Tanya Bretherton on 'The Husband Poisoner'

Fresh off of winning the 2020 Danger Prize, sociologist, researcher and author TANYA BRETHERTON has returned with The Husband Poisoner, a fascinating look at the women of post-World War II Sydney who used poison to kill.

The spate of thallium poisonings in the 40s and 50s is a part of Sydney’s history many readers might have never heard of before - how did you come across them?

For most of my other books, I have stumbled across a case while I am journeying somewhere else entirely.  When I was researching the history of adoption in NSW for another project, I stumbled on the story of Sarah Boyd.  When I was looking more closely at the orphanage system in NSW, I discovered the tragedy of the Sly family. 

The Husband Poisoner was a little different because I went actively looking for a poison story.  Gender is an important part of my work and I’ve addressed some key criminal archetypes – mothers who commit infanticide; and women as victims.  It occurred to me that I hadn’t covered poisoners and that is one of the most powerful female criminal archetypes there is.  So, I went to the archives in pursuit of criminal cases that involved poisoning.  I had no idea that I would find an absolute jackpot of material – and all of it is based in Sydney. 

What is thallium, how it was so widely available in Sydney, and what made it a perfect murder weapon?

Thallium is a heavy metal.  It was available in NSW in order to address a vermin problem - rats in particular, because they had a reputation at the time for being finicky eaters. Thallium was developed into a commercial preparation called Thall-Rat at a small factory in Enfield. It was widely available in NSW because its sale wasn’t regulated. You could buy it anywhere: grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores. Some councils gave it away for free as a way of mobilising local citizens to assist in eradicating the rat problem.

It was a perfect weapon because it is very toxic, but has no flavour. You also don’t need much for it to very quickly become a very big problem for the human body to deal with. It makes you very sick – so poisoning can be masked as digestive problems. Given enough it will destroy the nervous system. The victims of poisoning in The Husband Poisoner suffered terribly: paralysis, crippling pain, and eventually they went blind. It was very easy to poison people with because it mixed easily into food. This made it the perfect murder weapon for women in particular, because women were the carers and the cooks. 

The book offers a very intimate and domestic look at the cases offering keen insight into marriages and families, and what went wrong. How did you go about researching these aspects, and building a creative non-fiction narrative out of it? 

My books are assembled very slowly, using archive materials, published social history and genealogical research as well. I start with the foundation relationship – the victim and the murderer – and I work out from there. I look at family and neighbourhood and broader society too. I look backwards and forwards as well – what is the history of these characters, but also where do they end up?  When I think I have determined not just what happened, but why, then I build the story.  In very rare cases, I re-construct dialogue, and I usually identify in my footnotes if I’ve had to do that.  In most cases I use dialogue that I know was spoken, because it is in the transcripts. 

From your sociological perspective, what societal reasons do you think there were for the spate of thallium poisonings done by women?

I guess there are two answers to this question.  Convenience – is the first answer.  Women were the household cooks, so thallium could be easily fed to victims. The second answer reflects a little more on the motivation. Without question, what happened in The Husband Poisoner is horrible and I wouldn’t want to even try to excuse the inexcusable.  But it is possible to identify some reasons for the terrible choices these women made. We have to imagine life in the 1950s for women. It was the post-war era. Society believed that life for women was about marriage, children and the home. 

Paid work for women was not well paid, and married women in particular struggled to find employment at all because they were seen as unreliable. Now let’s consider Yvonne Fletcher’s situation. She was the first woman to be convicted of thallium murder in Australia.  She was also in a really tight spot. She had worked during the war, and supported herself and two children.  When the war ended, she and all of the women that she had worked with were displaced from their factory jobs. She was unhappily married at a time when divorces were hard to obtain.  Being divorced attracted a very real stigma. She also, at one point in time, found herself in an abusive relationship. Yvonne even took the unusual step of going to the police for help, which not many women at the time were willing to do. She was fobbed off. We may not agree with what the women in the book chose to do, but I think it is important for us to reflect on why they believed it represented a solution.

You won the 2020 Danger Prize last year for your previous book The Killing Streets – how did it feel to win such a prestigious award?  

To the BAD Sydney Crime Writers' Festival I say thank you!  I was absolutely thrilled to receive the award. 

The Husband Poisoner by Tanya Bretherton is published by Hachette.