Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers
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Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630 – 1676) was a French serial killer.
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[edit] Crimes
De Brinvilliers poisoned her father, brother, and two sisters in order to inherit their property, with the help of her lover, army captain Godin de Sainte-Croix. There were also rumours that she had poisoned poor people during her visits to hospitals.
The poison she used appears to have been the Tofana poison, an art which one of her lovers taught her. She was acquainted with Exili, another poisoner of the seventeenth century.
She fled but was arrested in Liège.
[edit] Execution
She was forced to confess, and sentenced to death. On July 17, 1676, she was forced to drink 16 pints of water, and then was beheaded and burned at the stake.
The trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers led to the Poison affair.
[edit] Fictional portrayals
Her case was portrayed fictionally by Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Leather Funnel", and by Alexandre Dumas, père in "The Marquise de Brinvilliers". Robert Browning's 1846 poem "The Laboratory" imagines an incident in the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite d'Aubray Brinvilliers. In the novel The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr, the plot concerns a murder that seems to have been committed by the ghost of Marie d'Aubray Brinvilliers.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
