All Zone Media.
Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that people can do good things like kill their husbands. This is a rerun episode. Did you know that I get weeks off sometimes? And I got last week off, and I got last week off because of the Founding Fathers, who I don't like very much, but I appreciate my week off. And I thought to myself, what rerun should I give you all? And then I read a headline that says, quote conservatives in red States
turn their attention to ending no fault divorce laws. So I thought I'd tell a little story about what happened before divorce was legal, which is that women killed their husbands, just poisoned them, a lot of them, because it was the only way that they could get out of the situation. Divorce saves lives, it saves men's lives. You think they'd be happy about it anyway, This is a rerun and it's about women who poison their husbands. Hello, and welcome
to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm your host, Margaret phil Joy. Sophie says that I have to start each episode with a joke in order to be part of the cool Zone Media Network of Podcasts. Yeah, so okay, let me tell you. I remember that detail in my contract because I've got a photographic memory. It's just that I left the lens cap on. That's my joke. Okay. And today we've got a returning guest, the one and only Sharen Shreen.
How are you hi, I'm okay, Hi, Thanks for having me.
Yeah, what do you do? How do you justify your existence?
That's a hard question for me to answer right now. I've been going through a very extended existential crisis, like extended by like years.
Oh now I feel guilty.
It's fine. I should know at this point how to answer that after all this time. But I uh, I make stuff and try every day to stay alive. But yeah, I I write and direct and I can't say that I've done that in a while though. So there's where that there's where the imposter syndrome comes in. But you're not asking you all these questions. This is not therapy. I do need a therapist. I want to shut up.
Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to get you to talk about your podcast really quickly.
Oh my podcast. I do co host a podcast called Ethnically Ambiguous it's uh, it's evolved over the years. It used to be about news, and we do a lot of guest interviews now because the news hurts.
So that's true. Yeah, Sophie is our producer and is on the line too. How are you?
So it's just Sophie.
As we established ahead of this podcast, we do believe I have been cursed. So if you're listening and you we are the one who did that, how dare you?
How dare you?
And I believe we could probably do like a Peter Pan thing or if everyone starts clapping and says I believe in Sophie, Oh, then that will help lift Sophie's curse. If everyone who listens to this does.
That, yeah, please let me know. Or if you know how to lift a curse, you know, yeah me on Twitter. Thanks.
Ian is our editor and unwoman wrote our theme music, so sharene. I want to talk to you today about that sacred bond between two people, the bond of marriage. No, in particular, we're going to talk about the most important part of any successful marriage, which is to say, today we're going to talk about women who've murdered their husbands.
Okay, that's better, Okay, cool, I'm down. I'm down, I'm doun I like that twist.
I told Sharene that we picked this episode specifically for so it would have been particularly cruel.
Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean the context behind that is that I do not like marriage, and that's all you need to know.
Oh great, well, yeah, today we are going to talk about a multi generational crew of witches, roughly we'll call them witches in seventeenth century Rome, who sold poison to anywhere between forty six and six hundred women so that those women could murder their abusive husbands during an arrow when I know, big play, big play, And this is during an arrow where divorce wasn't a thing and where
women were basically the legal property of men. And we're also going to talk about the the real and yet also mythical concoction that they came up with called Aqua tafauna. And along the way, we're going not to also talk about skincare routines like bathing in the Blood of Innocence.
I do love skincare.
All right, well, this is some good stuff for you today.
Cool.
Cool, So everyone buckle up for the How to Kill Your Husband episode, which we're going to call the how to Kill your Husband. We're just gonna call it how to Kill your Husband and see if we get in trouble.
Cool.
Cool, So first we have to talk about whenever we talk about the cool things that people did, we have to talk about the bad things that they're going against. Right. So, marriage, m the history of marriage in Europe, really anywhere that's been controlled by Catholicism or even more importantly, patriarchy. But the research I did for this episode was primarily about Europe. It's dark as fuck. It's so dark. The history of
marriage is so bad. Yeah, Italy didn't legalize divorce until nineteen seventy.
What.
Yeah, well it's waste too late.
Years ago, you know what I mean?
Yeah, No, it feels like thirty years ago.
Yeah, it feels like thirty Yeah, you know what I mean?
The real ones know, Okay, Yeah, Spain didn't legalize it until nineteen eighty one.
What.
Ireland didn't legalize marriage until nineteen ninety six.
I was alive through in both of them. Wait, what was the second one eighty one?
No, I was eighty one.
I'm a spring chicken, but that was way to ninety six.
Yeah, and the reason for I mean The reason for those three is all Catholicism, but Ireland in particular, because they the Catholic Church of that very clever thing where they position themselves is like the anti colonial choice for
the Irish rebels right against that damnable Protestant England. And so when Ireland got its like kind of independence, the Catholic Church was like, hell, yeah, now you're free from England and you can just serve the pope and no one's allowed to enjoy sex anymore, and kind of instituted a theocracy, which is not what we're talking about today, but I always want to get that off my chest.
Yeah no, yeah, I don't like marriage for a lot of reasons. One of them is that it's usually really based in religion and control, and it's just become the archaic thing we've gotten used to in my opinion. But that's just my two cents. Because also, not all religious hashtag not all religions, but I'm not I don't really believe in anything, but I will say that in the Muslim faith, the woman keeps her name because she's not necessary, because why would you take your name if she's not
related to you? Is the logic behind that like, she's not your sister, she's not your mom. So she's going to keep her maiden name or just her name, and she can divorce anytime she wants. Like it's in the it's in, it's allowed.
You know.
So I'm not saying every religion is that way. I think it's become I think the institution of marriage itself has become something really out of our control, regardless of religion.
That makes sense, Yeah, totally. I started trying to look up more, you know, like I was looking up a divorce in Islam, and you know, finding overall a much better history than divorce into various Christian faiths. Although ironic, the Puritans, who hated sex and all this other shit, they were more pro divorce than the Catholics.
