Listen to the episode here.

Sometimes Angie and Theresa share a special mind-meld where the topics have a surprising theme. This week, the theme is “sorta/kinda.”

Theresa starts off by telling the tale of Frederick Thomas Lynwood, the Muffin Man, London’s first serial killer. In typical Theresa fashion, she catches down facts and ruins this delightful clickbait. Come for the creepy tale, and stay for all of the ways it could never be true.

Angie picks up the torch and continues the theme with the story of La Voisin, the most renowned poisoner of her time. This French fortune teller was doing everything she could to keep her family afloat, including but not limited to “inheritance powders” and black masses …but does her forced confession make her guilty?

Transcript

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where two absolute compulsive nut jobs are going to just download everything they can find about some obscure topic and then verbally a cost friends, families, neighbors, and randos before coming, joining forces, and telling their co-host what they’ve only recently learned. I’m host one, I’m Teresa. And that is host too. I’m Angie. 

Angie: I love to verbally assault my friends and neighbors with the facts I just learned. Truth. Mm-hmm. Indeed. 

Theresa: Um, so Angie went only last time, so I’m gonna jump right on in. Angie. a Uh a while back I texted your husband and asked, um, I didn’t think you were doing this story, but just said, hey, by by whatever chance is is Angie covering this time period. He goes, What story are you doing? I said, The muffin man. 

Angie: No. way i Oh, I cannot wait for him to get home today because he had you said something to him, and I was sitting at the computer desk. He was sitting in in the couch, which is like a good ten feet. Yeah. And he starts cracking up, and I’m like, what? He goes, I can’t tell you. If I tell you, I’ll ruin it. But I have something really funny to say, and I want to say it, but I can’t say it to Teresa because I don’t know if she gets the joke. And it won’t be funny to her if she doesn’t get the joke. 

And I really want to say it to you, but if I say it to you, I’m gonna give it up. That is hilarious. I bet you he was gonna ask me if I know the muffin man. Okay. 

Theresa: But so my sources, uncyclopedia.co, the muffin man. All that’s interesting, the muffin man is the ben beloved nursery rhyme, actually based on a serial killer by Kalina Fraga. And the London Museum, the Muffin Man. 

Angie: I am so excited. 

Theresa: Okay, so Frederick, young Frederick, uh, he is born to Obadiah and Lauren Linwood of Drury Lane. So we’re starting off strong, okay? 

Angie: Yeah, you sure are. 

Theresa: Jeva Dia is a local baker. What? 

Angie: Just got asking if he knows the muffin man. He’s gonna get like a string of texts from me that make no sense. 

Theresa: Uh so Jevadaya, local baker of the utility muffin research kitchen, he is kind of not he’s not a good human, right? He abuses his son Frederick with an iron spatula. 

And the diary cites specific abuse at the hands of his dad that I’m skipping over. Okay. All right. Bad. 

It’s bad. Uh now, he Frederick grows up, he has a series of jobs. He’s a teen is a young man. 

These range. Like everybody has a series of jobs that don’t make sense to anybody. Um he goes at one point, he’s selling apples on the corner before reverting to baking and using the skills that his father had taught him. 

Angie: Hate that for him, but also good on you, buddy. Right. 

Theresa: Now, Frederick’s never a popular baker. Uh people tend to complain that there’s too much cyanide in their Bismarks or that their baklava contained shards of glass. Oh. Because you’re doing all kinds of stuff to stretch your materials. Right. 

Angie: So eventually cyanide in my muffins, thank you so much. 

Theresa: Isn’t that awful? But I mean, this is the time where you had well, actually, this is, you know, this gosh, 1600. So this is before we had um arsenic in the wallpaper. 

Angie: Yeah, I but this is about the time we’re putting it on lead on our faces to be beautiful. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. 

Theresa: So he his business he goes out of business, surprise, surprise. But he still sells some pastries going door to door, you know, in to teenagers and whatnot out of his hilltop house. 

Now, apparently he’s starting to get what seems like the onset of dementia. Okay. Okay. And he starts to set up shop again. But he tends to have some some issues because the pastries he has may have like arsenic in his apple crisp um or things like that, but he’s trying to create these pastries to stay in business. 

