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Femme Fatale’s – The Poisoner’s Handbook
How would you kill your husband or cheating lover? Alcohol overdose perhaps? Choke him with garrote wire? Or if subtlety isn’t your thing you could just smash his skull in with a heavy object and be done with it. If you are jazz loving, gin drinking party girl Ruth Snyder in 1920’s Manhattan you could do all of the above, just to make sure. In her new ‘Poisoner’s Handbook’ Deborah Blum focuses on murderesses like Snyder along with the emergence of the new forensic techniques used to catch them and provides details on each poison used.
Fortunately for Snyder and many like her, the new science was still very much in the testing stage and very few were caught - it also helped that poisoning with alcohol often went undetected as many in the Prohibition era drank methanol recreationally!
New Scientist says “one arsenic poisoner the toxicologist missed went on to serve her neighbour eggnog laced with Rough On Rats powder.” Others added thalium to cocoa before serving it to their victims, baked arsenic into cakes and pickled fruit with various chemicals to dispose of unwanted people.
It’s a good thing the Satanic Sluts weren’t around then, God help anyone who crossed one of our ladies! Home-made muffin anyone?
Article in New Scientist here http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/02/how-manhattans-poisoners-met-their-match.php
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