Maybe hating sex has something to do with that, I wonder.
Oh yeah, maybe, oh yeah, they're like, oh yeah, I get divorced. They can't fuck anymore. Yeah, totally, all right, So divorce hard. In a lot of times and places and a lot of places, men were allowed to divorce their their wives, but not vice versa. So like, because the woman is property, the man can be like I'm done with this property. But the property can't be like I'm done with my owner, you know.
M makes sense?
Yeah and and yeah, so okay, throughout history you've got this this shit that says wives of the legal property their husbands. In medieval England it was called coverture, which means that the wife's legal identity is subsumed by her husbands. And so an unmarried woman could own property, but a married woman couldn't because if once you're married, it all goes to the husband.
Wow, that is backwards as shit.
I know. So it's like, why the fuck would anyone get married? And mostly it's because of arranged marriages and being forced to.
So there wasn't any like benefit. There wasn't the excuse of like tax breaks, right like back then, there wasn't really like why wouldn't women get married if she had the choice?
I you know, everything that I was reading just basically had the like you kind of like couldn't. It was very hard to also in many ways, it was very hard to go through life as an unmarried woman. And I think this, I think it does change like century to century and like country to country, like exactly how free people are kind of in the same way that I feel like whenever I read about like historical gayness,
it's so different. It'll be like twenty years of awesome on this island and then everyone dies and that, you know, it's like and I feel like the rights of women, as best as I can tell, in medieval Europe would would fluctuate a lot. But I think people were getting married because you were like fucking told to.
Basically, it's just like the path of life that was laid out for you.
Yeah, and I think you also literally don't have a choice in a lot of cases. And so English law does this thing. And there's this problem where if English law does this thing, then the rest of the fucking world's law does this thing. Because I don't know if you knew this stream, but England hasn't always stayed on its island.
Oh really?
Yeah?
Has it got other places? English people been places they don't belong.
Yeah, well, you know, and they showed up as tourists
and took some pictures and went home. And then for some weird reason, when they showed up as tourists, all the other countries swore allegiance to their monarchy and anyway with all colonization and shit, their bullshit legal institutions get inherited by legal systems all around the world, including the US, and in the US all coverture wasn't really challenged until the nineteenth century, and it lingers in legal codes today still in various places, but state by state, each state
slowly got rid of coverture.
I'm the stand in for the dummies in the room. What is coverture?
Oh?
Sorry, So that's the the idea that the wife's legal identity is subsumed by the husband's.
Okay, got it.
And so it's a little bit like the wife is the property, but it's a little bit like the wife doesn't exist.
Like legally, you know, it kind of disappears.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Louisiana was the last state to get rid of coverture. Nineteen seventy nine, they finally got rid of it, and then nineteen eighty the Supreme Court ruled it federally unconstitutional. And I'm currently I'm hoping that the current Supreme Court is not listening to this podcast at getting any ideas. Yes,
I hope not, Sophie. Can we add a legal disclaimer that anyone who is currently serving on the Supreme Court or who determines what cases are heard by the Supreme Court isn't allowed to listen to this episode.
I think you just did all right.
If you are listening and you are on the Supreme Court, you have broken the law and you should report directly to jail.
Also, most of you fuck off.
Yeah yeah.
Non English conquered areas also managed to have similar shit because of other kind of internal colonization of Europe. You have the Napoleonic Code, which spread throughout Europe, which made women the property of husbands as it went. Ironically, the Napoleonic Code, I think also like spread legalization of homosexuality, but it also spread anyway.
Mixed bags, yeah, double edged.
Yeah. French women didn't get the right to work outside the home without their husband's permission until nineteen sixty five.
Wow.
Wow, famously liberal or I guess famously neutral. Switzerland didn't offer marriage equality until nineteen eighty eight, with like a super narrow vote.
That is unsettling.
I know, it was like it was like fifty three or fifty six percent of the population was like, yeah, let's make women equal in marriage.
Yeah, we're all was just like, oh, that place is fine, they're neutral, nothing bad happens over there.
They make pocket knives. Yeah, exactly, and hide all the money. Okay, So in the US didn't have the right to open credit card accounts, or rather, they could be denied opening credit card accounts if they don't have their husband's permission or whatever until guess what year.
I mean at this point nineteen ninety eight.
Okay, Well, well it was actually nineteen seventy four. I kind of set you up.
I was really, yeah, thinking the worst of humanity, which is fine, usually usually that's true.
Yeah, in nineteen seventy four, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prevents creditors from discriminating against people based on race, sex, or marital status. And even then, the thing about sex and marital status was literally slipped into the bill at
the last minute. There was a congress person named Lindy Boggs who hand wrote it onto the bill and made photocopies to pass out and was like, oh, I'm sure this was just an oversight that you made this Credit Opportunity Act and didn't include women in marital status in it, right, And they were like, okay, fine, and they passed the bill.
Wow.
Interesting critical support for someone I know nothing else about. Box plus So most of the past thousand years or so. Western women again, at least Western women. That's what I've looked at in the context of this particular episode shit run of it. When it comes to marriage, there's this essay that I think you Scherene would like. It's from nineteen oh seven and it's by Vulturing Declaire and it's called those who marry do ill.
Oh yeah, that sounds sick.
Yeah, And it was a response to there was like this like debate and someone else presented those who marry do Well, and so she was like, Nah, those who marry do.
Ill well epic nineteen oh seven. That was that's a good on you.
Yeah, who is it? By Vulturing Declare One Future Friend of the Pod Vulturing Declare she wants some she's like against the prison system, and so when someone tries to assassinate her, she like doesn't call the cops on them, even though he shot her, and then like gets handled in other ways and all this shit. I don't think he disappears or anything. Anyway. I don't know enough about that story yet because I haven't researched that episode yet. But Future Friend of.