Okay. Now, children tend to frequent his shop because he’s got sweets, right? This drives Frederick absolutely crazy. 

Because kids. Kits. They’re loud, they’re noisy. They touch everything. They touch it. They basically take their nose, rub it across the grass the glass, and then paint in the boogers that they’ve left. That’s a wonderful image. Uh it doesn’t say that in my notes. That’s coming from personal experience. 

Angie: So now you had some issues in the jewelry store, didn’t you? 

Theresa: Quite frankly, there’s a reason why there’s a lot of windecks in a jewelry store. Um, so Frederick has some issues with the kids. So he ends up, he OK, he run a shop because when you’re a baker, you’re working some really crazy hours because you’re trying to keep the pastries going, like continue to turn stuff out, all this kind of things, right? 

So he would run his shop, did run himself ragged, but to stop the flow of children, murder tends to be how he decides to go about things. Oh. you could just Pick him out, but okay. um he there’s some reports that say he would put a muffin, think English muffin, on a a string, trail it behind him, maybe above the air, maybe on the ground, but either way to you know, attract the kiddos, lure them into an alley, and knock him out with a wooden spoon. That would be the start. Right. Um, so if he just knocked the kid out, then the kid might be scared poopless and decide, I don’t want to go to Frederick the Baker’s. 

Angie: I will go see Steven. Yeah. 

Theresa: You know what? Quite frankly, I can travel down the road to the other baker, not on Jury Lane. Um, but Frederick, I guess he tends to be a little uh jealous of some other chefs in town, and there seems to be reports that he might have killed a total of seven rival pastry chefs. 

Angie: That is not the sentence I had on my bingo card for the day. 

Theresa: This is not part of the great British bake off. 

Angie: It should be. 

Theresa: Uh well, because Chef Randall reportedly, allegedly, drown in brownie brownie butter, batter, brownie batter. There’s a lot of bees and bees. 

Angie: Honestly, that might actually be how I want to go out. 

Theresa: You know, I’ll I’ll I’ll start taking notes. 

Angie: And get your final wishes fully locked in. 

Angie: Um I have a list of things I don’t want to, how I don’t want to die, but not how I do. 

Theresa: So we need to start thinking positive, right? Like, if we start saying the end, if there’s a terminal diagnosis, I’m just gonna start whipping up some brownie batter. Yeah. Perfect. 

Angie: Thank you. 

Theresa: Um Chef William brain beaten to death. I don’t know exactly what that means, other than just traumatic brain injury. Uh Chef Carver was beaten with a match lock. Uh Chef George, there was a rolling pen involved. Chef David is golden brown at the end of his. Chef Aaron shaked and baked. But Chef Adam is killed with a mortar after tripping over a pestle. So I’m curious on the mechanics of that one. 

Angie: How big was the I have okay. 

Theresa: Yeah, you can. So eventually, uh Frederick’s caught. There’s a sneaking suspicion of fro a foul play. Uh after Chef Adam. You know, when everybody but him is coming up. Yeah. 

Tits first. Uh now he’s arrested. There’s kind of a a carriage chase that happens. One of his wheels breaks, and he’s caught then, and then by orders of the king, he’s given a kind of a slap on the wrist and set free, only to get attacked by an angry mob minutes later. 

Okay. Despite getting attacked by the mob, that wouldn’t be how he died. It would be when he this is gruesome. 

He was eating his dinner and he decides to smash a cockroach with his fork, only to basically miss the everything, hit his hand, and that caused him to scream and he choked on the dumpling he was eating. Damn. So kind of a very twisted thing. But reportedly the song or the children’s nursery rhyme, do you know the muffin man? That was used as a warning to small children. About uh the presence of the serial killer. Gross. Okay. 

Now I have to tell you all of this because this is kind of the stuff that was paddled to me when I was flipping through TikToks and I was like, adding that to my list. We’ve got some problems with this because everything I told you based out of the 1600s at a surprising amount of detail for the 1600s. 

