Wicked Wednesdays:

Guilia Tofana was a woman born in Palermo, Italy in the early 17th century, roughly around 1620. Her mother Thofania, was executed in 1633 after allegedly murdering her husband Francis. With this in mind, it would become very clear why Guilia did what she did and had clear motivation for her actions.

Guilia would frequent apothecaries through mere fascination and spent most of her time there, overlooking with eager eyes how potions, poisons and medicines were made, and it wasn't long before that she developed Aqua Tofana, (it has been disputed that it was her mother Thofania who developed the recipe and passed it down to Guilia though this is speculation).

Guilia worked in cosmetics creating various beauty products for women and when some of her regular clients complained about their husbands, Guilia decided to lend a hand.

In 17th century Italy, the areas where Guilia worked, such as Rome, was currently a Papal State, which is a territory within the Italian peninsula under the sovereign rule of the Pope and the Catholic Church which meant that divorce was not a thing. Women were stuck with their husbands, mostly through arranged marriages, some were lucky enough to have loving husbands but most were not so lucky, women were commonly seen as property and husbands would be abusive to their wives in order to "keep them in line."

Guilia got wind of such happenings from some of her clients and sold them her poison Aqua Tofana, a product which was made using arsenic, lead and belladonna and was cleverly disguised as a beauty product such as eyedrops, which also used belladonna where it was used to dilate the pupils, a trait that was at the time typically seen as attractive (though of course we know now how bad belladonna is.) Arsenic and lead, the other two key ingredients in Aqua Tofana, were also used frequently in cosmetics throughout history and only recently did we learn how bad these things actually are and the damage that they can inflict, thus damage being the key player in the grand scheme of Guilia Tofanas legacy.

Women would buy a bottle of Aqua Tofana from Guilia and would drop it in meals and drinks and slowly poison their husbands, their resulting deaths would spell an end to the troublesome marriages and the women would be free.

The beauty of Aqua Tofana and Guilias learned ability of chemistry, nobody was able to determine that the cause of death was poisoning because the ingredients, particularly arsenic, was so minute in trace that it was undetectable and even at the source, the Aqua Tofana itself, was tasteless and colourless, which meant it was easy to mix with food and drink and was overlooked every time. Because the killer ingredients were so small, poisoning took its time, with symptoms and eventual death would fall under the narrative of a progressive common illness or disease, and this is how Guilia and her clients got away with murder.

The scheme that Guilia had started selling Aqua Tofana spread across wherever she worked, from Palermo to Naples and eventually Rome to many unhappy women, thus, the death toll rose over the next twenty years. The profit Guilia was raking in from her Aqua Tofana built her cosmetics business, now with several aides and even her own daughter working in the business and branching out to unhappy women in unhappy and abusive marriages and amassing to 600 deaths. 600 men dead, 600 women, and their children, freed.

Looking back to Guilias early childhood it is very likely that this had a huge part to play in the eventual murders. It is very possible that her father was abusive towards her and her mother Thofania. Thofania murdered her husband because of the abuse. This in turn lead to Guilia being sympathetic towards these women trapped in abusive marriages and it was her desire to help by going against the law of the Papal State, since divorce was an unheard of concept besides the fluctuating state of England with the protestant Church of England at the time (historically since Henry VIII founded the protestant reformation of the Church of England to allow him to divorce himself from Katherine of Aragon).

Guilia and her business would come to a quick end when one her clients bought a bottle of Aqua Tofana and planned to poison her husband by mixing it in with his soup. However, the woman was overcome with guilt that she alerted her husband. Eventually the conspiracy was brought to light.

Guilia claimed sanctuary in the Church to avoid persecution, however, because the Papal State was investigating the matter, they forcibly withdrew Guilia from sanctuary and tortured her for questioning, revealing that Guilia had sold over 600 bottles of Aqua Tofana, (though it is widely disputed and highly possible that Guilia may have in fact sold and poisoned more up to and over a thousand), and with the confession, Guilia was later executed along with her daughter, Girolama Spera, and several workers in her business as well as a handful of customers, some even being bricked into the walls of the dungeons.

And that s the story of Guilia Tofana, a woman who became the most successful serial killer in history.