The Yeah, that's a little crumb for later.
Yeah, okay, And so if you know this show, you know, if there's a bad set of laws and social practices, there are people fighting against it. And how do you think people fought against marriage, Sharen when divorce wasn't.
An option assuming they're already married or like, yeah, I mean the only logical like a solution seems like they would have to kill their husbands.
Yeah, poison, Yeah, poison is a really women solve the problem of marriage with poison?
Hell yeah. So but like, honestly, like really think about it. What was the choice there was like not all murder. Actually I shouldn't say that, but I think when you push people against a wall. This is in context of so many things, so many things, but people will do things that they wouldn't normally do, and everyone's capable of the same amount of things. You know, no one's like born
unless it's like actually like a chemical thing. But I think anything that you see someone do and you're like, oh my god, you can also do that because you're like you're just the same species and you have the capability of, like, in my opinion, anything can push you to the edge. Yeah, you know. So my point is I support this kind of murder. Yeah, and that's all I'm gonna say.
I mean, I am putting them on my show, cool
people who did cool stuff. So no, but that that makes a lot of sense, And even that point about anyone can do any of these things is worth thinking about also from the other point of view of like, you know, when when we do episodes that are about like people who like organized and did all this crazy shit that is a little bit more above board and a little bit less murder, that's stuff we can do, you know, And I like, I do a history podcast not to be like all the cool people are dead
and everyone who listens to this sucks, you know.
But like I mean, it's hard for me to remember that even like I just said it out loud, like sounding like I really believe that I was saying. But it's hard for me to believe that like real change can happen because you hear about all those revolutionaries, and you hear about people that were like fighting in a much more impressive time, and you're like, wow, those are badasses, and you forget that you can do the same thing.
I forget anyway for myself, because I think we get a little bit complacent, And also I think like history in general makes things seem really romantic and like far away. So yeah, I think reminding ourselves that we are just as capable of not more so, if we wanted to be. But it's just about wanting to be, and it's about executing, executing that.
Want, executing something.
Executing something good. Job, Wow, I cannot up.
Yeah, no, no, And it's such a I don't know. That's an important point. And and I will say the institution of marriage is still not inherently great, but is a different structure than it was before, and divorce is available to more people. So I'm not advocating, I'm just describing what people who had their backs up against the wall chose to do. So Medieval Italy had this reputation that may or may not have been deserved of being
fucking obsessed with poison. Supposedly, Medieval and Renaissance Italy had in whole poison factories. The authorities were like constantly testing poison and antidotes on prisoners and animals. Italian perfumers had side gigs making poison.
Wait, so what was this? What was most of this poison comprised of? Like, was there like a so hot one.
Yeah, Well, we'll actually talk about a lot of what people use to poison people in detail on this episode, but the big new poison on the scene for most of what we're talking about is Arsenic.
Okay, Okay, I was I was gonna say that. I was just like, I don't know, Yeah, it's a smart suggestion, but I'm glad my mind was in the right track.
Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And so Italians had this reputation of being these master poisoners, and so they would get hired by courts all over Europe to be like, oh, we need a court poisoner, come on over, or like at one point supposedly, and but all of this is wrapped up in myth, right, and we'll talk about that some too, But supposedly at one point, like you know, some monarch is like, oh, I need fifty poisoners to win this war for me by going and poisoning all
the wells over and you know, enemy land or whatever. Crazy one English guy wrote at the time, the Italians, above all other nations, most practiced revenge by treasons and are especially and especially are skillful in making and giving poisons. And so it's kind of this like, oh, those sketchy Italians, right, but you know whatever, that's so interesting.
I mean, I guess it kind of it makes sense, like I mean, obviously they're movies or whatever. All the stories you hear about that time, there is a lot of poison involved. There's a lot of like assassinations evolving poison or like whatever. Yeah, and so I guess I for I forget that that's like an actual thing that makes sense.
Yeah, because it seems like like a like a wizard's spell or yeah, yeah, the dragon came or the court poisoner slipped their ring open and poisoned the.
King drank the wine and then fell over and whatever.
Yeah, oh no, And I actually didn't write this in a script, but the kings and shit were fucking obsessed and paranoid where they would have like food tests, and the food testers would like, like the kings ate shit because like the food tester would come and eat a little bit of everything, but sometimes we just stir it all up together and like and so the food by the time it like is ready for the king to eat is like cold and like take like just destroyed.
And also strong flavors would mask the scent and taste of poison, so they would avoid the like strong flavors, and their concept of strong flavors was like onions and garlic.
Maybe not explains English cuisine.
I know, That's what I was trying to figure out. I couldn't find a direct link, but it seems because it's like, well, we don't know about those. But then I'm like, but I bet the peasants, I mean, they're already like turnips and shit, right, so the peasants are probably eating some spicy shit.
Yeah. I mean the solution to that, mister Kings, wherever you are is to make your own fucking.
Food, totally. Yeah, And they would like eat alone, and then they would like, like one king, I can't remember which one cause again it didn't make it in the script, he would like wet all of his napkins and have his like testers lick the napkins, and so the like the fucking handkerchief he's cleaning his face with or whatever is like wet and covered in someone else's spittle. Wall why in case there's poison on the napkins.
Oh my gosh, that's a little bit too far.
Oh And the best part is none of it worked, because these these poisons don't take five minutes to show up. They take take a couple hours at least, you know. Yeah, so poison times, ye oldie poison times. But a lot of it was fake. But there was like everyone was like freaked out about it, and it's hard to tell how much was real or not.
Mm hm.
One Italian poison of note was used by the Borgia family to murder a ton of political folks like bishops and all that stuff. And it was a cantarella or thought and it might have been copper arsenic and phosphorus prepared and the decaying carcass of a hog.
Hmmm.