Angie: Yeah, there haven’t been any fires or anything since then to knock them out. 

Theresa: Yeah, okay. And thankfully paper is so stable. Okay. So Museum of London. They note that the Muffin Man is first written down in 1820. Now, this is the call and response rhyme. Do you know the Muffin Man? Yes, I know the Muffin Man. 

Now, the museum goes on to explain that Londoners of the 19th century, they would buy food from street sellers. These guys were working long days, long, long days. Twelve hour days, right? Now, they tended to not even have kitchens at home, which is a wild thought to me. 

Angie: There was a house I almost bought that didn’t have a f a kitchen. It had like a counter and uh a plug-in plate. 

Theresa: Okay, but when was it built? Was it was it like an ADU that someone put in their backyard? Like what is this? No, I think it was built in 1890, and people have literally been living in it consistently since then, and everybody I just assume eats out because it there has still no kitchen in it. How weird. Like you could have done that. You could have put a stove in. 

They’re at low. We considered buying it, and I I looked at the space where you could fit a kitchen and was like, this actually wouldn’t this wouldn’t work for us. Like as far as what our family needs. 

But I was like, how the hell have people been consecutively living in this house for 140 years? Like, what? I just assume it’s people that don’t cook at home. They like cereal. Gazpacho. Yeah. And the Mexican restaurant down the block. 

Theresa: I mean, is there an honestly that’s a well-rounded meal or life as far as I’m concerned. 

Angie: Yeah, I mean, honestly, it’s a great Mexican restaurant, so Okay. 

Theresa: So, yeah, so you think think along those lines. You actually have a better idea. So then they without those kitchens, they would either cook over an open fire, think like outside, uh, bake potato like okay, or they would pick up food from the local Mexican restaurant, aka the city’s local vendors. Um, Now, they tended to have muffins. Think muffins, not like blueberry, I think English muffin. Right. 

Angie: Where but didn’t make it a savory or sweet with a dam we got on it. Right. 

Theresa: Okay. So they could end up picking up all kinds of stuff from these local vendors, think fish, eel, soups, baked potatoes, meat pies. I heard eel and I got so excited because that’s growing up in Japan. I haven’t had eel anywhere else. I don’t know if I trust the British with eel. 

Angie: I don’t trust the British with most food stuff. Right, you see what I mean? Yeah. Um but yeah, muffins, right? 

Theresa: So the muffin man, do you know the muffin man? So muffin man, the muffin man tended to um have muffins or crumpets, and they would buy them from their local baker, and then they would go and sling them out piecemeal. 

Angie: Okay, so this is like all a cart. Like I went in and bought six dozen, and now I’m now you’re the delivery now. 

Theresa: You’re paddling them. Like the ice cream doesn’t make ice cream, but he drives the truck. Right, right, got it. So he he’s going out with these loud bells, and he’s they’re I say he, but they’re attracting attention and slinging these things for a penny apiece or or half a penny apiece. Then we have a man named Henry Mayhew. He traveled around London and he’s documenting all of the jobs that the muffin men had and said that they’re basically either young sons of bakers or they’re elderly former bakers. 

Like they can’t quite do the long hours of a bakery, so now this is their gig work or part-time work outside of it. Um, but the true alleged story of the muffin man, right? So is about this dude named Frederick Thomas Linwood. Now, like we said, Lynwood was purportedly going out and killing tons of humans by luring them to their death with these muffins. But the original rhyme doesn’t have a ton of details. But it said purportedly that this is a 16th century serial killer. 

Angie: I could be lured to my death with a muffin. I just No. know. 

Theresa: I mean, Angie, I I knew this about you. 

Angie: Okay. Sorry. 

Theresa: I knew it wouldn’t take much. 

Angie: Like a chocolate muffin just popping along, I’d follow it. I’m not on the ground. 

Theresa: You can’t eat at everybody’s house. Oh, no, yeah, no. Nope. 

Angie: Um but so I was thinking like the Starbucks muffins, but alright. 

