Arsenic in the Soup

By Patricia Blake

VICTORIAN MURDERESSES by MARY S. HARTMAN 318 pages. Schocken. $15.

Women on trial for murder in 19th century Britain and France were objects of fascination. Ladies followed every detail in the penny dreadfuls and were seen battling for tickets outside the courtroom. Victorian Novelist Eliza Stephenson observed that "women of family and position, women who pride themselves upon the delicacy of their sensibilities, who would go into hysterics if the drowning of a litter of kittens were mentioned in their hearing--such women can sit for hours listening to the details of a cold-blooded murder."

Absorbing Entertainment. Not just women. Not only in the 19th century. For millions of people who wouldn't drown a kitten, there is still no more absorbing entertainment than the story of the killing of a human being. Who among the connoisseurs of real-life homicide could resist a title like Victorian Murderesses'? Never mind that some, having been French, were not quite Victorian, and others, having been acquitted, were not exactly murderesses. The real delight is that Historian Mary S. Hartman does more than reconstruct twelve famous trials. She has written a piece on the social history of 19th century women from an illuminating perspective: their favorite murders.

What turned these obscure provincial homicides into causes celebresl The answer seems to be that these crimes were responses to the social repressions of the age. On a deeper level, the crimes offered extreme solutions to extreme rages. The unconscious mind may be satisfied with nothing less. Hartman notes that female interest in the twelve cases was not "aberrant" but rather "an integral part of the fantasy experience of women of the [middle] class."

All twelve murders sprang from some aspect of the oppression of women. Euphemie Lacoste, victim of an arranged marriage, was accused of poisoning her husband in 1844. While the bourgeoisie in the reign of Louis Philippe prattled of love matches, Euphemie's father signed a marriage contract for his convent-bred 22-year-old daughter. The husband was Henri Lacoste, the girl's 68-year-old great-uncle, who was riddled with syphilis.

While Papa nursed hopes of eventually sharing in Lacoste's inheritance, Euphemie had to endure her husband's passes at the maids and, worse still, the touch of his festering body. The consequence was arsenic in the soup. It remains open to question whether Euphemie put it there (she was acquitted) because Lacoste often dosed himself with the arsenical compounds then prescribed for venereal disease. Still, Lacoste's death smacks sufficiently of retributive justice to meet the criteria for classic murder.

More problematical is the fratricide to which Constance Kent confessed in 1865. A plain girl evidently slated for spinsterhood, Constance had been blighted by a callous stepmother. At 16, Constance cut the throat of her 3 1/2-year-old half brother with such violence that the head was nearly severed. She then stuffed the body into the family privy. When the judge passed the death sentence (later commuted to life), his voice choked with sobs, and a local paper reported that the jury and "the greater part of the assembly" wept over the severity of the verdict.

Masturbation Cure. Women shed no tears over Celestine Doudet when she was tried in Paris in 1855 for beating five young girls, sisters--one to death. The children's father, a fashionable English physician named James Marsden, had put them in the Frenchwoman's charge so that she might cure them of masturbation--a practice that Victorians believed caused epilepsy, asthma, paralysis and madness. Doudet's qualifications for this task were obscure; she had previously been employed as a wardrobe mistress to Queen Victoria, who gave her a warm testimonial.

Once installed in a Paris apartment, Doudet began her course of treatment. She tied the children's wrists and ankles to the bedposts--a common method approved by their father. She also kept them on a starvation diet and subjected them to nasty tortures. On a rare visit to Paris, Marsden attributed his daughters' rickety, emaciated appearance to their persistence in the "secret vice" and ordered up some "preventive belts." Another physician who called upon the girls made a similar diagnosis.

Women neighbors, seeing and hearing of the children's plight, managed to start a police investigation. Still Doudet persisted in brutalizing her charges, and one died of skull fracture.

Even after this tragedy, Marsden was reluctant to press charges against Doudet, fearing that exposure of the girls' vice would stain the family honor.

When the trial finally took place, it seemed as if the four surviving girls were charged rather than their tormentor. If masturbation was proved, Doudet's lawyer argued, then there was no need to invent mistreatment to explain the dreadful physical condition of the girls.

The issue of whether the sisters did or did not masturbate was never resolved. Doudet claimed that the dead girl had been suicidal because of her uncontrollable masturbation and had hit her head against the wall. Acquitted of causing the child's death, the Queen's ex-wardrobe mistress got five years for child abuse.

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