Mystery and Murder in Paris: The Infamous Madame de Brinvilliers

Mystery and Murder in Paris: The Infamous Madame de Brinvilliers

French aristocrat Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray poisoned her father and two of her brothers by 1670, in order to inherit their estates. After her arrest, she was forced to drink sixteen pints of water (a form of torture known as the 'water cure'), then beheaded and her body burned. This portrait was sketched on the day of her execution. Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (22 July 1630 – 16 July 1676) was a French aristocrat who was accused and convicted of murdering her father and two of her brothers in order to inherit their estates. After her death, there was speculation that she poisoned upwards of 30 sick people in hospitals to test out her poisons, but these rumors were never confirmed. Her alleged crimes were discovered after the death of her lover and co-conspirator, Captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, who saved letters detailing dealings of poisonings between the two. After being arrested, she was tortured, forced to confess, and finally executed. Her trial and death spawned the onset of the Affair of the Poisons, a major scandal during the reign of Louis XIV accusing aristocrats of practicing witchcraft and poisoning people. Components of her life have been adapted into various different mediums including: short stories, poems, and songs to name a few. It has been suggested by many researching the Marquise that before poisoning her father she tested out her poisons on unsuspecting sick hospital patients. This theory comes from a report made by the lieutenant general of the Paris police, Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie, who, in speaking of the Marquise, indicated that she, a pretty and delicate high-born woman from a respectable family, amused herself in observing how different dosages of her poisons took effect in the sick. Scholars who support and acknowledge this theory do so because the era in which the Marquise lived enabled the Marquise to get away with murder quite easily. Typical for the era, female members of French nobility would often visit hospitals to help care for the sick. Because many of these patients were already ill, it provided the means for the Marquise to test out her poisons without much suspicion. She tested out her poisons at the hospital, Hôtel Dieu, close to Notre Dame. Furthermore, because Hôtel Dieu was not a very well managed hospital, as it was overflowing with patients, and was more concerned with saving souls than saving lives, deaths, even those under suspicious circumstances, went unnoticed. She also started to experiment on her servants, giving them food tainted with her experimental poisons. The Marquise was not tried for these crimes, however, because they were only attributed to her after her execution. In 1666, the Marquise started to slowly poison her father, who would eventually die on 10 September. She placed a man by the name of Gascon in her father's household to slowly administer poison to him. In the week before his death, her father invited the Marquise and her children to stay with him. She gave him multiple doses of "Glaser's recipe," a tried-and-true mixture of chemicals that would render him dead seemingly of natural causes. Antoine Dreux d'Aubrey died with the Marquise at his side. An autopsy was performed on his body which concluded that Dreux d'Aubrey died of natural causes, exacerbated by gout. After the death of her father, the Marquise inherited some of his wealth. She quickly burned through the money, and needing more, decided to poison her two brothers, hoping to get their share of her father's fortune as she was, to her knowledge, their next heir. Her two brothers lived in the same household but the Marquise was not on the best of terms with either of them, making them harder to slowly poison than her father. She thus employed a man by the name of Jean Hamelin, more commonly known as La Chaussée, to work as a footman in her brothers' household. La Chaussée went to work straight-away. Antoine d'Aubray actually suspected that he was perhaps a target of attempted poison when he noticed that his drink had a metallic taste to it. La Chaussée's attempt at poisoning him there failed, but not long after, during an Easter feast, Antoine d'Aubray fell ill after eating a pie and never recovered, dying on 17 June 1670. The second brother was poisoned soon after, dying in September of the same year; their subsequent autopsies would hint of poison due to the fact that their intestines were suspiciously colored but nevertheless concluded that they both died of "malignant humor". Numerous individuals around the inquest of the brothers' deaths were suspicious that they were poisoned, especially because their deaths were so close to one another and in similar circumstances, but La Chaussée was never suspected; in fact, he was so well loved by the younger Dreux brother that upon his death, he bequeathed one hundred écus to La Chaussée. Discovery of her crimes and her escape and capture The Marquise's poisonings were not discovered initially, and in fact continued to be unknown until 1672, upon the death of her lover and conspirator, Sainte-Croix. Many claim that Sainte-Croix died because an accident exposed him to his own poisons. However, others argue that this is purely speculation and that Sainte-Croix simply died of disease. At the time of his death, Sainte-Croix owed a great deal of money. Among his possessions was a box containing letters between him and the Marquise, various poisons, and a note promising a sum of money to Sainte-Croix from the Marquise dated around the time her father first starting feeling ill was found, re-opening the case of foul play for her father and brothers. These contents were instructed to be given to the Marquise upon his death, and thus were resealed and given to the Commissary Picard, until formal procedures could happen. La Chaussée, hearing that Picard was in charge of Sainte-Croix's remaining affairs, went to him explaining that his former boss owed him money, and in explaining this, provided a suspiciously accurate account of Sainte-Croix's laboratory. Picard mentioned to La Chaussée that among Sainte-Croix's possessions was the box with the incriminating letters. La Chaussée, on hearing this, ran away and fled, leading to Picard to demand an inquest for La Chaussée for this suspicious behavior. He was soon found, and, on interrogation, implicated not only himself, but the Marquise for crimes against her family. La Chaussée was then tortured before being executed on 24 March 1673. On the same day as his execution, the Marquise was condemned in absentia for her crimes and a warrant went out for her arrest. Similarly, upon news that this box had been found, the Marquise fled France to hide in England. She evaded authorities for a number of years, who continued to hunt after her. While in hiding, she survived off of sums of money sent to her by her sister, Marie-Thérèse. Her sister died in 1674, leaving the Marquise with little money to survive on. She continued to evade capture, moving from place to place every so often, including locations such as Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Antwerp. It was in Belgium that the Marquise finally was caught. In 1676, she rented a room in a convent in Liège where authorities there recognized her and alerted the French government who subsequently had her arrested. Among her possessions in the convent was a letter titled "My Confessions", which as the title implies, detailed the various crimes she had committed over the years along with other personal information. In this letter, she admits to having poisoned her father and two brothers, and that she had attempted to poison her daughter, sister and husband, although the latter three were unsuccessful. She also confessed to having had many affairs, and that three of her children were not her husband's. Some scholars doubt the Marquise's authenticity in her letters, but certainly the content of her confession was heavily used against her in French court. Madame de Sévigné, a contemporary French aristocrat of the Marquise's, talked about her in many of her famous letters, highlighting the gossip that spread around French nobility. While being extradited back into France, the Marquise made various suicide attempts. On her return to France, she was first interrogated at Mézières before being imprisoned in the Conciergerie, a prison located in Paris.

All What's You Should Know Dig into history, fact, science, true crime, and beyond with All What's you should know — where you'll discover the most interesting things that you Should know Click Here For more trending stories