Theresa: I mean, okay. So but either way. Frederick Linwood, he ends up being dubbed uh allegedly the Drury Lane Dicer. Um and according to the ticket talks and everything like that, he’s England’s earliest documented serial killer. 

Now, let’s let’s start debunking this, shall we? Because there’s a Drury Lane in London, but there’s no evidence that it’s stalked by one muffin seller named Frederick Linwood or Thomas Linwood, okay? Now we do know that they’re in the muffin man in the rhyme. There’s a muffman lives on Drury Lane, and Drury Lane is right next to Covent Gardens in London. In the eighteenth century, this is a poor area. 

It’s got a terrible reputation because you wouldn’t imagine these crimes happening in the upscale. Right next to Herod’s. Right. So Drury Lane in this era is where people go to drink, gamble, and even commit crimes. Surprise, surprise. 

Angie: It’s weird how those all seem to find them themselves in the same spot every time in every city, everywhere. 

Theresa: Yeah, totally. And so then the muffin man is selling his crime or selling his muffins to the committer of these crimes. Okay. Now, Drury Lane today, much, much nicer. It’s crowded with tourists. There’s lots of theater shops. It’s it’s where you go. Okay. N not to find the muffin man, but back in the 1800s. 

Angie: Now I’m looking for the muffin man. What? I’m looking for the muffin man. Yeah, you better be looking for him. 

Theresa: So Victorian times, there’s no real laws about keeping food safe. So they’re shocking. They’re doing a ton of things to keep bread cheap and produce it in large quantities, like you know, putting chalk to make it look wider and chunkier. Think what we did, like what we covered in the poison squad episode. Yeah. 

Angie: And for those listening at home, I covered the founding of the FDA, which is about the poison squad. That’s episode 131. 

Angie: So Did you think when you were covering that you were gonna find yourself later being like, and this is tied to that? 

Theresa: Yeah, yeah. Well, but I will say that the poison squad in the start of the FDA for us was much, much later than Victorian times. Truly. Yeah. So we were still doing this. But back Victorian England, they’re putting um alum, which is aluminum, like aluminum-based powder, and it’s now used in washing detergent. 

So they’re they’re doing all kinds of stuff to really stretch this flower, make it go. But we we really don’t have any any idea that uh Linwood existed at all. Or if he there were he was tied to the first serial killer. Now, we do know that the very first serial killer seems to belong to somebody named Mary Ann Cotton, who killed eleven of her children and three of her husbands in order to collect insurance payments. Damn. So did she live on Drury Lane? Yeah, I don’t know, actually now that you say that. 

Angie: Um but it just seems like that would make sense. Right. 

Theresa: But like I even I didn’t put it in my notes, but there was like this how Drury Lane came to be, and it was part of the Drury family, and but anyhow, like Drury Lane didn’t exist during that time. Okay. So that’s one way and I should have put that in my notes, because that makes a ton of sense, right? 

But there’s like a Snopes article that suggests that sometimes Drury Lane is a substitute for Dorset Lane, which is another real street in London. Right. So that you know, maybe there could have been, you know, some of that. Um, but still, it’s like, wait, what? 

But I I kind of went on this weird rabbit trail trying to figure out if the muffin man was indeed London’s first serial killer, and in true Teresa fashion, I came up blank because I wouldn’t. do hard. Thanks. Thanks for going too hard. 

Angie: Honestly You’re doing too much, Teresa. Always. 

Theresa: Because I’m always like, well, wait a minute, but what about and then it’s just like, no. Because and that’s why I like cut out like all this stuff about his abuse growing up, because he doesn’t even really exist. 

Angie: So somebody after the fact just made up this horrendous lifestyle thing. 

Theresa: Oh, it’s made up the horrendous lifestyle and I I’m glossing over the sexual assault, I’m glossing over the cannibalism. Right. Because it didn’t actually happen. It didn’t happen. So I should probably also not mention dinosaurs either. 

Angie: Damn it, Teresa. 

Theresa: Dinosaurs weren’t in the original text that I read, but here we are. 

Angie: Well, you know what? Washington didn’t know there were dinosaurs, so we’re okay. 

