Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
Hello, and welcome to Criminalia, where we explore the lives and motivations of some of the most notorious criminals in history. In this special episode, we're returning to our season one roots to talk about Lady Poisoners with author and illustrator Lisa Parrin.
I'm Marian Marky and I'm Holly Frye. Welcome, Lisa. It is so delightful to have you here.
Thank you. I'm tickled to be here.
So for our listeners, Lisa is, as Maria said, the author and illustrator of the League of Lady Poisoners, illustrated true stories of dangerous women, and she is with us today to talk about the stories of women who deliberately poisoned everyone from strangers to family members. Okay, so right out of the gate, Lisa, it's not just us. There are a lot of other people who love this topic. So why do you think we're all so obsessed specifically with women poisoners?
Yes, I love that question. I'm so glad to be amongst my people here. I was actually really surprised when I thought of this idea that there wasn't more about women poisoners as a genre or as a concept. There's certainly a lot of true crime books, and there's even increasingly more books and stories about women criminals. But I had always heard, and I imagine you have too, this old adage that poison is a woman's weapon, and that there is this cultural connection between women in this particular
vehicle for murder. But I was surprised that there weren't more podcasts and books and movies on this subject. As to why, I think there's a lot of reasons. I think it's a bigger interest in true crime and in history, and I love the kind of historical true crimes and how weird they can be. I have a few theories on what keeps people coming back to true crime tales, and I think a few of them are us that
they're great examples of storytelling. I think we have heroes and villains, and we have dramatic action and a climax, and then hopefully sometimes we get resolution and justice. So I think just they're compelling for that reason. I've noticed specifically that women are interested in true crime. I think that's a fair thing to assert, again with everyone in the room. It's a safe way to engage with the thing we're the most afraid of, listening to podcasts about
it and reading books about it. It's like we can finally let ourselves think about that most scary thing with enough distance that it's not happening to us or someone we know personally. Then I think, finally we feel like we're doing research on some level, like we're going to protect ourselves because we know what happened to them and we're not going to do that thing. So that was like why I think we're all maybe on the true
crime bus. But as for poison specifically, there is this long historical connotation that women were the ones who were making tinctures and solved like these wise women and witches and had access to different materials or ingredients that could cause harm. And because they had access, and in theory that women are more duplicitous or more likely to harm by more secretive means that there is this connection. The whole impetus for the book. What for me was is
this true? And is it you know? And if not, why has it endured?
When Holly and I worked on the first season, we sympathized with a lot of the women that we covered, and it was surprising. Did it surprise you in that way too? Did you become more or less distasteful or tasteful towards your subjects as you were researching and writing about them.
Most of my response I've gotten to the book so far has been generally like really positive. The only critical comments I've gotten, and I think you might appreciate this, is that I have read in a few places that they find my take on this a little too sympathetic to the murders. I think a valid and I think is interesting. I understand, but I think you too will understand more than anyone else that these stories are not straightforward.
There's so much more nuance, and usually there's so much more context, and once you have more of that story in that background, and you understand more of the motivation, which of course is hard to completely know or understand and to get into someone else's mind. But when you have more of that story fleshed out, you see their situation differently, and you understand that most often these were acts of desperation. This was like a last ditch resort.
The themes that I kept coming up against were women who were using poison as a way to escape abuse or situation that they had no agency in. And I think many modern women today would have a lot of sympathy for that because we do have so much more, not in all places, certainly, but ideally hopefully some more control over our lives and our futures and our own money and finances. And this was something that interested me
because it wasn't just in one place. This is a global study throughout the world, and of these same themes kept coming up. This is not in all cases too. There are definitely women in this book where were like that is absolutely it is not across the board, like, oh, you cannot sympathize for this woman. She is killing just unabashedly, with no fear or sadness or guilt.
You think of that quote where people say there are no female serial pillars and you're in the middle of this kind of research, and you're like, I think there.
Might be, Like I beg to differ you me names I can share.
You mentioned motivation, and I want to talk about that a little bit because that's how you organize the book, which is fascinating. Your poisoners in each chapter are grouped by the motivation whether that's that it was their profession or greed or love, et cetera. What led you to that structure versus doing something like in chronological timeline or geographical, Like why was that the way you wanted to do it?
