Toxic Wives: Murder, Media and the Poison Panic in America

In the latter half of the 1800s, widespread suspicion and anxiety emerged when wives of all ages and social status were accused of killing their husbands with poison. However, what seemed like a massive spike in murderous wives across the United Kingdom and United States may not have been a spike at all, but rather a poison panic caused by hungry newspapers and mass hysteria.

This work explores several high-profile cases of women on trial for murdering their husbands with poison. Lust, mo...