Theresa: That’s fair. I’m I’m here for that. Yeah. But that’s the story of the the muffin man, the first real killer of London. Not really. 

Angie: Thanks Not really. Just kidding. Umks for ruining yet another tale of my childhood. Now I will in fact go mess with the Muffin Man Andrea Lane because I was told not to, but you’re all telling me he’s not really a thing, so nobody believes in you anyhow. I just I just imagined, like, you know, remember in Peter Pan when Tinkerbell’s like, they have to believe in me, and she’s like flittering out. Yeah. I’m imagining the muffin man like disappearing because you said that. 

Which honestly, I guess if he’s a murderer maybe that’s helpful. For my next trick. Yeah, okay. Um I’ve got a I’ve got a I’ve got a I’ve got a little right turn. 

Um mine’s a dark one, at least for my standards. Uh but it is the perfect time of year for this one. Uh so I’m gonna tell you the story of La Voisin, the poisoner to the king’s mistress, maybe. Oh, and I like how yours 

Theresa: is maybe. I think we kinda had a theme here. 

Angie: We did. So my sources are the Foul Play podcast, which this is the first time I’ve ever listened. Um it was that’s a really fun podcast. They kind of did the basics, like of her life, and I was like, okay, this is super helpful. Um my sources are wild. There is LaVozon France’s Murderous Fortune Teller from Sci-fi.com by Jessica Tomar from October of 2020. LaVozan has a pretty extensive Wikipedia page, which I did not see coming, but she’s involved in a lot, so I guess it makes sense. There is a Britannic article called Affair of the Poisons, Poison Plot, Louis the Four 14th and Witchcraft. 

A medium article called Was Lavoisan the Greatest Poisoner of All Time from uh June of 2020, and my favorite source from this um episode that I did is called the Lunac Lunatics Project.com. 

Theresa: Okay. I didn’t realize that I still had that URL up. 

Angie: It’s pretty fabulous. Dark History, the life and death of Fortune Teller LaVoisin, and then um the medium had this really great article called The Big Book of Female Killers, Chapter Two, The Marques de Bronzeville by the Hairpin. Um her name is Tori Tori Telfer from July of 2014. They had like they did like a series on female killers. Ooh. And I was Like, oh, okay. So all that to say, this story’s huge, and there are a ton of players, and I’ve done my very best to like funnel it down to sort of just focus on the one, but some of the other ones will be mentioned because of how they all tie together. Okay. 

Okay. So Catherine Deshaise is born in the year 1640. Um we are firmly positioned in the glittering stinky court of King Louis the Fourteenth. Um his court ha he and his court have been brought up in several episodes, like Darcanion and Lucy Hay, episode 174 and 102. But what I did not realize is just how it’s like um every time we learn something or I learned something about Charles the Second, somebody else is involved, and I’m like, holy crap. 

Um sort of like that for me. So we don’t know much about her childhood, but we can guess it’s not an easy one because by nine she’s already mastered the art of fortune telling. And she’s fortune telling like palm reading and things to nobles for a little bit of money. She’s nine. So like Wow. 

Theresa: She’s had to start hustling early. Yeah. 

Angie: So we know that by the time she’s twenty, she marries a merchant called um Anton Vol Mont Volzon. He’s a jeweler and a silk merchant, and he has a shop in Point Marie in Paris, but um she rather quickly discovers him to be financially incompetent and totally unre unreliable, not to mention the fact that he is totally in debt and very quickly has to declare bankruptcy. 

So she’s like, great. Uh thought you’re gonna help a sister out, but anyway, so she does what any woman in her shoes would do, and she uses her skills to make money for the family, because she has figured out that this man is just an absolute like he is completely incompetent, so she’s going to have to be the breadwinner for her family. She reads palms and faces, she works as an herbalist and a midwife as well. Now, being that she lives in a very Catholic country that is also big into the carnal pleasures of life, her duties as a midwife often involve abortion. This is the 1600s, which is wild to me. Yeah. 

