People die all the time, right? Death is inevitable, as our wise elders say. So when thousands of young, healthy men randomly drop dead, no one should be surprised… right?

Well… unless a professional poisoner lived in your town.

Between the 1600 to 1900s in Europe, a bunch of women came to be known as professional poisoners. These women were skilled in modern chemistry, and decided to use their skills in a different way -- to help women stuck in abusive marriages.

If you were a woman in Renaissance France, you could walk up to the house of La Voison, the local "witch" who would gladly hand you a giant bottle of arsenic to murder your husband.

If you were a woman in mid-1600s Italy, the mother-daughter duo of La Tofania and Guilia Tofana would supply with a potent blend of poisons to make sure your darling spouse slowly withered away -- slow enough that you could still get his inheritance.

And if you were lucky enough to live in Serbia in the early 1900s, Baba Anujka would have you covered. Although, please remember, modern autopsy methods did exist during this time, so you were likely to get caught quite easily. 

This episode is intended to be an informative listen, and also a cautionary tale -- of criminal women supporting their fellow sisters, in times of dire need.

SOURCES: 

• Montague Summers, Geography of Witchcraft (1927; reprint Kessinger Publishing, 2003)

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/07/poison-is-a-womans-weapon/  

• https://www.historiamag.com/5-infamous-female-poisoners/

• https://medium.com/an-idea/ten-famous-poisoners-and-their-hapless-victims-776419e36c50  

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-human-equation/201207/psychological-profile-poisoner 

• https://www.wired.com/2013/01/the-myth-of-the-female-poisoner/