Because what's cool. And we're gonna get to more of this. This is the time when science and magic are just fucking. Science and magic are just in bed, just fucking.
I appreciate that. Yeah, I was gonna say that sounds kind of witchy.
Yeah, you know. Yeah. And one of the reasons why I think that's a lot of this is exaggerated. There's so many things to say. Yes, Italy was obsessed with poison. There's all these poisons blah blah blah blah blah. But then like for example, Palmero, Polermo, pal marrow, you'd think I would have spelled it right when I wrote it down into my script. So town is sicily that a lot of this story takes place in It only had over like a three hundred year period, there was only
seven executions for poison. So, like, I think a lot of this is this sort of moral panic where basically anytime anyone important dies, people are like it was poison.
You know, Yeah, they've just like perpetuated this like fearful rumor yea more than it probably was. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like what we do now, So I know checks.
Out, But people definitely fucked with poison. Killing people never goes out of style, and poison has always also been a weapon of those who don't have access to more direct means of violence, which is to say, a woman's weapon again or has it been? Who knows? Because women kill people, right, Obviously we're going to talk about some women who absolutely kill some people, but patriarchal society condemns women in what amounts to witch trials over and over again. Also,
and everyone loves a good moral panic. So a lot of the killing we're going to talk about this week of women and Buy Women was actually about robbing property, and so I want to talk I'm going to go on this like little side quest before we get back to the main quest. I'm really excited about the side quest. I want to talk about Countess Elizabeth Buttori, which I always thought was pronounced Bathory. Have you ever heard of this person?
Just that not I have not heard of, but Torri.
Okay, So this just to be clear listeners. Also, there's a little bit more of a content warning than usual on this episode because I'm not going to linger on anything in graphic detail. But there's some torture and murder and sexual assault and shit in this week's topic. It's very medieval, and I'm sort of making a pun but also realizing that's just where the fucking word medieval, meaning torture and shit comes from.
I guess that's yeah, that makes sense, that's the root meaning of that word.
Yeah. Okay, So the story goes there is this woman, Countess Elizabeth Battore, the Blood Countess, the alleged inspiration for Dracula. She's been claimed to be the most successful serial killer in history, with upwards of six hundred and fifty bodies. Wow, and I'm gonna tell I'm going to tell the most commonly heard version. First, but first before we do that, I want to know, so normally we're sponsored by very positive things. I think this time we're sponsored by Arsenic.
But I'm wondering, Sharen, if you have anyone that you would like this show to be sponsored by something that's just like a pure on adulterated positive thing for the world, like potatoes or arsenic.
A positive thing for the world. Yeah, I mean, I need more of this. This is sponsored by my will to live because it's running out and I need more. So if I can buy some, that'd be great.
Yeah. So if you purchase the products and services that we advertise, you will have more will to live. That is the promise and trap of consumer capitalism. Yep, here's some ads. Okay, So the commonly heard version of Betty. She was born in fifteen sixty Royalty in the Kingdom of Hungary. She wasn't born in Transylvania, but which was a region in Hungary at the time now Romania, but her uncle was in charge of Transylvania, and she was epileptic child or what got called at the time the
more metal name falling sickness. And how do you treat falling sickness. Well, Scharene, you should try rubbing the blood of someone without falling sickness on your lips or just drink that blood mixed up with powdered skull.
Oh, I mean they do do that like plasma facial these days, the vampire facial where they like literally take plasma out of you and put your on your face. Really so yeah, and it's supposed to like do wonders for keeping you young forever and like skin rejuvenation. So no, it sounds like she was onto something.
Then, buttre is definitely ahead of her time because we're going to get to even more of her skin care routine.
Oh hell yeah, she probably looked so.
Good, I know. So her family was inbred as hell because their royalty and falling sickness and insanity ran in her family. Again, this is the sort of legend version of all this. Her family raised her up to be cruel, as rulers were at the time, so she grew up watching brutal torture and executions at the hands of her family. Watched one Roma woman who is accused of stealing and selling children into slavery, which was almost certainly like a racist attack on the Roman woman because Roma people get
accused of that kind of ship. This woman was sewn into a horse's stomach. Yeah alive, Yeah, I think so. Not for that long though. M yeah, I'm sorry. There's gonna be some yep, some medieval ship. She watched her own cousin cut out the ears and noses off her bellious peasants.
Mm hmm.
Now I feel bad. I feel like I've done a bastard's No, you have.
Notice. Notice how I'm not flinching.
Not the sewing of the inside of the horse. I've never heard that, and if I have, I blocked it out of my memory. That is that is sick.
There are numerous types of torture and execution in this episode that I had never heard of, and I have been reading fantasy books since before I knew how to read. I don't know how that worked, but I was probably doing it genius. Her family was Calvinist on paper, but they practiced Satanism and witchcraft at home. She spoke Hungarian, Slovak, Greek, Latin, and German, and was one of the most educated people,
let alone women, of her era. When she was thirteen, she bore her first child, who was fathered by a peasant boy. The child was whisked away and never seen again, and the peasant boy was castrated for having dared such. And in the same year she was married off to a baron named ferent Nedazsi, who was about five years older than her and was from a family that supposedly
wasn't all fucked up like the Batteries. And this joined like two of the most powerful families in the country, right, because women don't have any fucking choice in know they marry, especially if you're fucking royalty and you're thirteen. Yeah, totally. She did get given a castle that she didn't even have to live in. She had a different castle to live in. She got like her own extra castle and
seventeen villages to own, because feudalism is fucking weird. Her husband was a noble and a soul journey, was always away from home, which I think probably suited her just fine. They didn't conceive their first child until they've been married for like ten years. He fought mainly against the Ottomans, because I think everyone who was an Ottoman was fighting against the Ottomans at that point, and he was a brutally effective leader and a monster to his prisoners. He
would impale them for fun. The Black Knight of Hungary, leader of the Hungarian troops and hungry.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. I can't deny that it's kind of metal, I know, I know.