Right. Um, supposedly she had done money among her group. In fact, according to sci-fi, she had also opened a home for unwed mothers that would help women with unwanted pregnancies, whether that was abortion or by placing um like uh finding a place for the young ladies newborn to be given up. So I’m thinking sort of like a halfway house orphanage sort of situation is what’s going through my mind, but there wasn’t much on that. So I’m not real clear on exactly what services were actually offered. 

Theresa: And this is an older story, so you’re not going to get a ton of detail. 

Angie: And you’re gonna find out why in just a little bit. As an interesting aside, she doesn’t charge her peasant clientele for these services. She instead puts the bill on the aristocratic women she takes care of because they’re willing to pay extra because these are women that can’t afford the scandal. So she’s like, Oh, I see what we can do now. Um it’s unclear, as I mentioned, how Lavazan tells, like if she tells them these women if where their babies are gonna go, or if she says nothing, so some of these women may have wondered for the rest of their lives what happened to the child they gave up. 

It’s it’s very unclear. Now to take a sharp turn from what you may consider her philanthropic work, she has also picked up skills for holding a black mass. A what? Are you f are you familiar with a black mass? 

Theresa: I mean, not outside of Ozzy Osborne, and even still, I’m not sure that I would be able to fill in the blank accurately. 

Angie: So the I I um I did some research and I tried to find the nicest way to word this, but a black mass is a ritual that copies kind of like the blueprint of a Catholic Mass in order to mock it. So, you know, Catholics consider mass as one of the most sacred acts of their worship. So this would be uh kind of a parody of its experience, and it’s profoundly sacrilegious. Historically, stories about black mass include real scandal, rumor, they’re they’re everywhere, it’s all in literature, it’s the it’s the whole thing. It could it could involve having a woman uh over the altar with a priest and dripping baby’s blood. It’s it’s very like gory and crazy, and Lavoisan is said to have been one of the conductors of this, and she would use priests within her circle to conduct these black masses. Okay. And my understanding, if if I’ve got it clear, is that these would be used at the behest of some of these um aristocratic ladies for whatever reason, like they need help with their love potion, they need a better situation financially, and and it may just come to the point where my other stuffs aren’t working, let’s move to a black mass and see what the devil can do for us. 

Theresa: God hasn’t answered the prayers. What other options have we got? Right. 

Angie: Now, she is also on top of all these other skills, she is also going to get those that are associated with a master of poison. And she is going to build this reputation all around Paris, and more and more people, powerful people are stopping by her place to indulge in her various services. She’s also pretty brilliant in my opinion. I think because of her years of palm reading, she is a really great reader of people in general, and she does some pretty impressive stuff with that skill, like convincing the local church vicars and the theology pet professors at the Sorbonne that any skills she may have were in fact given to her by God, and they buy it hook line and sinker. 

Wow. So she is able to make some real money. Um the other thing that she does to the other thing that she’s doing to pay attention to the needs and wants of her clients, so she sees what they’re after, she sees what they want, and she does what she can to make that happen for them. She comes to the conclusion that most of her clients all want something from a man. Some want husbands, some want their current husbands dead. Um right? Some just want a family member to will them everything and then die. So you get the gist. So Catherine starts creating potions to help with this process. Supposedly the potions needed to be rid of someone were referred to as inheritance powders. 

Theresa: I’ve heard of that, that phrasing. Yeah. 

Angie: I was like, oh okay. One source says, quote, she’d grind the bones of toads with Spanish fly, human blood, and iron shavings to help some of the noblest women in Parisian society bewitched their lovers and would be husbands. One of these women is going to be one of the most influential women in France, the king’s own mistress. The king being none other than Louis the Fourteenth and his mistress being none other than the very famous Madame de Montespan. She uh allegedly uses a black mask to ensure his affection no matter what. Because, I mean, She wants to stay the favorite mistress, you know. 

Theresa: I mean, who among us wouldn’t, let’s be honest. 

Angie: Right. Now, as I mentioned before, La Voisin is making real money now, and she is the sole provider for of her family, and she is going about town in this red velvet cape, or possibly a whole outfit. Different sources differ a little bit on the description, but it’s embroidered with golden thread of eagles. Oh. 