To be honest, at first, my plan was chronological and I'm lucky to have a really thoughtful editor for the book at Chronicle Books, and she was like, you could do that, that would be fine. She just left us up to me, and she gave me the question, is there a more interesting way to organize these chapters? And
I thought, I didn't even think about that. There were a couple of options, like geographical, but I think when I thought about motive, I was like, that's so much more interesting to me because it brings together women from throughout the world and history in the same chapter. And you see how much in common these women that you
think would have absolutely you know, no overlap. For me, it made those connections richer and more interesting, and I loved getting to see the parallels of two stories that have never been compared or related to each other now juxtaposed, but like being in the same exact world and again people from different classes like queens and people from really a lot of poverty in their socioeconomic backgrounds ended up becoming more of a sociological examination that I think I
realized or prepared was prepared for, but it was. It was interesting.
I actually think that a lot of what you're talking about is also some of the reason why I still find our first season to be one of my favorites. It's so layered and thick and so many stories that you're never going to get the entire story, but how much can you get? And it was just really a very interesting season, not just to talk about the stories, but to find them and put them together as well.
Did you find that when you were doing your research that sometimes you had to piece together a lot of the history that was happening in that moment because you didn't have enough of that one woman's actual life story because they didn't really have them written down and it didn't get passed along.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's tricky, but I think you did it.
I think you did it so well.
How did you find a balance between how you portrayed the dark side of these lady poisoners and their actions while maintaining respect for them as well, or at least a respectful tone.
That was really hard. I knew that I didn't want to write a textbook. I don't feel qualified to write a textbook. I actually wanted to write something that would be in a more conversational tone. Actually, I think I was really inspired by all the true crime podcasts I personally listened to, including your own, which is more conversational. I find it's just so much easier to understand and engage with the stories. I have a dark sense of humor. I'm a silly person, so I wanted to bring part
of myself to it. But I knew that there would have to be a balance, that there would be times where would be appropriate for a little snarky aside and times when it wasn't. And there are certainly lines that we removed because that's a little too dark and that's fair. So trying to strike that balance that took many revisions.
But I wanted it to be engaging to read and fun to read too, And I think one of the reasons the things that helps with that is I only chose historical stories when I was doing my research, and when I came across modern stories or anything that's happening now in the contemporary world. It was not fun. It was like you could not make jokes about it. The history gave it a distance that allowed me to make
little cheeky comments. But something that just happened, I didn't feel it was appropriate to make that kind of commentary. So I felt making it all historical gave me a little permission to be cheekier with it. That was part of the decision making that when.
We understand that concept intimately, absolutely, as we mentioned at the top of this chat, you didn't just write this book, you also illustrated it and beautifully so, and that brings up a raft of questions. Was that always your plan, where you like, I can write and I also can sure make art, so let's do that together. Or did this come up a little more organically.
The way I sort of described this project to people is that this was an art project for me that got out of control. Like that's sort of that. I don't think I set out to write a book when this started, I saw it as an illustration series. I'm an illustrator myself, that's my profession. I am but a humble picture maker. That is most of what I do. I mostly do freelance illustrations for other author's book covers, So this was my first time kind of having control
over the whole process. It wasn't just the cover. And I'm a professor of illustration, so my perspective is definitely that from the visual art. That being said, when I was young and in college, I double majored in painting at the time in English, and I always liked words and pictures and putting them together, but I professionally had only gotten the illustration route. But I think it has
always been my dream to be an author illustrator. But I got really put off because I thought, I don't want to write a children's book, and that's the only way to be an author illustrator. And I was like, I don't think my interest is in creating content for kids. Maybe an older kid, maybe maybe not the wei ones or so impressionable.
Here's the bottle of arsenic, kiddo, this is what it looks like. A is for arsenic.
It's a little flush poisoned boy to play with. Le me read our bedtime story and I've been dressing up like a Victorian widow to read amazing. But yeah, but like I said, I think it was always my secret dream to write and illustrate together. When I proposed the book, I originally thought I would work with an author, I would illustrate it, and we would find someone who had
more experience with writing to write it. And I spoke with some of my colleagues and they said, you have a background in English, you like to write, this might be the chance to try it. I think the book has so much more of my voice because I'm doing both ends of it, with the pictures and the words, and I got to live a dream. I think with this for sure.
Now that you've done the book and you've done both the illustration and the writing, if you came up as an illustrator, the presumption would be that that was the more enjoyable part of it. But I'm wondering if the writing proved to be a surprise dark horse that emerged as your favorite part.
