Pod Insights After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal The Murder Network That Terrified Versailles About this episode In 17th century France, Louis XIV's court sparkled with luxury. It also teemed with poison, occult rituals and aristocrats trying to murder their way up the social ladder.
What started with one poisoned Easter pie uncovered a criminal network stretching from the backstreets of Paris to the bedchamber of the Sun King himself.
Joining Anthony to uncover this criminal underworld is special guest co-host, and host of our sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets, Dr. Kate Lister!
Thanks so much to https://www.shanscreepycreations.ca/ for the amazing new doll. Head to the website to check out more :)
Edited by Anna Brant. Researched by Phoebe Joyce. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hello After Darkers. Now brace yourselves for a public service announcement.
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0:48 Speaker 01 It's 1663. Beautiful and wealthy Marie Daubreuil has been experimenting with the dosage of her poison for months. She leans over a patient at the hospital in Paris. Two deadly drops find their way into the water on the bedside table. Marie is a serial killer in 17th century France. She murdered her father, and her brother, her servants, and more. But when her crimes were exposed, they uncovered a network of poisoners across Paris that reached all the way to the court of Louis XIV. Even his mistress, Madame de Montespan, was implicated in what became known as the Affair of the Poisons.
1:32 Speaker 01 More than 400 people were investigated and dozens were executed. So now, from the poisonous world of 17th century Paris, this is After Dark.
1:49 Speaker 01 Well, hello and welcome to After Dark. I am Antony and, of course, I'm not joined by Maddie because she is currently trying to investigate the inclusion of fluoride for key stage one children all across the north of England. Once she's that solved, she will be back. But for now, we've been joined by a plethora of guest co-hosts. And I'm going to wait for just a second to reveal- Who my current guest co-host is, because you may have noticed that over my left shoulder, there is a charming addition to the After Dark family, and this is Teresa. And Teresa has been sent to us by a listener called Shannon, and she lives in Canada, and she sent this to us all on her own back, and it is, I mean, not physically, she didn't
2:30 Speaker 01 actually carry it on her back, there is post nowadays, and it is from Shan's, a creepy creations, go and check her out. We've also have like a hand and a skull thing over there, you'll see that in a minute in another shot when we reveal the co-host. But it is so brilliant, we are so grateful for this, Shannon. Thank you so much for sending it in, it's so perfect for After Dark, and now she has pride of place in the shot on YouTube. So if you're not watching on YouTube and you're just listening on the podcast, go and watch on YouTube and you'll see our new Teresa doll in the background. Right, guest co-host reveal time. A few weeks ago, I was teasing who we might have come in to After Dark as the guest co-host, and I felt a little bit bad because I posted a picture going, who
3:14 Speaker 01 do you think this might be? Now, it was a brilliant co-host that went down an absolute storm with all of you guys, but everybody guessed wrong, and they guessed consistently wrong, and the same person the entire time, and that was who the guest co-host is this month, the one and only Dr. Kate Lister!
3:31 Speaker 02 Hello, hello After Darkers!
3:33 Speaker 01 I have blackmailed her into joining the dark side, and now here she is, she has no choice but to be here. She is, of course, as you bloody well know, the host of Betwixx the Sheets, also here on After Dark, I was gonna say, no, History Hit, we don't own the whole network, we just, it's our own podcast, that's it. But she also has a really incredible new book out called Flick: A History of Female Pleasure. Have I said the whole title correctly?
3:55 Speaker 02 Yep.
3:56 Speaker 01 Yes, and we are, and I know you're gonna be so excited that Kate is here for the next four episodes, and we're gonna be discussing all kinds of sex history, yes, but also dark history, we're gonna be melding, it's the perfect crossover episode between After Dark and Betwixx. Thanks for coming, babe!
4:11 Speaker 02 Anytime, it's a pleasure to be here. I was frankly a little insulted I wasn't invited earlier, but...
4:16 Speaker 01 Well, I was just about to say, well, we say the best to last, because you are the last one. Before Maddie comes back. But then if I say that, that's insulting to everybody else. So we saved the best for now. No, we saved the, yeah, everyone's the best.
