The author gives you a complete history of arsenic poisoning: how easy and cheap arsenic was to get for killing rats (or people) how it was used (no taste) and the ghastly results. The newspapers had lowered their prices and had a bigger readership so this was big front page news. This murder case scandalized England, then Europe and there was a famous trial that held people spellbound. The victim was a very rich (but stingy) elderly farmer named George Bodle who gets very sick after drinking the morning coffee and soon his whole family and their servants becomes very ill as well. I told it not, my wrath did grow – "A Poison Tree" - William Blakeīritish Medical Journalist Sandra Hempel has written an entertaining and well-researched book about arsenic poisoning and a nasty Victorian murder case in Plumstead, England in the nineteenth century. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - the more things change, the more they are still the same! Especially in those papers (now called, disparagingly, tabloids) that specialised in the salacious. But still, it was an interesting book and 3 1/2 stars.Ī fact I learned from the book: that when Parliament dropped the tax on newspapers to make them very cheap, literacy in the UK burgeoned.
She is a journalist specialising in health and social issues, and the book needed someone who could write a cracking good story and develop the characters so we would want to see the right John convicted instead of it all being rather academic and so what-ish. The author was the wrong person to write the book. The overarching theme was poisoning explicated through a story, but what it should have been was the story first with poisoning being the theme. The characters, it has to be said, were somewhat flat and undeveloped. The science was interesting, especially learning of the mistakes of 'infallible' expert witnesses. The main story, though slight, was a good idea and well written.
This all sounds pretty good, right? It was well researched. Although he was not found guilty (when he was), with the developments in science in parallel cases, it was shown that if he had come to court ten years later, the court would have reached in a different decision.
The elements were all linked through the story of the murder of George Bodle, a wealthy landowner, by his grandson Young John, who blamed his father Middle John. Science - the beginnings of forensic science and poisons History - the rampant use of poison in the 19thC as a method of disposing of the unwanted who had what the murderer wanted: money, hence the title This book was a mixture of three elements:
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