Some Guys Just Can’t Hold Their Arsenic

Poison has always interested humans, probably because it can be put into anything. A meal, a cup of medicine, a family visit. For women, poison charges carried extra weight, tied up with fears about wives, mothers, healers, mistresses, and anyone standing too close to power. Some of the women below were convicted. Some confessed. Some were probably shaped more by politics, gossip, or later legend than by hard evidence. These 20 historical women were accused of poisoning, and their stories show how easily fear could cling to a woman's name.

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1. Locusta

Locusta became one of ancient Rome's most notorious poisoners, remembered as someone allegedly useful to people near the imperial throne. Ancient accounts connected her to Agrippina the Younger and to the deaths of Claudius and Britannicus, though the surviving stories come through hostile political tradition.

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2. Agrippina The Younger

Agrippina the Younger was accused by ancient writers of arranging the death of her husband, Emperor Claudius, so her son Nero could take power. The poisoned mushrooms story has survived for centuries, partly because it fits Roman imperial drama almost too neatly.

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3. Lucrezia Borgia

Lucrezia Borgia became attached to legends of poisoning long after her lifetime, mostly through the darker reputation of the Borgia family. She was accused and mythologized. Proved, she was not.

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4. Catherine De' Medici

Catherine de' Medici was accused by enemies of using poison in the tense world of 16th-century French politics. Stories about perfumed gloves and secret cabinets say as much about xenophobia and fear of powerful women as they do about any actual evidence.

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5. Giulia Tofana

Giulia Tofana was linked to Aqua Tofana, a slow-acting poison associated with 17th-century Italy. The most dramatic versions of her story are hard to verify, though the legend endured because it placed poison inside the intimate world of marriage, cosmetics, and household survival.

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6. Catherine Monvoisin, La Voisin

Catherine Monvoisin was a central figure in France's Affair of the Poisons, accused of fortune-telling, occult services, and supplying poisons to clients who could afford them. She was convicted and executed in 1680.

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7. Madame De Montespan

Madame de Montespan, a longtime mistress of Louis XIV, was accused during the same scandal of using La Voisin's services. The allegations were never proved in court, though the association with poison and royal jealousy damaged her reputation all the same.

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8. Marie-Madeleine D'Aubray, Marquise De Brinvilliers

Convicted of poisoning family members in 17th-century France, the Marquise de Brinvilliers horrified people because her case moved poison out of courtly rumor and into the family home, where inheritance, resentment, and dinner all sat uncomfortably close together.

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9. Mary Blandy

Mary Blandy was hanged in England in 1752 for poisoning her father with arsenic. She claimed her lover had given her the powder and that she'd believed it would soften her father's opposition to their relationship. The court wasn't persuaded.

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10. Elizabeth Fenning

Elizabeth Fenning was a young English cook executed in 1815 after arsenic was found in dumplings served to the Turner family. She maintained her innocence throughout. While we can never be sure, this case was a controversial one, partly because Fenning herself had reportedly eaten some of the same food.

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11. Sarah Chesham

Sarah Chesham, sometimes called Sally Arsenic, was accused more than once in mid-19th-century England. She was eventually executed in 1851 for attempted murder after arsenic was connected with food linked to her husband's illness.

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12. Marie Lafarge

Marie Lafarge was convicted in France in 1840 of poisoning her husband Charles with arsenic. Her trial became notable because chemical testing played a major role in the proceedings, though the case stayed controversial among those who doubted the evidence.

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13. Madeleine Smith

Madeleine Smith, from a wealthy Glasgow family, was tried in 1857 for allegedly poisoning her former lover, Pierre Émile L'Angelier, with arsenic. She received the Scottish verdict of not proven and walked free, though her private letters kept public interest burning for years.

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14. Florence Maybrick

Florence Maybrick, an American woman living in Liverpool, was convicted in 1889 of poisoning her husband, James, with arsenic. The case stayed disputed for years because James was known to have used arsenic himself, and her death sentence was later commuted.

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15. Adelaide Bartlett

Adelaide Bartlett was tried in 1886 after her husband, Thomas Edwin, died with chloroform in his stomach. She was acquitted, partly because the medical evidence left a question nobody could satisfactorily answer: how the chloroform had actually entered his body.

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16. Mary Ann Cotton

Mary Ann Cotton was convicted in 1873 of poisoning her stepson, Charles Edward, with arsenic. She was suspected of many more deaths connected to husbands, children, and household members, though her legal conviction rested on that one murder.

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17. Lydia Sherman

Lydia Sherman, known as the Derby Poisoner, was accused of poisoning multiple husbands and children across the United States. She was convicted of second-degree murder in 1872, and later accounts described confessions involving several victims, though the totals varied depending on the source.

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18. Jane Toppan

Jane Toppan, a Massachusetts nurse, was accused of killing patients and people close to her with drug overdoses involving morphine and atropine. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of her life in a state hospital.

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19. Amy Archer-Gilligan

Amy Archer-Gilligan ran a private nursing home in Connecticut where a troubling number of residents died. Investigators found arsenic in exhumed bodies, and her case became a deeply unsettling story about elder care, money, and how you can trust the wrong person.

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20. Nannie Doss

Nannie Doss was accused of poisoning family members across the American South, including several of her husbands. After the death of her fifth husband, investigators found evidence of arsenic, and Doss eventually confessed to multiple killings.

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