Arsenic Arcana

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, 1997

‘Drops of sweat stood out on her blue face which seemed to have been frozen by some metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her eyes grew large as she stared vaguely about, and to all questions she would merely give a nod of her head. Once or twice she even managed to smile. Then little by little, her cries grew louder. Suddenly she gave a muffled scream. She pretended to be improving and said she would be getting up in a little while. But then convulsions seized her.

“Oh God, it’s unbearable!” she cried…’

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)

Arsenic is a brittle, grey-white, non-metallic chemical element which forms poisonous compounds with oxygen, eg, arsenic trioxide, a white powder used for insecticides, pesticides, rodenticides, homicides and certain medicines. The word comes variously from Latin arsenicum, Hebrew zarnig, or Greek arsenikon, or “yellow orpiment”. (cf Greek arsenikos, “virile”.)

When Anna Maria Zwanziger’s lawyer husband died leaving her destitute, she resolved to avenge herself on the entire legal profession. Working as a housekeeper in a succession of judges’ homes, she is thought to have administered poison to at least eight people, killing four and causing violent illness in the rest. During her trial she was seen to tremble with pleasure at every mention of the word arsenic. The Bavarian authorities finally beheaded her for her crimes in 1811.

Arsenic is not an essential element for human nutrition, although human tissue normally contains 0.1 part per million. The ancient Greeks used it in small doses to treat anything from skin rashes to anaemia. During the 19th century arsenic derivatives such as neoarsphenamine were employed as a treatment for syphilis.

In 1889 Mrs Florence Maybrick was sentenced to life imprisonment following the death of her husband, but doubts remained as to the extent of her culpability. Both had used arsenic regularly in the home. Florie employed a compound distilled from arsenic-impregnated flypapers to rid herself of spots as part of her toilette before social occasions. James Maybrick took frequent doses of it both as a pick-me-up and as an aphrodisiac, sometimes visiting the local chemist in Liverpool five times a day. The build-up which killed him could have been accidental, given how much picking up he needed. Apart from his wife, who was his junior by twenty-three years, he had a mistress with whom he had been conducting an affair for twenty years and who had borne him five illegitimate children in addition to his two legitimate ones. At the time of his death, he and his wife between them had amassed enough arsenic to kill fifty people.

Arsenic compounds work protoplasmically, that is, by blocking cell and tissue respiration. They paralyse the muscles, causing much local haemorrhaging and stopping normal cell division.

In the early 17th century the beautiful 13-year-old Frances Howard was contracted in marriage to the equally youthful Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. While he went abroad as a soldier, she was sent to Court where, equipped with “a sweet and bewitching countenance”, not to mention “a lustful appetite”, she quickly attracted the attentions of Sir Robert Carr, a favourite of King James I. Carr employed the services of his close friend Sir Thomas Overbury to act as go-between and the affair flourished. However, by the time Essex returned from the continent eager to claim his delayed nuptial rights, Frances had determined to divorce him and marry Carr. Overbury – whether through jealousy or snobbishness – objected to the match and so Frances decided he needed to be got out of the way.

Using her family influence, she succeeded in having Overbury slung in the Tower where she set about silencing him for good. For weeks he “never ate salt but there was white arsenic put in it”, but this failed to have the required effect. Cakes and tarts then began to arrive at the doomed man’s cell, so thickly laced with poison that they turned black and had to be thrown away. Over the next three months the increasingly desperate Frances resorted to ever more lethal preparations involving mercury, nitric acid and Spanish fly. Overbury finally succumbed on 14 September 1613. Shortly afterwards, Carr and Frances were married. The bride wore white.

And she would have got away with it if the apothecary who supplied the poison hadn’t made a dramatic deathbed confession of his involvement, thereby exposing the plot. Frances, now Countess of Somerset, was sentenced to death only to be reprieved and finally granted a royal pardon after six years’ imprisonment. She died at the age of 39, her marriage now a ruin of bitterness and recriminations, another casualty of her greed and wickedness.

Symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning include severe stomach pains followed by vomiting, giddiness, headache, general weakness and diarrhoea. If death is not immediate, the patient suffers skin rash and aches in the extremities.

Johann Otto Hoch got though twenty-four wives in fifteen years by murdering all of them. His victims, generally lonely but wealthy women, were said at first to be taken in by Hoch’s animal charm, only to be completely overwhelmed later by his arsenical attentions. He even proposed to one of his sisters-in-law over the deathbed of his latest wife with the words: “Life is for the living, the dead are for the dead.” She accepted, but soon afterwards her new husband made off with her life savings. Hoch was finally apprehended in Chicago and was despatched to rejoin his wives from the scaffold in February 1906.

Treatment:

                Keep the patient warm.

                Do not induce vomiting as this wastes time and may do more harm than good.

                If the victim is unconscious, place them in the recovery position.

                If the patient stops breathing, begin artificial respiration but take care not to ingest any of the poison yourself.

                Call an ambulance

History has been unkind to Lucrezia Borgia, whose name has become synonymous with the foul art of poisoning, yet the really wicked one of the clan was her ambitious brother Cesare. He used poison as a political tool and questioned his court physicians closely on how best to go about poisoning everything from cups and flowers to saddles and even stirrups. He is said to have been particularly interested in the notorious veleno attermine, a white powder that killed slowly but surely, the poison which gave “perfect sleep”.

In fact, poisoning was so widespread throughout Italy in the 15th century that cardinals, politicians and nobles frequently attended banquets each with his own personal steward serving his own (presumably uncontaminated) wine. The practice was so commonplace that it was accepted by the host without insult.

Arsenic exists everywhere in the environment as a pollutant in the air, a contaminant in water, in food which has been treated with pesticides, in cosmetics, medicines, plants and certain inks. We are all, to a greater or lesser degree, poisoned by arsenic on a daily basis.

Between 1864 and 1878, Lydia Sherman is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of at least forty-two people, including many members of her immediate family. Her first husband, a drunk, died under suspicious circumstances, but although the doctor wanted an official investigation, the authorities refused as they felt it would be wrong to intrude further on the widow’s grief. Several marriages later her new husband Nelson took to drink following the sudden death of his young daughter. He too duly died. This time the body was exhumed and was found to contain “enough arsenic to kill an army”. At her trial the murderess said in her own defence, “I just wanted to cure him of his liquor habit.”