Yeah, No, this whole there's multiple metal bands that I mean. One of them is just called Bathory or maybe Victory. Maybe it's pronounced correctly. I'm not sure. He teaches his wife even more cruelty. At one point, he punishes a girl by smearing her with honey so insects bite her. He has this whole game called kicking the Stars. I
don't understand this game. To quote Alexandra bartoso Witz's right up of this legend, it consisted of putting a piece of oil soaked paper between the fingers of a disobedient servant and setting it on fire. What was the thing called, uh, kicking the stars? I don't know. If it was between the toes, it would make a little bit more sense.
That sounds way more pleasant than it is.
It's totally Hey, kid, you want to play kicking the stars? Yeah, it's where I set some stuff on fire in your hand.
That's interesting and strange. Never heard of that.
From the same I know, from the same source. He also presented Elizabeth with a pair of gloves that ended in claws, which she used to punish her servants.
The original Wolverine and Dracula. Well she really had had had layers.
Yeah, absolutely, like like Shrek.
Yeah. I also just like a side note that I haven't forgotten since you said it. I forget that Transylvania was a real place, And I know there are people out there that do the same thing. So that's already wild to me, Like it's already set in this fantasy reality time.
Yeah, totally, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I have a friend of mine gave me a necklace that's a little vial of dirt from Transylvania. Oh that's cool, Okay. And so meanwhile, while her brave and cruel husband is off at war, Lizzie Batore is at home and she's getting into the evil shit all of her own. Now. She's making potions and casting spells and fucking people, even women. She travels around and has lesbian orgies. She invites witches and wizards to court. She keeps a guy who looks like a
vampire around. He's pale and has sharp teeth and wears all black. Huh, and she gets the name the Beast of Setya, which is the name of her castle.
Was.
I mean, this is definitely not something you need to know. But when did the vampire myths start? Like, when when did that being first get introduced into lore? I wonder.
I used to know the answer to this better I got. I fell into a vampire rabbit hole a couple of years ago, I want to say. I mean, historically versions of it have kind of existed forever. It's kind of from the like we thought someone was dead, so we buried them, but they weren't dead, so then they came back and it scared us, right. But it's around this time period that you start getting more and more folkloric vampires,
and they're kind of interesting. In the old vampire stories, some of them are like aristocrats, and it's kind of this like fear of the aristocratic, but then some of them are also like all kinds of other shit. I should do a vampire episode at some point when I actually know this off the top of my head.
So you're reatively sucking the blood of the people.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, like staying young forever by you know, and so by our mid twenties against posedly, she's torturing people, mostly peasant women in her castle because you see Sharene, have you ever had a migraine?
Yeah? Yeah, they suck.
Okay, Well, what if I told you that nothing cures a migraine like the screams of your victims.
Hmmm, I do. I am pausing for a moment of thought. Yeah, that would be hard to turn down if it was a really bad migraine. I'm not gonna lie.
Yeah, fair enough. So so she starts torturing people to cure her migraines. And but that's what she believed, Like, my my, if my victims are screaming, Yes, this is what the legend about her has, right, right, right, yeah, all of this. Yeah, and she's doing all kinds of shit according to this legend that I'm not going to
get in the details about. By the time she's forty one, she's got a witch best friend who moves in with her, just a gal pal named Anna Darvulia, who is described as a while old beast in a female body, which is objectively cool. So when Anna around, but Torri gets crueler and starts killing her victims. She claims that there's a cholera outbreak, and that excuses all the dead people, including now the daughters of the gentry who've come to learn manners in her court. So she's like, oh, send
your daughters to learn manners. They will live as prey in my castle and I will hunt them. She probably leaves that part out of the letters Interesting and most Famous, so.
She's not just killing peasants at that point.
Then, right, she moves on to the royalty or the gentry. Most famously, she's known to bathe in her victim's blood to stay young forever, which is why it's a shame it's pronounced batory instead of bathroy.
I was gonna say hot.
Supposedly she put other girls and women into iron maidens with drains at the bottom of the iron maiden and like attached it to a chain that swings above her takes showers and blood.
Huh, And I know.
And the way that she learns that blood is good skincare, much like twenty first century has learned that blood is good skincare, is that whenever maids would fuck up while doing her hair for she would massacre them and noticed that their blood was good for her skin. But the blood of aristocrats works better. So I would say that basically, the blood of billionaires will keep you young forever.
I would say that is a fact.
Yeah, O, caase anyone's wondering, Yeah, is this where.
The super problematic vampire facial thing comes from?
I was thinking about that. I don't know, there's no
way this is how it started. Maybe, but like the modern version of that is definitely interesting to think about because a lot of people dismissed it, but apparently it's actually a very it works like because I mean, what the first thing you have to do is though, is like you have to like micro needle your skin, so you're wounding your skin and then the blood over it your your face is apparently like the act of your face healing the wound and like generating you skin.
It used to be. And the reason why it was where where there was primarily is they were using not your own blood. That was the thing.
I can't do that, that was a thing.
But you can't create market for blood.
Where does the blood come from?
Great question? And there was all kinds of you know, as you can imagine health and sanitary issues there.
That is that is bad.
But yeah, no, no, but what I know exactly what you're talking about, which is, you know, less.
Pr or like collagen, and it's.
Done by like board certified like dermatologists.
No, no, it's like that.
But no, this other thing. You can't create a market for blood. That's the bad thing. Yeah, ahead, I did not realize that.
But that, Yeah, it was in fact a thing. I'm just wondering if this is the original source of it. I mean it sounds like it, which would be kind of cool. Yeah, and what Margaret's saying is you're renfercing something from pop culture Sharen and Sophie. I don't know the answer to that.
