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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.
List of contents
Table of ContentsPreface
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
About the author
Christine Seifert, PhD, is a professor of communication at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she teaches classes in rhetoric, professional writing, communication strategy, and history/philosophy of science. She is the author of one novel and three nonfiction books, and has written articles for Harvard Business Review, Bitch Magazine, and The Atavist, among others.