From what I understand, this get up would have cost a year’s wage for some folks. So she’s just like she is in it. She knows she knows what’s up. Now, not only is she doing all this, making all this money, wearing all this fabulous art, because it’s gotta be, she’s also able to use her skills to build this network of collaborators. She’s got other midwife, alchemists, priests, which is gonna come back and haunt her later, and all sort of other type of practitioners. Some of these individuals would also be her lovers, of which she took many. 

At a girl. Including, and I find this very interesting, the executioner Andre Guillaume. I don’t know why that’s interesting to me, but why did we need to know that? I mean, look, he had a very he had a very stable job. 

He really did, and they made great money. So, like, sis knows what’s up, in my opinion. Now, she basically becomes so busy with seeing two people out of her home all day, as well as entertaining the upper class all evening in parties that are held in her garden. So she needs this network of other providers and collaborators, right? Like she is so freaking busy she just needs help. It’s so hard to find good help these days. But despite all that, she’s still able to regularly attend mass. Because of course she is. Right. 

Theresa: I mean, that’s also where she’s leading clientele. Exactly. 

Angie: And priests to do her bidding, who may also be her lovers, because sis is taking them on. While leaving one such mass in March of 1679, she’s arrested. She had been outed by uh Mary Bosey, who was a rival uh Parisian prisoner uh poisoner and fortune teller as well, and while she had been detained and questioned all of La Wazan’s network of providers and accomplices is being rounded up as well. Oh So, like, yeah. 

Here’s the thing. She um served quite the repertoire of very powerful and influential people, both in politics and at court, right? And as you can imagine, they’re a bit nervous now because they know she’s been arrested and they know her network has been arrested. So they’re like, oh no. 

Theresa: Everyone’s puckering. 

Angie: Well bit. She does her best from what it from all accounts to keep her mouth shut, but some names do come to light, and she admits to selling poison to more than one member of King Louis’s court. Now, as I said before, the story is so much bigger, and I’m I’m sharing like there’s so many players involved, but for the sake of time and what happens here, there’s this little thing called the Affair of the Poisons, and this is how it goes. Starting in 1677 and going all the way the way through 1682, the poison the affair of the poisons is this I’m I may one day just do a whole story on this, but the the short version is it’s this sensational murder and witchcraft scandal that reaches all the way to the king. It began in 1675 with the trial of the Marquis de Brian Villers. Now she has a wild story, but the slimmed down version of it is her lover, a man called Guidon de Saint-Croix, dies in 1672. 

Investigators find poison and letters linking her to the murders of her father and brothers. Uh huh. Yeah. Her story’s insane. She is tortured, confessed, beheaded, and burned. And the stake that this case sparks all kinds of rumors and other explained deaths within the court. So you can kind of see how the other witch trials have historically worked, right? Like one person goes down and then they take the whole village with them. Yeah. And and so this is sort of what kicks it off. The police chief, a man called Gabriel Nicole de Loren has he proceeds to round up all the fortune tellers and alchemists who sold inheritance powders along with things like Averisiac and Black Magic Services. So he’s like, I’m gonna get you all. 

Like I helmet. Now, in his mind, the key figure being none other than our midwife fortune teller poisoner La Voisin. They know she’s gotta be in on it. And she gets arrested in 1679, as I mentioned, and she starts when she does start to spill, despite the fact that she’s trying very hard not to. She includes a handful of her high ranking clients. Olympio Mancini, she’s the Counton of Soissons, the Duchess of Bouillon, the Duke of Luxembourg, and the King’s own mistress, Madame de Montespawn. She claims, La Voisin, that Monaspawn bought love potions and took part in black masses with a priest who is named to keep the king’s favor. There’s no hard evidence of this beyond a tortured confession that exists, but reputations are ruined. And it’s believed that once Montespan was named, Louis has the records removed from evidence. Like so that’s why we don’t have a ton of like concrete like court documents. 