Fair enough, Yes, that is what's happening.
Fair enough, Yeah, please continue.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, sixteenth and seventeenth century vampires. I have a little bit more knowledge about.
Yeah, thank god, I will say I if I had the money. I don't think I'm above of the like the actual version of the PRP plasma facial thing, because collagen your body can't create college and once it's gone, you're just gonna get more hollow and sad. There's nothing wrong with be hollow and sad. But but the thing is, if something works, regardless of how weird it is, you will do it. And I think this lady is doing the same thing, you know, like it's working for her, and so she's gonna keep doing it.
Yeah, fair enough in sick oh okay, and so yeah, so she's doing this bathing of blood, and she also keeps girls as prey in her castle to be hunted at a whim.
Why girls? Why just girls? I'm not sure it easier to get probably so.
I actually I do have an answer that I'll come in the second half of when I'm talking about her, when I say what the actual story is, and I think that all In sixteen oh four, her husband, the Black Knight, is off at war again, and he's forty eight fucking years old, and he either gets slain in battle or gets poisoned by his wife, depending on the
story you read. And with him dead, suddenly his widow inherits everything, and rumors are spreading about what's happening in the castle at this point, and the king sends this guy his palatine is the name of the title, basically the Hand of the King. I can make a pop culture reference, it just has to be about just shows about people with swords, fair enough, The Hand of the
King goes to go investigate. Over three hundred witnesses to torture and murder come forward and they are exhooming all these bodies and shit from graveyards to find all the torture. They find other bodies and the tunnels under the castle. So on December thirtieth, sixteen ten, the Hand of the King goes personally to her castle and arrests her and four of her servant accomplices. When they arrive, she's covered in blood over the corpse of a mutilated girl with
another livingess prey in the castle. And when they search her castle, they find her journal detailing the deaths of six hundred and fifty people.
She kept a diary about all of this.
Yeah, again, we'll get with anything.
Totally, like no DNA nothing, you're writing about how many people you've killed? But I have a question. Sorry, side, it's okay about the answer. What was the gender of the kid that they had together? Was it a boy or a girl?
And I don't know what the one that was secret?
Oh no, no, no, you said that they.
Oh they did. I think she had up having like ten of his kids in the end. Oh, but like I don't remember how many of them survived all of these stories are like, and then they had seven children, three of whom survived to adulthood.
Right, I guess my question is, like, would normally the air get everything versus the queen.
I oh, it's an interesting point. I don't know how the inheritance was working in this particular setup. I do know that she inherited everything from her dad husband.
That's pretty I mean, that's a cool point to think about, because it's a pretty sick deal.
Yeah. And it might have been because she wasn't a ruler. I mean, she was a ruler, but you know, not high up, right, Or she was high up, but she wasn't the fucking queen of Hungary or whatever.
Right.
So they all get arrested, The accomplices confess, and three of them are executed, one is given life in prison, and the countess gets convicted of vamporism, sorcery, paganism and was bricked up in a room in her own castle and lived out the rest of her days. And the blood Countess was defeated. Wow, except basically none of that's fucking true. Oh, which is like, I know, I'm a little bit like, I mean.
She's a terrible person if that was true. If that was true, she's like a disgusting torturer, serial killer person that had great skin. But uh yeah, interesting.
But I find I found a bunch of things in this when I'm when I'm finding this kind of history where there'll be like a woman who is like attacked as this horrible witch or whatever, right, and then it'll be like, oh, actually, all that's lies, And so then people will be like, actually, she was perfectly fine and normal and everything was fine and she was upstanding, and then you go like one step further and you're like, oh, no, she was really interesting and cool in a different way
than being a vampire.
Okay, I'm I'm in. You've hooked me.
So she was raised Calvinist, she had falling sickness, she might have been treated with blood. She probably witnessed cruelty at the hands of her parents. The sewing the woman into the stomach of a horse. Thing it was probably didn't happen, not because they didn't do that, but because they did that to They didn't do it to peasants, because a peasant's life isn't worth killing a horse for. Because a peasant is worth less than a horse. Wow, So she probably did see someone get sewn into a
stop horse of was whatever stomach of a horse. She certainly married the Black Knight, who absolutely was the Black Knight and a cruel, fucking, terrible person. He likely didn't die valiantly in battle. It's also really unlikely that she poisoned him, although I would not rule it out. He'd been mysteriously sick for several years before he died, and actually had been unable to walk the last several years
of his life. It was likely that he had poisoned himself with a treatment he was taking for venereal disease, but some of those same treatments were used in popular poisons around that same time, so I don't know. She might have been trying to get rid of her cruel husband. That's the head canon for me, is that she did
poison him and deserved it. But the investigation into Batory about wanton murder and witchcraft it started at the same time as her husband started getting sick, because when they knew that she was going to inherit his wealth and most importantly, the king owed them a fuck ton of money,
and that debt was canceled when she was convicted. Interesting, so the whole trial was almost certainly just about money and power, and then later the folkloric demonization of this Hungarian aristocrat was useful for Slovak nationalism, so it became a useful folklore. Right when she was arrested, she was
eating dinner and not probably covered in blood. The evidence of her journal was that a servant claimed to have talked to investigator who saw the journal, but the journal was never entered into evidence during the trial, so it didn't exist. Her three accomplices did confess to doing all those things while they were having their fingers ripped off with red hot pinchers and being burned alive. One who was I think you say, little person. He got off
lucky and he was just beheaded. It wasn't quick and they never acted as witnesses in court. They just had their confessions before they were tortured to death.
Wait, so you're saying the killing of the young girls to stay young thing was true?
No? No, so they didn't know. They didn't kill anyone as far as they can tell.
No, so they only confess under torture. Yeah the deal.
Yeah, and.
Huh.
