Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Erin Manky,

listener discretion advised.

In the early 1800s, the specter of arsenic poisoning was everywhere.

Arsenic was scary, and for good reason, it was a deadly poison that could odorlessly

be dissolved into food or drink.

And it was something with a number of legitimate uses, like rat poison, agriculture, even some

medical treatments, which meant that arsenic was widely available in apothecaries.

But something else made arsenic uniquely frightening among the bourgeois salon class.

arsenic was available from apothecaries, but it was only permitted to be sold to, quote,

well-known people, which meant it wasn't being sold to, quote, indigent prostitute beggars

or visibly destitute people.

And quote, arsenic was being used for murder, then, by the type of person that society didn't

perceive to be a murderer.

It was a little wonder that the poison was sometimes referred to by the morbid little

nickname, inheritance powder.

Another thing that made arsenic terrifying was there was no real way of testing for it.

It killed someone with vague symptoms that could be ascribed to a number of fairly common

diseases, and even as late as the 1830s, evidence that something contained arsenic could

be as inexact as whether it emitted a garlic-like smell when burned.

People were getting away with murder.

And what made it scary, those people getting away with murder could look like anyone.

The nice young man with wealthy parents.

...