4:28 Speaker 02 Everyone's the best.
4:28 Speaker 01 And you're here now. That's how that's gonna work.
4:32 Speaker 02 Nicely handled.
4:32 Speaker 01 Thank you. I think I should have been a politician. That's just that.
4:36 Speaker 02 Let's move past this. That's what politicians say. We want to move past this now.
4:40 Speaker 01 And this one. Always with this hand, whatever that is, and the thumb, the thumb on the hand. Come here, I was nearly going to wear what you wore, a very similar outfit. And in, in other YouTube episodes, you'll see, I, I, there'll be, even the red tie.
4:52 Speaker 02 That's, that's a weird coincidence.
4:54 Speaker 01 But just, I went for this instead. I went for, like, just, you know, oh, it's story.
4:57 Speaker 02 That would have freaked people out if we were spinning. It would be too weird.
5:00 Speaker 01 But actually, that was a missed opportunity. You should have coordinated to be like, exactly the same. Not even just kind of, right, okay. Enough preamble, tittle-tattle. Poison.
5:11 Speaker 02 Poison.
5:11 Speaker 01 Poison is afoot. Now, give me a little bit of an introduction as to what I can expect from this episode, because I was looking over the briefing notes last night. And it is twists, turns, ins, outs, loads of names. And I was surprised at you, because the last time we did something on Betwixt together, you did not like having to use the French names. There's a lot of French names.
5:29 Speaker 02 That's something I need to apologize to, apologize to everybody at the start of this, is I am gonna butcher the French language. It's my Achilles' heel. I'm better with Icelandic than I am with French.
5:40 Speaker 01 Also coming up, by the way.
5:41 Speaker 02 Also coming up. It just, you know, that episode of Friends where Joey's trying to speak French. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm so sorry. You don't need to correct me in the comments. I know I'm awful at it.
5:54 Speaker 01 I was just about to say we're showing our age by referencing Friends, but actually loads of everyone watches Friends now, because it's on, whatever. I mean, I haven't seen it in years, but it was sad when it ended. I was there for the, the original ending of that as well. Right. Seventeenth century Europe. We are in an age of poisons.
6:08 Speaker 02 Yep.
6:09 Speaker 01 I am going to throw back to another After Dark episode, which I never remember any of them. But my notes tell me that Julia Tufana is also an After Dark episode.
6:20 Speaker 02 Aqua Tufana. Yeah, the woman who was selling poisons in Italy.
6:24 Speaker 01 That's her.
6:25 Speaker 02 For wives to get out of unhappy marriages quite conveniently. You'd go to her, say, could you give me something she would?
6:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:32 Speaker 02 And then suddenly, you're, you're free of all of your problems.
6:35 Speaker 01 It was an After Dark episode. I don't remember, but she, that, that's, now that you've said that, I remember it. But yeah, that was it. Then we also did a, an episode with Blessing Adams, Poisoned Fish episode.
6:47 Speaker 02 I can't help you with that. I don't know what.
6:48 Speaker 01 I know who Blessing Adams is. She's great.
6:50 Speaker 02 I know she is, yeah.
6:50 Speaker 01 But Poison Fish.
6:52 Speaker 02 Poison Fish.
6:52 Speaker 01 I, I would say it's probably great and you should go and listen to it.
6:55 Speaker 02 Okay.
6:55 Speaker 01 And then, oh, Poison in the Tower of London with Misha Yu. And yes, I do remember that one because we love Misha on After Dark. We've had her back a couple of times. But we're not talking about any of those things today. Those are some old episodes.
7:06 Speaker 02 Thank God, because you don't remember any of them.
7:08 Speaker 01 I don't remember. I don't know what you're about to talk about either. I just wing my way through these things, Kate. It just comes to me as it happens. But we are talking about Poison.
7:17 Speaker 02 Yep.
7:17 Speaker 01 We are talking about women and Poison and why there is such a historical link between those two. Like, why is it when we think about historical female murderers, Poison really comes into the, the, the frame pretty quickly?
