Sorcery, Witchcraft & Murder: The Affair of the Poisons

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In France during the 17th Century, a string of unexpected deaths lead to a murder inquiry that uncovered the dark practices of a serial poisoner, who had plied her trade in the streets of Paris, using the popular alchemy and astrology social circles for cover. The eventual arrests shocked the nation, when it was discovered that far from common rabble, the poisoners had hailed from a more well bred class of citizen. Unfortunately, for the Royal Court, the case was only the start of what would turn out to be an unravelling scandal, fueled by a moral panic and the wild imaginations of those accused, that saw witchcraft, occultism, poison and assassination infest the entirety of French society, from the bottom, all the way to the very top. SOURCES Somerset, Anne (2004) The Affair Of The Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, And Satanism At The Court Of Louis XIV. St Martin’s Press, NY, USA. Duramy, Benedetta Faedi (2012) Women & Poisons in 20th Century France. Golden Gate University School of Law, CA, USA. Zacharias, Gerhard (1964) Der dunkle Gott: Satanskult und Schwarze Messe. Wiesbaden, Germany. Duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon (2016) Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency — Complete. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ------- For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In France, during the 17th century, a string of unexpected deaths led to a murder inquiry that uncovered the dark practices of a serial poisoner who had plied her trade in the streets of Paris using the popular alchemy and astrology social circles for cover.
0:16.0	The eventual arrests shocked the nation.
0:19.0	When it was discovered that far from common rabble, the poisoners had hailed from a far more well-bred class of citizen.
0:26.2	Unfortunately, for the Royal Court, the case was only the start of what would turn out to be an unraveling scandal, fueled by a moral panic and the wild imaginations of those
0:36.4	accused that saw witchcraft, occultism, poison and assassination infest the entirety of French society from the bottom all the way to the very top.
0:48.0	This is dark histories where the facts are worse than fiction.
1:01.0	Hello and welcome to Dark History season 8 episode 18. I'm Ben your host as usual. It's good to be back on the microphone I had my
1:05.0	summer holiday it was really nice I took some time off I went camping I hesitate
1:10.6	to say in the wilderness I know England's
1:14.0	England's idea of wilderness is probably very different to
1:17.0	America or larger countries with more
1:20.0	sort of countryside or rural areas but yeah I went out into kind of the middle of
1:24.2	nowhere, did a bit of camping, walked around some woods, took a few books out. It was
1:29.1	really nice. My schedule for Dark History is is pretty much 10 days on, 4 days off, but in those 4 days off,
1:37.6	I rarely actually get a chance to not do anything with the podcast.
1:41.2	I'm usually always working, you know, doing something.
1:44.0	Those four days are just sort of less intensive. So it was nice to actually go away. I just went away for
1:49.6	like three days, but it was nice to just go away and just do nothing. I mean I did, I say, I took some books for this episode, so I did do some reading, but it was pretty hands off. So yeah, it was nice to just go and do nothing for a bit and have a bit of some holiday, especially as the weather is already seeming to turn away from summer. But we're not talking about that anymore anyway. Let's get on with this episode enough about my
2:13.1	uh my holidays. Let's uh yeah let's just get on with it this week's episode
2:18.0	actually quite a famous one relatively speaking for dark histories.
2:22.8	But I hope you enjoy it.
2:24.1	Yeah, it is sorcery, witchcraft and murder,
	...

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