Interesting, she was never bricked into her castle. She was just put under house arrest, despite theoretically having like personally murdered more people than anyone before since it ever personally murdered. And they just were like, whatever, you have to stay in your castle because we successfully robbed you. It would also take about thirty people's blood to fill a bath, and the detail about the blood baths was added to
the folklore one hundred years after her death. There were probably no lesbian orgies, which is the saddest part for the word damn, And she acted the galpal, so is she real? Yes? And I believe in the galpal being gal pals mm hmmm, because and she wasn't accused of witchcraft or satanism in court, just the murders. All the witchcraft was added later. The Iron Maiden never really existed in Europe. It's an invention. Like the concept of the
Iron Maiden is like so weird. The Victorians were like kind of being like it was like a Victorian like con artist was like, look at this murder thing that the medieval people had pay me a dollar to go look at it or whatever.
Damn, that guy really grifted.
I know, I know. Speaking of more metal bands that came out of this. And you know, an iron maiden For anyone listening who doesn't listen to iron maiden, it's an upright human shaped coffin with metal spikes that you put the person in your close in and they die, right. But it is true that they would sew people up into the stomachs of horses. So maybe they did have spikey boxes. It wouldn't surprise me if they had spikey boxes. You know, they also had things close to iron maidens.
They would like put you in like kind of a barrel with spikes, but you the spikes don't puncture you unless you move, so it's a like, hey, don't move kind of bullshit.
I mean, if you were rolling down a fucking hill, that sounds worse than just a quick little snap of the iron maiden, you know what I mean.
That's true, that's true.
That's that's bad.
And where did have an iron maiden? Was ninth century Bagdad. Oh okay, the vizier Ibn al Zayat made a wooden chest full of spikes and would like throw people in it. But live by the wooden chest full of spikes, die by the wooden chest full of spikes. And in eight hundred and forty seven he got thrown into his own box and killed.
Wow, karma, I guess that's what you would call that.
But what but Torri was is really fucking interesting. She was a healer and her accomplices basically were witches. They were midwives and healers that she hired and her she turned her castle into a place that taught women anatomy and medicine, which of course was all medieval as hell and involved blood letting and like burning people's wounds with hot irons and shit. The like red handed that she got caught was well, actually, before I tell you that, you know who else will heal you and heal your
soul and give you the will to live. Everything that comes after which we have personally that we have not personally vet it. The ads that are coming after are randomly generated.
And we are back from those ads that we all personally endorse and love because everyone who participates in capitalism appreciates their own role in the perpetuation of a society that's destroying the entire globe.
Yep ah, okay, where were we?
Uh? Red handed? She was caught red handed.
So she was caught red handed which was because yeah, she was there. She was in the middle of like I mean, she was in a middle of eating dinner, but there was someone there who was being treated, a young local woman who had been attacked by a wild animal and so had like been taken to the castle where you know, the weird ass countess with all of her like weird ass probably lesbian witch friends would heal
you up. And so that was where like the dead bodies and stuff would come from that, and like there were all of these you know, disease outbreaks happening at the time that was killing a lot of people.
But interesting, that's that's a really unfortunate twist or like way to change that story. And you know, like she was just uh because before you said but you described her as very smart, like knowing all these languages and like all this stuff, So it makes sense that she'd be interested in like their version of medicine back then.
Yeah.
Uh, that's that's a I mean, not surprised that I got twisted that way, but it's unfortunate.
Yeah, And it's just like such a classic way that like I mean it all has to do with witch hunts and not serial murder, you know.
Yeah, and also just like that stereotype of like, uh, I guess it's like a witchy stereotype, like an older like someone uh like sucking the life out of a young person to stay young because that's what they because like it's vanity and like whatever.
Totally, so in.
This case it was literal. But I mean you can say that about a lot of uh, I don't know, shitty people.
Yeah, but in my head canon version, they're doing blood letting and they're using leeches and shit on people. Why not use some of that blood for your own skin?
So, I mean you said that when she was young, her epilepsy was treated that way, right, I don't think she's above that. I think if especially with these vampire facials, I'm calling them that because that's essentially what they are. Yeah, there's blood, but they work apparently, and so yeah, I don't think she would have had to go on gone out of her way if that, if she was already doing healing and stuff anyway, like blood living, you know what I mean?
Yeah, totally, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And it's like, you know, because like people want to be like, aha, she was actually perfect, right, Like she's still like in my head she still might have murdered her husband, who might probably had it coming, you know, and she's still like I
don't know, like it like we just don't know. Because when things get muddied so completely by like misogynist trials and the misogynist folklore, you take someone who is probably genuinely really weird, but you don't know how you know?
Right, Wait, so did you tell me how she died yet or no?
So she so she gets put on house arrest and she kind of just like waste. So she like doesn't actually live all that long after that, but she doesn't die of any like particularly notable way. Maybe she can don't.
Kill her now, just like exile her.
Essentially into her own castle. Yeah, but I banish There is one really interesting end of this story. Okay, So she was buried at the local church and the locals were like, no, what are you fucking doing. She's like an evil vampire sorceress, demon from hell. Get her out of here. So she was moved to the family crypt somewhere else in the country. But that crypt was opened in nineteen ninety five and her body wasn't there.
Oh damn, that's cool as shit, right, is Uh? That's so interesting.
So maybe she was a vampire maybe. Okay, so she's like a healer vampire, right, who like occasionally has to kill people, you know or whatever, but like mostly.
She's like, yeah, she uses her powers for good.
Yeah, her husband sucks so away with him and you know who.
I mean, where is her body that you have to wonder? I don't fucking know, Like maybe someone like unearthed her to keep the legend alive or something. Oh yeah, total lot of effort though to like think about years and years later, I don't know.