7:33 Speaker 02 I think it was Agatha Christie who coined the, the phrase that poison is a woman's weapon. And I don't think that's actually borne out by the evidence. Criminologists can weigh in. I think that it's very much a, um, an accessible, inclusive murder weapon is poison. But it's known as being a woman's weapon for a few reasons. I think that number one, there is this really, really long history of women getting out of terrible, terrible marriages by poisoning their husbands. That, you see that cropping up all over the place. In fact, in fact, poison, um, poisoning syndicates were discovered all over Europe, right up into the 20th century. They were big in Hungary.
8:09 Speaker 01 Wait, what's a poisoning syndicate?
8:11 Speaker 02 A poisoning syndicate, that's where there would be a central poisoner like Juliana Tufana, who would sell poison for women to kill their husbands.
8:20 Speaker 01 Oh, I see.
8:20 Speaker 02 Yep.
8:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. So it's not like they're all colluding together.
8:23 Speaker 02 No.
8:24 Speaker 01 It's coming from this. It's like a pyramid scheme.
8:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like, yeah, basically, a weird poisoning pyramid scheme.
8:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
8:29 Speaker 02 And it was big in Hungary and you've got them cropping up well into the 20th century and they were known as angel makers.
8:35 Speaker 01 Ooh, that's a good movie.
8:37 Speaker 02 But like that, not that I would advocate poisoning anybody, please don't do that. It's a bad idea. But you can kind of see how that would happen in a system where women have to get married. They're, they're, there's security and financial security is dependent on them getting married. And there's no way of getting divorced and you're going to lose all of your rights, all of your money, your access to your children, everything as soon as that's happened. There is no way out. Or is there?
9:00 Speaker 01 And I do think that's really, that's such a good point because it is your entire life. And if you were in 17th century England or Italy or Hungary, as you're saying there, it's like, well, do I sit here, again, not advocating that anybody's doing this, but I'm just saying, you can kind of see the mindset. We're going, do I just sit here and accept this for literally the rest of my life?
9:20 Speaker 02 Or, or if, or if he dies, I would get all of the money. I would get everything and then I would be a widow and I don't have to, to deal with this. So you can see how that rather horrendous trade in poisons arose. And there is a really long history of women poisoning their husbands. Then you've got the fact that poison is quite an intimate method of killing and it's put in food, which is historically read as being a feminine thing, the preparing of food, the cooking of food, the serving of food. And there's something particularly nasty about like, like the weapon is striking right at that place where you should feel the most comfortable and the most trusting because we eat food from people that we trust. So I think that's where it comes from. And also you don't have to use physical strength to be able to, to use poison. You can do it and then you can run away.
10:06 Speaker 01 So if I was going to have to murder somebody, it would be poison because I'm very physically weak.
10:10 Speaker 02 I don't think you're as weak as you think you are. I think, I think you could smother somebody if you really wanted to.
10:14 Speaker 01 I mean, maybe, maybe at some point we should have an arm wrestling and I can show you how weak I am.
10:18 Speaker 02 Okay, that's fine.
10:20 Speaker 01 Right.
10:21 Speaker 02 We'll come back after the break and I'll just be like, no, it would be poison. That was awful.
10:25 Speaker 01 No, he actually fell on the ground. As soon as I touched him, he was gone. That was it. So I'm going to introduce now one of the main protagonists for this episode. It is Marie Madeleine Marguerite Daubray. She is born in 1630. I know that to the Daubray family. Tell me why she is important in this, in this episode.
10:43 Speaker 02 All right. So this is all leading up to the infamous, it was called the Affair of the Poisons, and it was this huge scandal that rocked French society, right from the very, very top down to the absolute bottom. Marie de Aubrey wasn't in that scandal. She was the precursor to it. She lit the touch paper. What was particularly shocking about her is that she was an aristocrat. She was born to wealth. She was born to money. Her father was like the, the Prefect of Paris, he's really high up in the law courts, he's got loads of money. And she would marry a guy who became a marquise and she becomes the the marquise to Branville. And she, um, there was not a lot of love, there was not a lot of love in this marriage.
11:25 Speaker 02 It was set up for a financial convenience. Uh, the guy's name was Goblin, Goblin.
11:30 Speaker 01 Antoine Goblin.
