Prohibition: Disaster or Success?
Prohibition is widely thought to have been a disaster. It was supposed to make the population healthier, but it did the opposite. 1. Arrests for drunken driving increased. 2. Cirrhosis of the liver...
View ArticleAntique Poison for Sale!
An alert reader pointed out this item for sale on eBay–an unopened bottle of mercury bichloride in tablet form. (Can you read the label, I hope?) This was the poison that killed Olive Thomas (Jack...
View ArticleGovernment-Poisoned Booze
Who knew? I certainly didn’t realize that it was official government policy during the Roaring Twenties to poison alcohol so as to deter illegal drinking. Of course I knew that thousands of people died...
View ArticleRoaring Twenties Drugs and Poisons
I‘ve come across another great drug that I can use in my stories. Thanks to my official poison advisor, Dr. Mark Pugh (a pharmacist), I’ve learned about the properties of Veronal. This was a popular...
View ArticleMickey Finns
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my discovery of Veronal, an over-the-counter sleeping medicine popular in the Twenties. In #3 of my Roaring Twenties mystery series, which I am writing now, I use a very...
View ArticleVeronal Poisoning
In my third book (I call it Renting Silence, but the publisher has yet to weigh in on that), I use Veronal to, ahem, rid myself of some shady characters. Veronal was an over-the-counter sleeping...
View ArticleThe Poisoner’s Handbook: a PBS Special
If you didn’t catch The Poisoner’s Handbook on your local PBS channel last week, consider hunting for it in On Demand or Netflix. It was an excellent, two-hour documentary that told the story of...
View ArticleRough on Rats
My favorite Twenties poison! I use Rough on Rats in SILENT MURDERS (due out in September), but not to kill anyone. No . . . another poison kills my victims. Still, I have a special place in my heart...
View ArticleInstant Death in the Twenties
What brought near instant death in the Roaring Twenties? Methyl alcohol, better known as wood alcohol. Not a new invention, it had been used back in the days of ancient Egypt to embalm the deceased–the...
View ArticleWhat’s “Smoke”?
Did “smoke” look like this? “Smoke” was slang for a deadly drink served in the poorer parts of town, like the Bowery in New York, and in speakeasies that catered to the lowest segment of the...
View ArticlePutting Those Grade-School Show & Tell Skills to Good Use!
In first grade I found my calling: Show and Tell. It was my best subject. And while my career goals morphed over the years from spy to teacher to curator to historian to writer, my fondness for Show...
View ArticleArsenic: the Easiest Poison
Arsenic seems to have been the easiest poison for a would-be murderer to use–at least until the scientific work of Alexander Gettler and Charles Norris in the 1920s in New York that took the anonymity...
View ArticleThe sad life of famous Twenties model Audrey Munson
Audrey Munson was fifteen when she was began her modeling career as a nude model for sculptors and painters. From 1906 until 1921, she was the preferred model for so many artists she became famous....
View ArticlePoisons Galore!!
I’ve had the remarkable good luck to find some authentic bottles of Twenties poisons–one that I use in book #2–mercury bichloride. This is so cool! I bring them with me to book signings and talks as a...
View ArticleBlind Drunk
Where does the phrase “blind drunk” come from? Wood alcohol (methanol) attacks the optic nerve and destroys retinal cells, rendering the drinker blind. During Prohibition, all alcohol was illegal as a...
View ArticleInheritance Powder
One of the murder “weapons” I use in my mysteries is arsenic. This popular poison has been used for centuries (remember the Borgias?) and before the development of forensic science, it was hard, or...
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