Yeah, I love a good dark horse. I enjoyed illustrating it a lot, for sure, and I think that came to me more easily. But I actually was surprised by how much I enjoyed the research and the writing. It was hard. I want to like caveat with that. It was it was so challenging.
Absolutely, but these stories. Uncovering these stories is so challenging yet so cool. I understand what you're saying, Like you come up with stuff and you're like, wow, I wonder if I can get a second source on.
That, right, But I made a credible exactly. I found so much good stuff that didn't make it into the book because the source was not credible. I could not validate that state.
Absolutely, I knew I.
Wanted to include all the resources in the back, and I was like, I cannot listen to not to be legit. I also felt a lot of duty that I was like the steward. I don't know if you felt like that. I did some of these byes who do not always get told or don't always get hurt, especially some of the less known ones, and I felt a lot of
obligation to like do right by them. Again, maybe that's too much sympathy for the murderers again, but I did feel like I wanted to do it as well as I could to represent their story for an audience who had maybe never heard before.
If you could think of one woman that you wrote about who could be tried today, do you have someone who you think that would have a better chance of being acquitted or somehow rehabbing their image. You know, Holly and I always talk about how surprised we were when we did Lucretia Borgia, and we were like, Wow, her her image out there is so completely different than who she actually was as a person that I wonder if you came across someone like that too.
Oh yes, And I think I Lucretia Borgia was also one of the first ones I thought of when you started mentioning enough to talk about just a reputation, Oh mishap that just this completely. We have no evidence to back up that she was this scandalous, fem fatal poisoner, but that has endured through centraal.
She's got the wrong family name, is what she's got.
I read like a six hundred page biography on Lucretia Borgia, and I was like, give me a little poison. Fingers crossed I because when I was researching the book, I was like, who are the most famous women poisoners? Who are the names that have come to mind first? And I asked folks on social media and I can't tell you how many people responded Lucretia Borgia and Catherine de Medici.
When I was researching this book, I think the biggest let down for me was finding that both of them there was no proof for evidence that the head ever poisoned anyone, although Catherine de Medici was certainly involved in other problematic and violent things. The poison specific rumor, which again I think is often tied to women, true or not true, I think, is something like to make a woman seem evil in history. Maybe to call her a
poisoner is something I have found to tarnish their reputation. Yeah, Lucretia Borgia definitely comes to mind. It seems like the whole Borgia family. When I was doing more research, they were saying was not different from other powerful families, are influential families of the time. It's just one of the more famous ones. But not that their behavior was so outlandish in comparison to what other similar families with similar
statuses were doing. And that Lucrezia Borgia had a tough life like her father controlled so much of everything she did, and she passed away quite young in childbirth and was put in a position of leadership in her life. I don't think people knew that story, but the one that came to mind and when you asked that question. And actually the one that the story that helped me find your podcast was when I was researching Sally Bassett and so I was researching and that's when I found your
first season of women Poisoners. And I was, like, they talked about her, No one's talked about she was a hard one to research. Yeah, there's not a lot a lot of the.
Women who come up in the historical record for poisonings. I think we found were, you know, socioeconomical levels different, but white women.
Yeah. And I found the same thing. The women who had long newspaper articles about them and whole books devoted to them were almost exclusively white and of the Western world. Yes, And I knew I didn't just want it personally as an illustrator. I didn't want to draw thirty white men. I just thought that wasn't interesting to me. I knew I wanted the book to be more diverse than that, because I felt the themes being explored here are more
universal than that. But it was much more challenging to find the stories of women of color who were involved in poison and women outside of the Western world. So Sally was such a powerful story, and I think she's one that talk about empathy. I think, like when I talk to people who've read the book since they say she is a favorite character and one that people see is more as a hero and not as a murderess or a villain, so she stands out. I think in the Cannon from the other Lady Poisoners.
You've named her as a bit of a favorite. But I'm curious, and also this will give our listeners a glimpse into some of the stories that you have done in addition to those we've talked about before. I was want to ask which one of your subjects is your favorite, but I think it's probably kinder to say what's your top three or top five?
Right?
Oh, that is so much kinder. It is people always ask the favorite, and then I always lawful and there's a couple. Right, Yes, that's such a good question. And I think I have favorites for different reasons. Sometimes their favorite because like Sally Bassett, I think she was more of a freedom fighter in a society that completely oppressed her and used Poisonous this agent of defiance. But then you get the other ones that are just so silly
or so weird. I think one that I came across that I didn't know until actually on my Instagram, a follower from Argentina said, Oh, my gosh, do you know about this? We have a famous woman poisoner in our history named Yyamrano and she became this big TV personality afterwards, and they made a musical about her. And I was like, ah, that is gold. Thank you so.
