Description
Book Synopsis In the latter half of the 1800s, widespread suspicion and anxiety emerged when wives of all ages and social status were accused of killing their husbands with poison. However, what seemed like a massive spike in murderous wives across the United Kingdom and United States may not have been a spike at all, but rather a poison panic caused by hungry newspapers and mass hysteria.
This work explores several high-profile cases of women on trial for murdering their husbands with poison. Lust, money and power were often central to the accusations, and the sensational news coverage set off a century-long witch hunt. No woman was safe from suspicion during this untold chapter in the history of crime.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Panic Rising
- 1. She Won't Get Away with Murder
- 2. Arsenic, the Wonder Powder
- 3. True Crimetainment
- Part II. An American Poison Epidemic
- 4. Poison Wives in America (1835–1846)
- 5. A Changing America (1849–1871)
- 6. Murder in the Gilded Age (1870–1902)
- 7. Murder in the Second City (1911–1923)
- Conclusion: What Happened to the Poison Wife?
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