11:32 Speaker 02 Goblin, yes. She's like, again, sorry, French people.
11:36 Speaker 01 But listen, Goblin's in there, let's be honest.
11:38 Speaker 02 Goblin is in there, his name is Goblin, right? So she has a typically well-to-do childhood. Later on, things come out that suggest that she was being sexually abused from about the age of seven. She never says who's done it. She's also accused of incest with her brothers. So there's some weird stuff going on. She marries this guy, he's awful with money, he's terrible with money and he's having affairs, so he's spending all of her money. She starts an affair as well with a soldier, with a handsome young soldier.
12:05 Speaker 01 Fair play.
12:06 Speaker 02 Fair play, by the name of Sainte-Croix, his name is, right? I'm not too bad on that one. So Sainte-Croix is also not good with money and Madeline Marie realizes one thing very, very quickly, which is that a sugar baby is quite expensive. Yeah, like they they cost a lot of money.
12:22 Speaker 01 It's why I don't have one, the only reason.
12:24 Speaker 02 Maxed out, quite frankly, more of a more of a splendor infant. No, that sounded awful. Sorry, I don't know where that went.
12:32 Speaker 01 Leave it in, but nothing got to do with me. I mean, also Shane is four years younger than me, so, you know.
12:38 Speaker 02 Oh, is it?
12:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:39 Speaker 02 Right, okay, a splendid teenager. Um, so anyway.
12:43 Speaker 01 There's no way to redeem that.
12:44 Speaker 02 No, there's not, no, we'll just leave that and move on. Moving on, we're moving on. Uh, right, okay, so she's got this this expensive lover. She looks around at her family and she thinks, I need more money.
12:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:58 Speaker 02 I need more money, like I've got this loser husband who's spending all my money and is is spending fruit and wine on his mistresses. I've got this this sugar baby who's spending everything. Where can I get money from? I'm only a woman. I don't, hmm, only a woman. And then she thinks, hang on. Hang on, if my dad died.
13:17 Speaker 01 Oh, she's going after her dad. I thought you were gonna say she was gonna go after Antoine Goblin.
13:22 Speaker 02 No. If my dad dies, I'll inherit.
13:26 Speaker 01 So she no brothers?
13:27 Speaker 02 Oh, she has brothers. We'll get to them.
13:29 Speaker 01 Okay, go on, yeah.
13:29 Speaker 02 Right, okay.
13:30 Speaker 01 Oh, she'll inherit something though, yeah, okay.
13:31 Speaker 02 She'll inherit something, so the money will come down to her. She'll get something, right?
13:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:35 Speaker 02 And this is a really weird quirk of the French aristocracy at this time, is they're so rich and they're so dependent on servants. They don't seem to poison people themselves. They hire servants to do it, which seems like a real weak link in this chain.
13:49 Speaker 01 Telling somebody you're gonna...
13:50 Speaker 02 Like hiring somebody. But that's what she does. She hires a servant and places the servant, and his name is Gascon, and places him in her father's house, and he slowly poisons him.
14:01 Speaker 01 Now, I will say, it does say something about, because we talked at the outset of this about women and access to domestic goods. But actually, although she would have had access to those domestic goods, it also says something about her status as an aristocrat. She's going, yeah, I mean, sure, there's access to food here, but I ain't prepping the food.
14:21 Speaker 02 I'm not going to do it.
14:22 Speaker 01 Just go and get Gaston.
14:23 Speaker 02 It would look very weird if I suddenly started cooking, quite frankly.
14:26 Speaker 01 But Gaston's in there with his kneading all the dough and whatever people do, and then, so if we get him. Although, I mean, you talked about affairs and that she was taking lovers as well. She would need to have been trusting Gaston very explicitly in order to be like, here, kill, who is essentially your master as well.
14:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, she would have done, but that's what happens. And he poisons the father over a long period of time. He dies. Oh, I should probably say that the father did know about her affair with Saint-Claude, and at one point he has him arrested and put into the Bastille to try and stop the affair. So she was also, it might have been motivated by revenge as well. She was really angry at him. Dad dies, she gets a bit of money.
15:05 Speaker 01 Because of the poisoning?
