of men. They. They have to exist in the shadows. And so, of course, the shadows get murky at times, and the scale of.
- [30:39]
Kate Lister
It must have been terrifying along with this realization of like. Like we. Maybe not that we have to be nice to them. I'm sure nobody ever thought maybe we should stop being horrible husbands, but, like, the realization that this is a mass enterprise and that women have been doing this for a very, very long time. Time that must have been particularly terrifying for them.
- [31:00]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, I mean, I think there are lots of different sort of versions of this, but they say between six hundred and a thousand men were. Were killed as a result of this poison. And, you know, they were dispensing it, and it went far and wide. You know, women were coming to them for this and then handing it to their neighbors, handing it to family members. It was traveling through Italy. It was unstoppable, basically. And men, you know, they can't infiltrate women's spaces. You know, you're not going to find men at the washing stream, and you're not going to find men in the female parts of the churches where they're celebrating mass. And, you know, I think for men, that was particularly terrifying that women had their own systems and their own way of operating that they could not control.
- [31:47]
Kate Lister
I'll be back with Catherine and Julia after this short break.
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- [32:55]
Kate Lister
So what happens to our friendly band of poisoners then? They've been tortured into confessing. I think I know what you're going to say. I don't think that this is a slap on the wrist type of an offense. But what. Let's, let's end their story. What happens to them?
- [33:08]
Catherine Kemp
Okay, well, I mean, I kind of get that done in the book straight away so that we're in no doubt. Well, they're standing at the gallows. So five women were executed as witches and poisoners in 1659. And yet their legacy kind of lives on in the fear that it created. And even Mozart in the 1700s was when, when he was kind of on his deathbed, was saying, you know, I think someone has given me aqua Tofana and calculated the exact moment of my death.
- [33:35]
Kate Lister
Death.
- [33:35]
Catherine Kemp
So this fear, their legacy was one of real fear in the minds of men going forward that women were capable of this and that they weren't actually very happy with being submissive, obedient, abused wives.
- [33:47]
Kate Lister
Why witchcraft? Why did they sling that one in there? I mean, they've got them as poisoners. Was that just. You just chuck it in for good measure. Why witchcraft as well?
- [33:55]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, as part of it, I think that anything with female agency, anything involving outbursts. Witch. Yeah, you're a witch. They were herbalists and midwives. They're witches. They dispensed potions. They were witches. And you know, witchcraft was bound in with heresy. Which, of course, was both a secular and criminal offense. And it meant that you were against the Catholic Church and, you know, that's what the Inquisition was all about. They were burning witches. So, yeah, I think it was just utterly assumed that that's how they were and that's what they were called.
- [34:24]
Kate Lister
Yeah, yeah, we'll just. We'll just bung that one in there as well. Now, obviously, they executed these women. They were hanged to death, I think, weren't they? Ye, yeah, they executed them and then that was it. No woman ever poisoned her husband ever, ever, ever again. We all learned our lesson and stopped it, correct?
- [34:41]
Catherine Kemp
Oh, absolutely. And. And, you know, they hid the trial notes in Castel d' Angelo for hundreds of years so that women didn't work out, that they could actually go ahead and do these things. If you look at history, actually, poisoning isn't such a female crime. It has that kind of reputation, and it has that sort of seductive reputation that it's a female crime, but it kind out across all genders, you know, that anybody can do it.
- [35:08]
Kate Lister
Was it Agatha Christie that said that one in one of her books, that poison is a woman's weapon?
- [35:13]
Catherine Kemp
Yeah, yeah. And that's how we view it, isn't it? You know, that it is because it's hidden and silent and in the background that we kind of naturally assume it's like women's wiles. You know, this is like a very female thing to do, which says more about men and their thinking, I think, than it does about women and their poisoning, I think.
- [35:30]
Kate Lister
So I think, like poison, at the end of the day, I think it's actually, it's. Again, I'm not advocating it, but it's a very clever method of killing because often leaves no trace. You can be well away from the victim by the time it happens. There's plausible deniability. The only thing that will trip you up now is obviously tests, is that they can be proven that it's happened. But I've never really understood that it was a woman's poison thing.
