Скачать или смотреть Inside the Victorian Poison Panic

In the mid-Victorian era, arsenic was everywhere: in medicine, cosmetics, rat poison, even the vivid green pigments that colored fashionable homes. This video traces how a series of notorious murder cases and trials turned this familiar household substance into a symbol of fear, creating the so-called Victorian Poison Panic. Through contemporary newspapers, courtroom records, and medical reports, we look at how arsenic became known as “The Inheritance Powder,” why it was linked so strongly with domestic life, and how public anxiety focused especially on women in the home.

Blending social history, crime history, and the early development of forensic science, the documentary explores how British courts, chemists, and coroners struggled to prove poisoning in an age before reliable laboratory testing. Along the way, it shows how shifting attitudes to class, gender, and respectability shaped both the media frenzy and changes in British criminal law, leaving a lasting mark on how murder and evidence have been understood ever since.