The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Fascinating…one of history’s most important poisons—and most important murders." —Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook
Available at any corner shop for little money and, because tasteless, difficult to detect in food or drink, arsenic was so frequently used by potential beneficiaries of wills in the first half of the nineteenth century that it was nicknamed “the inheritor’s powder.” But after wealthy George Bodle died under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind several heirs, the chemist James Marsh was brought in to see if he could create an accurate test pinpointing the presence of arsenic and put this Victorian scourge to rest.
Incisive and wryly entertaining, science writer Sandra Hempel brings to life a gripping story of domestic infighting, wayward police behavior, other true-crime poisonings, and an unforgettable foray into the origins of forensic science. She also solves this almost two-hundred year-old crime.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hempel's fascinating look at how the science of poison detection developed is certain to draw in readers with its masterful combination of telling details, engrossing prose, and drama the same combination that marked the author's The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump (about the 1831 cholera epidemic that ravaged London). This time, Hempel focuses on a different dilemma for the Victorian medical profession: how to successfully determine when poison is the cause of death. "The paranoia of early Victorian Britain... saw poisoners lurking in kitchens and behind bed curtains throughout the land, their little bags of white powder at the ready." In 1833 the strange death of farmer George Bodle and the investigation of his family members, with whom he lived, frames the history of scientists' struggles to develop foolproof tests for the presence, in the victims' digestive tracts, of arsenic the most commonly used poison used at the time. The Bodle case reads like something out of Dickens, and those fascinated by modern shows like CSI will delight in learning about the field's early days.