- [35:54]
Catherine Kemp
It's almost like being rebranded, isn't it? You know, by men telling women how they behave. Whether it was just women that poisoned and whether it was just men that they poisoned. We don't really know the poison was dispensed. It was to women who were in abusive marriages. But I don't think it was always. It was in the majority, of course. But, you know, again, I have it in the book that actually it can be inconvenient men or men that they're bored with or like boring marriages or just being in love with someone else. I mean, I'm sure that the images of this were blurred and inheritance, of course. Yeah, that's all. It's all part of it. But of course we have the Borgias who are famous for poisoning. And, you know, it was Cesare and it was the Pope who were famous for. I think it was cantarella. Was it it? So is it a weapon of men.
- [36:41]
Kate Lister
As well, when you start to look for it? Husband poisoning syndicates can be found across Europe right up. And I think the latest one that I found was in the. The early 20th century, Hungary in particular seemed to have been notorious for this. If you look at Victorian newspapers, every so often a case very similar to this one pops up. Husband poisoning syndicate, and it's some woman somewhere who was. Was producing a poison. And it's interesting. And they get caught in the same way. It's that suddenly the authorities start to notice. Why are there so many young widows around all of a sudden?
- [37:15]
Catherine Kemp
What's.
- [37:16]
Kate Lister
What's happening here? So I don't think that people did learn their lessons. And I would put money on the fact that these were not the only husband poisoners in operation, I'm absolutely sure.
- [37:27]
Catherine Kemp
But there's something about this group that's caught the imagination. And you know, that with all the rumors about what was in Aqua Tofana, how it was used, I mean, obviously, you know, poison isn't new. It's been used for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so there would have been poisoning going on regardless. But because it was a group of women, because it was these women, because of the legend of Julia Tofana, who was meant to be very beautiful, all of these things make it incredibly seductive. And certainly for me as a novelist.
- [37:57]
Kate Lister
What do you think the legacy of this is? As a final question? Is it just a fun story? It's easy to overly romanticize these things. Unfortunately, there is a lot of humor as well, because, like, I laughed about it, but you can't help it. It's so far in the past, I think you can kind of do that. Like these women were just bumping off their husbands. But it's quite a serious history, this.
- [38:19]
Catherine Kemp
It really is. And I think it's part of our history as women and how we have created our own agency in our own ways and ways that are very dark. You know, were they murderers or were they saviors? I mean, you know, that's something that is a question that's still open for interpretation and it's really about the history of women's voices not being heard and women's place in society not being acknowledged or equalized in any sense. So it's kind of a history of sort of our rage and our resilience and revenge and all of these things that, that we've had to fight for in order to be able to be as free as we are now. But, you know, those. Those freedoms are being taken away all over the world. So this is a story that keeps coming back and keeps coming back because we cannot take our freedoms for granted. You know, we see what's going on in Afghanistan, we see what's going on in America. We see, you know, across the world, women are fighting for the most basic kind of. Of healthcare and, you know, economic and legal status. So we do need to keep revisiting these stories. We do need to hear from figures in the past. Because we don't want to go back there, surely.
- [39:28]
Kate Lister
No, we don't. Catherine, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
- [39:37]
Catherine Kemp
Come find me on Instagram, Catherine Underscore kemp or on TikTok. So that's author Catherine Kemp. Or on my website, of course, kathleenkemp.com.
- [39:46]
Kate Lister
And say, hi, thank you so much. And we'll just put a caveat. Please don't poison your husband. Try therapy first, please. Thank you so much. You have been so much fun to talk to.
- [39:55]
Catherine Kemp
Thank you so much. Kate, it's been a pleasure.
- [40:00]
Kate Lister
Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Catherine for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to, like, review and follow along whatever it is you get your podcasts. And don't be getting any ideas about bumping off your spouse. And if you do, that cannot be traced back to us. All right, we never met. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixtoryhit.com this podcast was edited by Tim Arstell and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again. Betwixt the sheets History of Sex, scandal and society. A podcast by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
- [40:38]
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- [41:08]
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