Macabre history

The elements of murder: a history of poison

John Emsley

Oxford: OUP 2005 | Pp421 | £18.99 | ISBN 0 19 280599 1

While I was reviewing this book a recall notice appeared in The Times: 'Reebok is aware of a death from lead poisoning of a child in the USA who reportedly swallowed a piece from these bracelets (free gifts with its footwear)'. Lead is one of the elements featured in John Emsley's book, alongside mercury, arsenic, antimony and thallium. A concluding chapter of 20 pages deals with 12 other elements (barium, copper, potassium etc) that have been associated with fatalities, but seldom employed for murder.

The consideration of each of the main elements can be divided into two sections. First we have 'innocent poisonings' like the poor child mentioned above, and secondly we have 'malevolent poisonings' - murder to inherit, murder to dispose of inconvenient people and (with just a single example) murder in the furtherance of experimentation: the teenage poisoner Graham Young did away with at least three of his family and workmates with antimony and thallium compounds, sometimes one feels, out of a perverse curiosity.