Much for that.
I have to have this story because there's so.
You couldn't dream the way I now want to write ar Snake the musical, even though musical theater is not my jam, but no.
It is my dream and I have not been gy about this is Poison the Musical. I don't know what it looks like. I know we have lost my beloved Stephen Sondheim. I don't know who else could do it, but I can picture it.
I think we could do this together.
I feel ste yes. I think the stories are so fascinating. Oh and speaking about someone whose reputation like Cleopatra, who had this famous legend of dying via the poisonous or venomous fight, Nowadays scientists conclude it was probably that she drank a cocktail of poison. It would have been much more effective.
But less dramatic.
And artistic and creative. I don't know if they would make us so many paintings or plays about the death of Cleopatra just drinking out of a cup. It's just not and I know it as an artist. But the snake image is it's hard to like go.
That goblet has to be beautiful to compete with a snake.
Yes, I agree, and I tried to make it in my illustration. I tried to make it a decorative goblet, but I gave her like the snake in one hand in the goblet and the other to show that the duality. This is just a small segment of all the women I found. Everyone who made it into the book was because I felt they had some really fascinating quality or some part of their story that I felt needed to be told. So they're all my favorites for different reasons.
How do you decide how you're going to visually represent the Lady Poisoners and her story separate from the actual writing of the story.
The format early on that I used for sort of this portrait that was in a border and woven into the border was images or icons from her story and I had her name sort of hand lettered above her, and then I left room on the bottom for a brief summary or synopsis of the story. So I think it's a book where you could even just flip through it and you were in the mood, you could reread the whole chapter segment, or you could just read the little synopsis.
I do think it's very strong on both imbalanced on both ways, which is why I was curious. It's not always good lear thank you.
Yeah, I knew I wanted it to be richly illustrated, because I believe in picture books for adults. I think is like another thing that underlies this. I don't know why we decided everything with illustrations and it has to be for children. Not that I don't love and adore children's picture books. I just think we're such visual creatures and that doesn't go away. So I also think we like to look at images of these people. I think
we get really curious about what they looked like. So I started with a few illustrations, and then I pitched the book, and then I had to stop illustrating, and they wanted chapters, and then I went ooh, so I had to pause in the illustrating, and then I did a lot of research and writing. But while I was researching and writing, I would take notes of physical descriptions
or collect reference images. Some of the women are in the era where there were photographs or painted portraits of them, and whenever I found that that was great, some of them were not. Some of them were from antiquity or from a place in time when they did not have any representational image of them. Sometimes I'd try to find written descriptions, and I definitely sketched while I was still researching, knowing that I would come back I need these later.
In my dream world, I would have loved to have researched that one woman, written about her, and then illustrated her in the same chunk while I was in that brain space of like just thinking about her. That's not how publishing works. Unfortunately, for me, they needed the text much sooner than they needed the images. The images were
something they could get dropped in last. The text had to go through many rounds of revisions and edits, so I had to prioritize that, and then once the bulk of the writing was in, I could return to the pictures, and that was just more fun. For me, like a just kind of Oh right, I remember her. Oh she's the one who poisoned him with the enema.
Oh, of course.
You do.
That's also a funny one.
Good.
Great.
This seems like it was such a I know it was arduous work, because it just is, but it also seems like it was such a joyous journey for you in some ways that I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or designs on potentially doing other historical figures or true crime history stories that are of interest to you, whether those involve more lady poisoners or something entirely different. What's what do you have in mind or what's the dream?
I don't know yet.
Yeah, historical Bananas and the people, cause.
I see historical, goofy comedy, historical.
Can I tell you the book I want you to illustrate and write please, fifty amazing Vaudevillians.
I love Vaudeville me too, and I'm such a Vaudevillian character in life.
I can't wait for it coming out six.
Twenty six, seven twenty seven.
Give me a little more time. But yeah, I loved Honestly, I have loved the history angle. I've loved the true crime angle. I'm open minded if your followers have ideas something that they haven't seen that they want to see and specifically that they'd like to see illustrated. I'm so curious what the response to this book is going to be. At the time that we're recording this, it's not out
in the world yet. I'm still at three order time, so I'm really excited to see how people are going to respond to it, and if there becomes this sort of natural next step, like maybe it'll be like, oh, now you got to do blah blah, and I'll say thank you for solving it. But right now, I'm open minded, like I would love to do another book that's maybe related or adjacent in some way, but totally different topic.
