You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and think, "I wonder who was the best poisoner in history?" and you end up reading about Giulia Tofana?
It's like that.
Not much is known about her early life. She was probably born to Thofania d'Adamo in 1620, in Palermo, Italy. Her mother, as it happens, was accused of murdering her own husband, Francis, and was executed for that act on July 12, 1633.
There are two different ways Giulia could have learned to make her poison. First, she visited a lot of apothecaries, and watched while they mixed potions together. She could have learned how to make her infamous Aqua Tofina through observation. Second, her mother might have learned how to make this poison, and passed the recipe on to her daughter before her death. Regardless, the result was the same.
With this recipe in hand, Giulia ended up moving first to Naples, and then Rome, with her daughter Girlama Spera, after her own husband died. Her daughter also worked as a cog in the wheel of her mother's poison industry.
Giulia became known to women in Rome for being sympathetic to those who were mistreated (abused) by their husbands. Women would come to her for help, and also refer other women to her for her unique brand of problem solving. Soon, she became a sort of underground kingpin (queenpin?) in Rome.
Back in Giulia's day, a woman was pretty powerless. She only really had three options to survive in the world: get married, stay single and rely on sex work to survive, or become a well-off widow. However, to become a widow, one has to get married and then survive her husband. When husbands could basically treat their wives however they wanted, and women were truly at their mercy, it is no wonder that a number of marriages were not only unhappy ones, but potentially abusive as well. To secure a place in the world, is it any surprise that powerless women would turn to someone sympathetic and knowing, like Giulia Tofana, to help them navigate their precarious positions?
Giulia was part of a thriving underground community which was full of apothecaries, alchemists, and "black magic" dealers. Truthfully, these people were likely a lot less scary than they sound, and just operated on the black market in so far as they tended to solve problems most of the lawful people, like doctors and priests, would not.
Giulia, with the help of some trusted women and possibly a priest (more on this in a moment) became known as a trusted source with whom women in trouble could approach. A trusted source people could go to in times of need. A woman who not only could understand, but sympathize.
Father Girolamo, the priest she conscripted for her deadly work (though it should be noted, not much is actually known about her business so he may or may not have actually become a figure in her operation) was largely assumed to become the source by which she got the arsenic used in her tonic.
By mixing together arsenic, lead, and belladonna, in a bottle that looked like a cosmetic ointment it fit well on a woman's makeup table alongside lotions and cosmetics and the like, her poison could hide right out in the open with no one the wiser. She used a small glass bottle with a picture of Saint Nicholas on the front. Known to her customers as Aqua Tofana, it was labeled, "Manna of St Nicholas of Bari" which was apparently a popular healing ointment for blemishes in that day and age.
The poison was, undoubtedly ingenious. It would slowly kill a man over the course of a few days by only adding a few drops into his food or drink. Mimicking a disease or illness, the man would die and none would be the wiser. It was colorless, and odorless. As said in this article, "Administered through some kind of liquid, the first doses included weakness and exhaustion. The second dose included symptoms such as stomach aches, extreme thirst, vomiting, and dysentery. The gradual decline, however, would give the victim time to get his affairs in order, which usually meant ensuring his soon-to-be widow would be well taken care of after his death."
Due to this colorless, odorless poison, a woman could wail and be extremely upset, and order an autopsy of the body. Nothing would be found. She would be blameless and free to live her life thereafter.
As legend has it, Tofana's business boomed throughout the mid-17th century. It is said that what eventually brought her down was a woman, who had poisoned her husband's soup. The woman served her husband the soup and then had a change of heart, begging him not to eat it. Suspicious, the husband beat her until she confessed to what she had done, eventually implicating Giulia. When the authorities arrested Giulia, she was terribly tortured and confessed to killing around 600 men via poison between the years of 1633-1651. She was then executed, along with her daughter and some of her other devotees, and 40 of her lowest-class customers.
It should be noted that this allegedly happened. There are some reports as late as the 1700s about Giulia Tofana still operating in the world (as late as 1709). Also, Mozart, who died of a mysterious illness at 35, believed that he was poisoned by something likely very similar to the Aqua Tofana that Giulia administered. Since so much of her life was a myth and mystery, no one really knows for sure the when and how of her death.
Mozart, on his deathbed, said,
"I feel definitely that I will not last much longer; I am sure that I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea... someone has given me aqua tofana and calculated the precise time of my death."
Whether that is true or not will never be known.
Giulia never wrote down her precise recipe, so after her demise, her secrets went with her. By mixing together aspects of poisonous items commonly found in women's cosmetics in that day and age, careful packaging, and a grim sympathy for the plight of women in bad marriages, she became one of the most notorious killers of her day and age.
While Giulia and her relatives were the most notorious poisoners of her day and age, poison was considered a woman's art, and they were not the only ones operating in this way, at that time. Harmful poisons were easy to get their hands on, and easy to spread around to others. Belladonna, for example, was commonly used to dilate pupils, which fit the standard of beauty. However, it could also make a person blind, and it could kill. Arsenic and lead were commonly found in cosmetics. It did not take much for an enterprising woman to stretch the uses of these common items to other, more nefarious, purposes.
Further reading:
Meet The Woman Who Poisoned Makeup To Help Over 600 Women Murder Their Husbands
Meet Giulia Tofana: The Legendary Serial Poisoner Of 17th-Century Rome
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