Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims

Abstract

Katherine Watson, Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and their Victims , London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2004. Pp. 320. £19.99. ISBN 1–85285–379–4. Admirers of Under Milk Wood will remember the henpecked schoolmaster, Mr Pugh, reading his mail-order, brown-paper-covered copy of Lives of the Great Poisoners at dinner under his wife's suspicious eye. Apart from a play by Caryl Churchill, no author has produced a genuine book of this title, although biographies of individual murderers abound. Fortunately, Katherine Watson has not attempted to fill the gap. Although well-known figures such as Mary Blandy, Crippen and Palmer appear in her account, and the publisher has hopefully included Harold Shipman's picture in the collage on the dust jacket, the English poisoners of her title are a drab and sorrowful crew. Mostly poor and barely literate, they reflected the class distribution of the population. Some were ‘great poisoners’ in that they disposed of more than one victim, usually their own or their employers' families, but most were content with ridding themselves of a single burdensome individual. The majority of cases were attributable to personal animosities, but killing for gain was not uncommon (Watson attributes about a fifth of her cases to financial motives, emphasising the rise of insurance-related murders after the 1870s).