I'm going to send you my wish lists, just definite eyes.
I love theod Are there bond billions of committed crimes? Like?
Sure, maybe not fifty of them, but I'm sure we could come up with a good list.
Yeah. Ten, not enough.
I feel like you could pick one good one right because they all interconnected ways. Oh, I have ideas for you, but we'll move on and not just make this a list of things I would like you to illustrate for me personally, I think.
We have time for probably one more so. There is one thing that would come up when we were doing our season, which was the story of the woman. It was the story of the poison We found it was more arsenic than anything else do. We just kept seeing
some of these trends and trends. But one of the things that we really started focusing on more was how the legal system was at the time and in the time period of the woman who we were telling the story of, and whether or not it was or was not similar between female and male poisoners, and how is it different if it was. Did you run into that too.
A few things I didn't expect we're going to play such large roles in all of these stories was the role of the media, Oh yes, and the role of the legal system in all of them. And both had huge implications on what happened to this woman and what happened to her case and the way it was perceived by the people of her time, perceived by people for many years after.
Right now in the record, this is how she is. And I was surprised by the role of the sometimes the hysterical role of the media in how they covered these stories and the particular woman and had the size of her skirt.
And I always love the ones where they're like, she's ugly, she must have done it, So those are always.
Right, bad hair, right, Yes, I know, are you thinking?
Is that? Are you thinking of Tilly Climax?
Yes, yes, Tilly in particular. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, there was a quote about her in the newspaper from the time if only she had gone to the beauty parlor, she might not have gone to the penitentiary.
I think we've read the same work.
Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, similar to our reaction, Jim, excuse, I was so very angry about the whole thing.
Yes, and we would, but we didn't necessarily fixate on it because you got to just tell the story.
There's so much. Yeah, yeah, there's so much to those stories. But yeah, their appearance and the way they acted in court, what they wore, Did they cry enough? Did they seem feminine enough? That was a big one.
They crying, right, I mean that still exists, right.
And that's the other thing. We think this is specific to these time periods, and a lot of it is still talking about the media and the perception and to be a woman and to be a criminal, and how we see these two things linked together. And often it's that if she's a woman criminal, she can't just be
a regular woman. She's got to be crazy, or she's got to be a monster or masculine in some way, which I found so strange, and that it can't just be Yes, women also commit crimes because women are also human beings.
Yeah. I think of Bell Gunnis, who was a monster, but people always really focused on her. She was very tall and heavy, and it's like that's not part of the issue at all.
Any of it. Yeah.
Yeah, yes, she was a monster, but we don't like because of her actions, not because of her appearance.
Lisa, you are an absolute delight. I feel like we can start. I want to start designing shirts for our Lady Poisoners Club. I know we're a kindred little herd.
For our soul.
We'll talk about poisons and poisoners and we can get a little strych nine involved. But Arsenic is a star star anytime.
It really was the star for us.
Yes, I want to make sure that we give you a chance to tell us when and where people can get your book and where they can find you. On social media if you so.
Desire wonderful thank you, and please can we start like the League of Lady Poisoners Little Love.
You think I'm saying idle words, but I am not.
We are in but of course just enthusiasts. We're not encouraging any actual poisonings. I know to be careful of it.
We're just looking into the phenomenon.
Yes, the phenomenon people who are interested in the stories. But yes, thank you so much. The book will be out in the world this September nineteenth, twenty twenty three, wherever books are sold. I would love to encourage folks to support their local independent bookstores and not to forget the libraries are also going to be an option. Is
another way to access the book. And please do find me on social media, especially if you take pictures of the book dress up like a Lady poisoner for Halloween. I'll lose my mind. Please find me. I'm At. I use my last name mostly online, which is paren p E ri N so it's made by paren It's the handle that you'll find me on everything for and I'm really looking forward to seeing how folks interact with it and engage with it.
Once that's true. Thank you again for spending this time with us.
Oh this was a pleasure. Thank you.
This is a beautiful book inside and out. The illustrations are with lovely, the cover is lovely. I encourage everyone to take a book at it.
It is.
It's beautiful all right. For our listeners, we will see right back here as usual on Tuesday with the regular programming. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.