The Acqua Tofana case

 

The divorce in Italy was introduce in the 1970 so how could a woman escape from a situation of abuse before? An answer could be found in the story of Giulia Tofana and her poison "Acqua Tofana" or “Aqua Tofana”.

Back in the time once married the men had complete control over their wives’ lives and they could treat them as they wanted. So how could a woman put an end on the abuse? Someone could say maybe by killing their husband and Giulia made that her business.

To write this article I have interviewed two normal people that prefer to remain ammoniums, to have different point on view on the case. Both of them didn’t know this story before and both of them said that this situation is really morally ambiguous.   “Do you think that at the time the wives had others solutions to escape from a situation of domestic abuse? if yes, which ones?” I asked them, and both answer that there wasn’t really a way to escape from similar situations at the time.

There is really little information about this prolific serial killer, but I gather here all that I could find.

Giulia Tofana was described as a very beautiful woman and in young age she came in contact with people that educate her on how to produce her own “medicines” and other natural remedies. Some say that she learnt by herself how to do her poison, but other say that it was a recipe invented by her mother, who was executed for killing her husband (Can we call that a family tradition?).

“Acqua Tofana” in really little quantity could kill slowly a man and it looked like a clear liquid put in perfumes’ bottles, so that none one could be suspicious. So Giulia started with her daughter a small business (I am not talking about MLM) by selling this product.

But why would she do this? Of course we can’t be sure of the answer but appear that Giulia was really sympathetic of low classes women who lived in abusive household. She became well known through word of mouth. Mostly of her costumers where abused women who would buy the poison and then kill the husbands, and made it look like a death from natural causes, it took a lot of time to kill somebody.

Her clients would recommend this product only to people that they trusted. And for cover the activity Giulia started to sell her own cosmetics and the business worked for over 15 years. Also because she was very selective, the new clients had to be recommend by old ones and she would investigate on them.

However, in the 1760 all came to an end when a new lady bought “Acqua Tofana” but when her husband was reaching for the poison she yell’s to him to stop eating and admitted all, so what “Acqua Tofana” was and where she had bought it. Authorities tortured her and revealed the identity of Giulia, who tried to escape from the city. At this point someone spread a rumour about the fact that Giulia had poisoned the water’s supplies of the City (Rome), she didn’t do that. But people didn’t believe her and a group of people take her to the authorities to confess and she did that. She ended up executed with her daughter and some of her employees.

The legend of “Acqua Tofana” didn’t died with Giulia, in fact is believed that it could be used to murder Mozart, but this is of course only a speculation.

As already said by the people that I have interview I think that of course murder is horrible but what to do if it’s your only way to get out of a horrible situation? Can we really blame all these women for the choice that they had made back in the days?