Because as soon as his lady love was involved, he’s like, Ow, no more. Yeah, we’re done here. Pretty much. Um that said though, a special court called the Chambre Ardent, or the Burning Room, was convened, which is like pretty cool name for a special court. Um of the four hundred and forty-two people that are implicated, three hundred and sixty-seven get arrest warrants or arrest warrants are issued, and twenty two hundred and eighteen are carried out. Thirty-six people are executed. Five are sent to the galleys, and twenty-three are exiled. Others die under torture, uh, some by suicide. 

Many more are locked away for life by a letter to Cachet without trial. And I was like, damn, that’s intense, because that can only come from the king. Oh, all right. 

Theresa: He he had feelings over this apparently. 

Angie: He sure did. The court is quietly shut down about sixteen eighty-two because the king cannot afford any more public scandal. He is like this is we’re done. Like, and which I’m assuming this is the point with which he just locks everybody away for life. Like, we cannot keep burning people in the square, that sort of thing. 

Not that they were all burned, but you get the gist. Now, as a lasting consequence of this, the Countess de Sausson, she’s banished. Her son Eugene Savoy, he is blocked from any French military career, and he leaves the country big in his fields. But he’s gonna come back later to become one of Louis the Fourteenth’s most effective enemies as a Habsburg general. So like that conducts. 

Theresa: Well, I’m glad you blocked him from military work because he went and found it abroad. 

Angie: Yeah. Um now in February of sixteen eighty, Catherine Dechais Mont Vozon or La Voisin is tried and convicted of witchcraft on February twenty-two of sixteen eighty, pushing and stirring and causing a scene, she is taken to the stake and publicly burned. I like to end my story with this amazing quote from Philippe Broad writing for m um the medium article. Quote Catherine De Chase Monvoisan, better known as La Voisin, was a Parisian personality with a snack for gory business at the head of a network of poisoners, alchemists, and fortune tellers, she killed for profit an estimated one thousand to possibly twenty-five hundred, mostly rich people between sixteen seventy and sixteen eighty. 

She may have been one of the most successful serial murders in history and certainly in the history of France. Wow. Dang. And as an aside, because I was curious about a letter to Cachet, it is just for clarity in case anybody’s curious, because I was, it is a private royal order f from the king. It’s folded, it’s signed in the king’s name and countersigned by a secretary of state and closed with a royal seal. Once it’s opened, the it’s like you do whatever is on that list immediately. Most often it would include things like arrest, imprisonment, exile, something like that. Without a trial, there’s no public charge and no right of appeal. 

Theresa: It’s like Do not PASCO, do not collect two hundred dollars. Yeah. 

Angie: Uh so me being me, I’m like, hey, I wonder if D’Artagnan had to do any of those. Yes, he did. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay, that’s that’s uh that’s pretty interesting. Now now I know that. That’s a thing that I know. Cool. So there’s the story of uh La Voisin. 

Theresa: The king’s I had no idea of any of that. 

Angie: That’s wild. I thought for sure you would. 

Theresa: No, like no. I think I’ve read stuff that was probably like based on her from like a fictional standpoint, but never gotcha. Never that. 

Angie: Oh, I have um I have imagery. Go on. Okay, I completely forgot. I would have been so sad if I would have saw that later and been like, I can’t believe I didn’t share this with her. Uh should be up. The image on the left is um Madame de Montespo. And the one on the right is a woodblock carving of LaVouson. 

Theresa: So the one on the left is beautiful oil painting, very classic Renaissance uh exposed shoulder cherub floating over this woman. Um the woman herself is resting her elbow on this red velvet cushion wearing a very incredible blue robe and light blue dress. She’s gorgeous on the left, and on the right in the wood block, she is a dowdy old hag. Yes. 

Angie: That did a great job on getting the story across, didn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, cool. So this was such a big deal at the time. We got a wood block of Catherine Dechays. Okay. That’s my story. 

Theresa: I’ve adored that. Um if you’ve adored this, this wild mashup for spooky season of serial killer sort of and uh poi maybe maybe then rate review subscribe and send this to somebody else who’s looking for the sort of as and maybes in their life. 

Angie: Everybody needs one. And on that note, goodbye. 

Speaker 3: Bye.