Arsenic And Old Cake

[sonetka]

While taking a breather from the sixteenth century (my God, the Anne Boleyn books NEVER END, I really had no idea what I was taking on there) I wrote this post -- the story of a Pennsylvania accountant poisoned by an anonymously-sent slice of arsenical wedding cake. This happened in 1922, and what with the ironclad alibis, all-too-talkative

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[sonetka]

I know -- and they're usually the best part, too! I've wondered sometimes if Agatha Christie did see a small item about it in the news at some point and filed it away for future reference, but the fact that she didn't use the "poisoned wedding cake sent through the mail" gimmick until thirty years later makes me think she came up with it on her own while casting about for yet another way of getting arsenic into someone.

One thing that was a bit startling while going through the microfilms was just how many news items there were about food tampering; some of it seemed to be in the spirit of pranks which got out of hand, some was straight-up revenge (there was a woman who sent an ex-best friend a box of chocolates into which she'd injected poison -- the friend survived but had a bad few days). In the days before tamperproof seals on everything and when ulcers or gastritis could be held accountable for stomach pains, you could get away with that sort of thing a lot more easily. But you'd need an exceptionally dedicated and nasty joker to take the trouble of making the cake and sending it with enough arsenic in it to kill someone.