Yeah, and it was before black metal kids were really much of a thing, so like mm hmm. Although I mean basically black metal kids have always you know, the black metal kids in our hearts have been doing this kind of shit forever. So so there absolutely were some women doing some poisoning, and like most cool things in history, they wasn't done by a single person. And we're going to talk the main Okay, we finished our side quest
and we're off to the main quest. We're going to talk about a whole multi generational ring of women in seventeenth century Italy. Collectively, they've got upwards of six hundred kills, which might make them the most successful serial killer group in history. But as you can kind of pointed out the top of the hour, I think that murdering men who legally own you from whom there is no divorce should not be a crime, and neither should be providing
the poison. So I don't really see them as serial killers.
Yeah, if anything, gets an act of self defense, because who knows what they were experiencing to to like need to have to do that.
Oh we we unfortunately know, oh what they what they were experienced. I won't get into the details about that.
Yeah, I'm prepared, prepared.
Yeah, And maddeningly, this beautiful, like multi generational group of women gets their complex history has been reduced to a legend of a single woman, which is also untrue. It's the era of arranged marriages seventeenth century Italy, So not only are women incapable of leaving unhappy marriages, they don't even get to pick them at husbands in the first place. They're basically auctioned off. So your best bet was to be a aspiring widow and to get a sense for
the life of married women. At the time, there was a best selling book from the previous century, Rules for Married Life which advised husbands, you must be your wife if she delights in standing at the window and willingly lends a ready ear to any dishonest young men.
Wow, the rule book.
Yeah, sir, what Yeah, them's the rules, Sophie.
Yeah, k gates like forloringly or whatever out of window because it's the only thing that they could do and there wasn't any TV.
They're like window, window, not fine door Okay, yeah.
No, Yeah, it's just such a like you can't Yeah, the fact that you can't even gaze forlornly out the wind, like, oh, you better not be looking sad in your life, that I have made into a nightmare thoughts. Yeah, no, basically yeah, And so this is gonna be the murkiest story I've ever told on this show, because it's the one I've found the greatest variety of versions of. I'd even written a ton of this script before I found a history book that basically threw out everything else. And so I'm
gonna do my best. But I'll say that half the pop retellings of the story you'll find on various websites are completely fucking wrong, and so mine might be completely fucking wrong. But again, I've read a fuck ton of sources around this try to piece it all together.
I mean, essentially all of history is made up.
Yep.
You know, no one actually knows whatever happened, and history books are written by people that wanted to write them.
If that makes sense, Yep, absolutely, And I have so much respect for historians who actually just like do the work of trying to piece together all of these fucking things and be like, Okay, here's why the court record might be biased in the following ways, and here's why, you know. And I'm one of these pop historians I'm complaining about because I'm not actually a historian. But uh, the story that gets passed into legend is that there's
a woman in Italy, Julia Tufauna. She's a second generation poisoner, and she concocted a poison that mixed arsenic lead and Bella donna. It was odorless and flavorless when put into wine, that would kill a man with only four drops over the course of months. You do one drop like once a month or so, and it made the man appear to die of natural causes. She sold this poison to ambitious and evil women who wanted to rob their poor
unsuspecting husbands. It was sold as Aqua tafauna, a cosmetic so as to not arouse suspicion, or alternatively a vial of holy water with Saint Nicholas on the label. Wow, this was a whole con Oh like, oh yeah, we'll get to them.
An entire operation.
Yeah.
Respect.
Juliet Tafana supposedly worked for fifty years killing those six hundred people before being found out and executed in sixteen fifty nine, which is an awkward way for her to have to work for fifty years because she was born in sixteen supposedly born in sixteen, twenty thirty nine years before supposed to death. Never mind such details. Fifty years, six hundred people, all by herself. When she died, she
passed on her legacy to her kid. And that version of the story conflates a ton of people, Like I was saying, so, I'll try my best to get it right. But this isn't like the Elizabeth Batore's story. Don't worry. They actually did some murder, a lot of people getting poisoned, and the lies and the histories are around the motives and around who did the poisoning and the scope of the world they lived in. But that's where I'm going to cliffhanger. It nice because that's where we're going to
leave it today. When we come back Wednesday, we're going to hear the true story, which is actually cooler, like just frankly cooler, and involves a whole underworld of magicians and witches and cities, which is cool, which is very cool.
You're a pro even I'm excited about that. Even there is.
DREI do you have any thing you'd like to plug? Uh?
Not particularly. You can follow me on the internet if you want, but to be honest, I don't even post on there anymore. I'm very disillusioned with the act of posting right now and have been for a minute. But you know what, follow me anyway give me a little ego boost when I say, when I see it on my phone, which is sometimes all I need.
And you you host a podcast with uh on an ambiguous and listeners can also catch you on on cools on Media's Daily Show. It could happen here like several times a month.
Right, Yeah, Sophie, can you just do all my fight now on? I mean, because I appreciate that I do Margarets too, what.
H so you could uh, you can follow Margaret on Twitter at Magpie kill yep okay, and you can follow her on on Instagram at Margaret Killjoy.
I knew there was my handles, okay, okay.
You can follow Sharene on Instagram at shiro hero and you can follow Sharen on Twitter at shearer Hero six six six.
Hell yeah, okay, I.
Really I really know that. Also, Margaret, you have a book coming out. Correct or it is out.
It's already out.
It's out.
I'm on tour for it right now.
Yeah.
Margaret is recording in a in a car vehicle.
Very true.
Yeah, dedicated yeah to to Uh you know her book and her podcast. Oh yeah that too, Margaret. What what what's your book called? And where can people find it?
Well, it's called we Won't be Here Tomorrow because we'll be here Wednesday. No, I I've already made that.
Oh my god, that was perfect though.
Thanks.
Pretty good.
It's a book of short stories. If you like the kinds of things that I tell stories about here, whether it's witches or revolutionaries, you will find both in my book about people who feed men to mermaids or whatever. Yeah, and you can get from a cake Press.
By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.