The Time A Textile Weaver Poisoned Most of His Family
From the King Uzama who bragged of murdering a servant when he was 10, to the (something like) 1 in 10 people murdered in London in the 1300’s, the Middle Ages were known for violent crime. But we tend to consider the Golden Age of Poisoners to be the 1800’s, with famous criminals such as Jane Toppan and Crippen grabbing the headlines.
However, as I have covered before, poisoning people was a thing long before that.
This poisoning took place in 1442, and it was committed by an unemployed textile worker (he was a shearer and apuntador) named Sanxo Calbo in Valencia.
Now, chemists were not handing out arsenic to all comers: apothecaries had to note who bought arsenic from them. For instance, in Barcelona, only doctors who swore it was for medical uses were allowed to buy arsenic. However, this clearly wasn’t the case in Valencia, or, at least no one was enforcing that rule. Calbo went to two apothecaries and told them that he needed to kill rats, so they sold him realgar, which is red arsenic. He even went back to one of the apothecaries for a second dose because he claimed it wasn’t strong enough.
He went to town with the arsenic, putting it in the family drinking water, wine, candy, medicinal syrup, salt, and broth.
In all, he killed his daughter Isabel and her grandmother. His son-in-law, Roquer, grandson, and his son-in-law’s mother, Estevana, were incredibly sick.
He was finally stopped by their housemaid, Joana. She had also gotten the poison and had become suspicious. She caught him in the act of dropping arsenic into medicine.
She told Roquer, who, on February 19, 1442, brought the accusation against his father-in-law to Joan Sifre, a knight who was acting as criminal judge in the city.
Calbo was arrested almost immediately. He was taken out of jail the next day to face the charges. For the next month, between February 22 and March 24, 40 witnesses were brought in by the prosecution. He confessed under torture. (You will remember from an earlier article that a court could torture you under certain circumstances, generally when you already had a bad reputation and when there was evidence against you.)
Once they had their confession, he was buried alive under his dead daughter for a time. The city then dug him up and hanged him.
Source:
Medievalist.net “Murder by Poison: A Crime from 15th century Valencia Murder by Poison: A Crime from 15th century Valencia (medievalists.net)
I’m being consistent, I swear. Torture: Everyone’s Least Favorite Medieval Trope | by Vivian Yongewa | Medium