POISONING EPIDEMICS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 767, 12 November 1886, Page 8

POISONING EPIDEMICS.

Morning Advertiser.

There now lies under sentence of death in the prison of Pancsova, South Hungary, a young peasant woman, Draga Radovancey by name, the crime of which she was convicted being the murder of her husband. She is but the first of a numerous company of the sex who are,in custody and awaiting trial on a like charge. These women are for the most part Serbs and Roumanians, inhabiting certain villages spread over a considerable district, and the evidence for the prosecution showed that a wholesale epidemic of poisoning had broken outamong the matrons of this region of South Hungary. The toxical infection was wholly confined to the ladies, and only to such among them as had husbands to get rid of. ‘Where the desire existed it was carried into effect in a very simple and very practical way. The lady who did riot love her lord, but who did love somebody else, simply administered arsenic to the hateful husband, and having by this means got rid of him, married the man of her choice. It is strange to read of- these things as facts of actual occurrence in Europe at this day. The world, says the Laureate, ‘ is but a child, still in the go-cart,’ and it does seem, to quote an authority who was not a laureate, as if we ‘ don’t get no forrider,’ when we have the very species of crime which forms a peculiar horror of the seventeenth century revived on the eve of the twentieth. The repetition of history in this case is remarkable. It is considerably over two hundred years ago since secret poisoning became so prevalent In Italy that, according to several chronicles of the time, the Catholic clergy, despite the rules of the confessional, felt themselves bound to acquaint Pope Alexander VII. with the extent of the practice. It was found on inquiry that young widows were curiously abundant in Rome, and that most of the unhappy marriages were speedily dissolved by the sickness and death of the husband. Further inquiry resulted in the discovery of a secret society of young matrons, which met at the house of an old hag, one Hieronyma Spara. The crone, like, the sibyl who received Panurge in such amazing fashion when he went to consult her on the question whether he would marry or not, was a reputed witch and fortune-teller. She was much more, however, for her livelihood was chiefly gleaned from the sale of a poison with which she supplied any wronged helpmate wishful to avenge the infidelities of her husband, or any capricious spouse wearied of the conjugal j T oke and wishful to assume a new one. This poison was slow in action, clear, tasteless, and limpid, and of strength sufficient to destroy life in the course of a day, week, month, or number of months, as the purchaser preferred. The ladies of Rome had long been acquainted with, and had long availed themselves of, the ‘ wonderful elixir ’ compounded by La Spara ; but they kept the secret so well, and made such effectual use of their knowledge that it was only after several years, during which a large number of unsuspected victims had perished, that the whole proceedings were brought to light. This result was achieved by an artifice of the police, which was at least as lucky as it was cunning. La Spara and thirteen of her companions were hanged, a large number of the culprits were whipped half naked through the street, and some of the highest rank suffered fine and banishment. About half a century afterwards the discovery was made of a similar organisation at Naples, headed by an old woman of three score and ten, named Toffania, who manufactured a poison similar to that of La Spara, and sold it extensively in Naples under the name of of acquetta. The proprietress even circulated and sold it extensively through, all parts of Italy under the name of ‘ Manna of St. Nicolas of Bari,’ giving it the same title as the renowned oil of St. Nicola to elude discovery. And under this disguise it is possible that, as the quack announcements of our day have it, the ‘ Manna ’ was to be had of all respectable chemists in town and country. This poison, now best known as the ‘ Acqua Tofana,’ or the * Acqua di Perugia,’ is said by Hahnemann to have been compounded of arsenical neutral salts. Another authority, the celebrated Garelli, thinks it was crystallised arsenic dissolved in a large quantity of water. Both agree that it produced its effect imperceptibly, by gradually weakening the appetite and the respiratory organs. The extraordinary subtle working of the water of Tofana is n© doubt in a great degree a mere result of the backward condition of contemporary chemical science. But when all allowance is made for the absence of analytical development of the sort that in our day has placed an almost unerring detective on the track of every poison, it does still appear that the destroying agent invented hy La Spara, and continued in manufacture by her betterknown successor, was prepared with extreme craft, and did its work in a singularly insidious fashion. It was only after she had directly or indirectly caused the death of more than 600 persons that Tofana, or Toffania, was at length found out, tried, and strangled in the early years of the eighteenth century. From this time the mania for secret poisoning gradually died away in Italy, after it had been fo common and popular a resource that a soldier, who was commissioned to rid the Duke of Guise of one Gennaro Annese, the most active and vehement of his political opponents at Naples, refused the offer with indignation. As the angry bravo explained, the bare suggestion of assassination was to him horrible and shameful. But he was quite willing to poison Annese, if that method of procedure would content the duke. The subsidence of hus-band-poisoning in Italy was followed about

a quarter of a century after its occurrence by -an outburst of like crime in Franpe. It had its birth and ran its course in similar circumstances. The agents were married women, their husbands were the victims. And as in Italy the extent to which the crime prevailed ■was first made known by the clergy. Acting on the information volunteered from the confessional, the Government seized and imprisoned in the Bastille two Italians, Exili •and Glaser, suspected to be the manufacturers and vendors of the poisons. Glaser died in prison, but Exili becoming acquainted ■with a fellow-prisoner named Sst. Groix, communicated his secret to that person. "The talent thus bestowed was not buried. Soon -after his release St. Croix proceeded to utilise his knowledge. He compounded in particular the ‘ succession power which afterwards attained such special notoriety. Bis subsequent career belongs to the terrible and tragical history of the most notorious •empoisonneuse of the modern era, the Mar•quise de Brinvilliers. Perrautier, treasurer •of the province of Languedoc, and the Cardinal Bouzy were both pupils of the teacher of Brinvilliers. Each made practical application of his instruction, the treasurer clearinsr the way for his own advancement, and •the Churchman relieving himself of hisnumerous creditors by poisoning them. The evidence against the criminals was as conclusive as circumstantial could be; but their personal influence was more powerful than that of justice, and they got off without even being brought to trial. The result of this -evil clemency was that secret poisoning became fashionable. Jealousy, envy, avarice, ■and revenge were each satisfied in the same way. 'The prisons teemed with suspected Criminals, and the ‘ Chamber Ardente was ■organised for the special purpose of trying these offenders. In Paris the trade was mostly in the hands of two women, named Xavoisin and Lavigoreux, who combined with the ostensible occupation of midwife that of fortune-telling, and foretold to wives -the decease of their husbands, to needy heirs that of their rich relatives. Their prophecies came true, because they took care that they should be fulfilled. The houses of -these Fates, who, like * the fell fury with •the abhorred shears,* slit the thread of life with as deadly an instrument, were frequented by what the society paragraphist of our day would call the rank, beauty, and ffashion of Paris and the provinces. Among the celebrities who entered their names on ■the sibylline leaves or visitors’ books of the witches were the celebrated Marshal de Xuxembourg, the Duchess de Bouillon, and the Countess de Soissons. Lavoisin and her accomplice were burned alive in the Place de Grfeve in 1680, and fifty or sixty of their confederates were hanged in various cities of France ; but the practice had become looted so that we have Madame de S6vign£, in one of her charming letters, expressing a fear lest the terms ‘ poisoner ’ and * Frenchman ’ should become synonymous. More than a hundred persons had perished at the stake or on the gallows before the Govern, ment succeeded in stamping out the practice. Instances of poison mania have occurred, though on a more limited scale, here in England, but it has been reserved for the women of Southern Hungary to startle civilisation with the revival of a custom we are prone to rank among the obsolete barbarities of a dark and bygone age.