Getting Away with Murder: Criminal poisoning in the 19th century

In Victorian Britain, arsenic could be bought for a few pence with no questions asked. Fatal in tiny doses, undetectable in food and drink and producing the same symptoms as several diseases that routinely killed people in the 1800s, it was almost the perfect murder weapon. And even if its use was suspected, there was no reliable way of proving it.

Sandra Hempel is a former Times journalist who has written for many national newspapers and magazines. “The Inheritor's Powder”, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, tells the story of a real-life murder mystery that resulted in a breakthrough in forensic toxicology which was supposed to put an end to arsenic murders for ever. However, it didn’t quite turn out like that.