15:06 Speaker 02 Because of the poisoning.
15:07 Speaker 01 Right, okay.
15:08 Speaker 02 And I think it's like, they say that he died of gout. I think that that's what's written. That kind of normal 17th century where they're like, I don't know, gout?
15:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:17 Speaker 02 What happens? Could be anything, could be anything, poison. So she gets some money, but burns through it pretty quick, and then she realizes the reason... She hasn't got all the money is because she has two brothers.
15:26 Speaker 01 Oh, I now I see where this is going.
15:29 Speaker 02 Do you see? And then she goes, God damn it. I need more money. I need more money. And if they were dead. Then I would get the rest of it. So she now hires more servants.
15:39 Speaker 01 Not Gaston again.
15:40 Speaker 02 I think it is Gaston, but there's another guy called Hamlin who goes, and she's got two brothers, one's called Anton and one's called Francois. And she places a servant in their house and again poisons them.
15:51 Speaker 01 Can I just say the most stereotypically French names?
15:53 Speaker 02 That's how I remember them.
15:56 Speaker 02 Pierre is gonna make an appearance.
15:57 Speaker 01 Good, I'm delighted. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:59 Speaker 02 Right, so she's going after the brothers. They die, but now it looks a bit weird. Now, even by the standards of the time, people are going, I don't think that's gout, right?
16:10 Speaker 01 Jesus, gout is running through that family like I never saw before.
16:12 Speaker 02 Weird, like they've all died really close together. I don't think it's gout, like especially the brothers. Cause they had this really long drawn out and like all the symptoms are really similar.
16:21 Speaker 01 Probably not that old, right? She was twenty four.
16:25 Speaker 02 And she's sort of sat there just like, what, what? It's gout. It's terrible.
16:30 Speaker 01 It's plagued the family for generations.
16:32 Speaker 02 So now people are starting to ask questions and they arrest the servant Hamlin, who cracks. There's a lot of torture in this story.
16:39 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
16:39 Speaker 02 Okay, so the French don't fuck about like here. No, they don't. Like in this country, it was like torture sanctioned only in very, very particular cases. And then it's like to try and extract information, which is dodgy anyway. The French just go, let's torture everyone. Like they, they torture. They, but they do. And they, they torture people as punishment as well. So you can't even tell them something to stop. They just, they just go for it. Right, so Hamlin cracks and explains that he was hired to do, to, to poison people eventually. And the other thing that happens around this time is Sanqua ups and dies.
17:12 Speaker 01 Oh.
17:12 Speaker 02 The, the sugar baby, right?
17:13 Speaker 01 Now, is that suspicious?
17:15 Speaker 02 It's weird, but it doesn't seem to be that suspicious, right? It seems like he might have died fucking about with his own poisons. But we don't know. It's just one of those many, he died.
17:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:26 Speaker 02 He just died.
17:26 Speaker 01 And she's not gonna benefit from him dying because they're legally not tied.
17:30 Speaker 02 She liked him. So we don't think there's anything suspicious about that. But he just does the dumbest thing. She must have just been sat there, just like, you had one job. He was horribly in debt. The bailiffs go around to the house. Things were already a bit hot because of all these brothers and people dying.
17:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:46 Speaker 02 They find a case that he has written on, if I die, this has to go to Madeleine Aubrey. It belongs to her. Don't look in it. That's basically what it says.
17:56 Speaker 01 Don't look in it.
17:57 Speaker 02 Don't look in it. The bailiffs do look in it and find it's full of poison.
18:01 Speaker 01 Ah, geez.
18:02 Speaker 02 Right? And like, basically, like, notes and instructions.
18:04 Speaker 01 Of how to poison your dad.
18:06 Speaker 02 You absolute idiot. So now it's completely linked to her. And I think this was the point that they started to torture Hamlyn, and he just gives up everything. And she's legged it. Maria Madeline has legged it.
18:18 Speaker 01 Where's she gone?
18:18 Speaker 02 She goes to England at one point, and then she's moving around Europe. They catch her eventually when she's hiding out in a convent.
18:26 Speaker 01 So she's kind of like, in England terms, she's coming in in the Restoration kind of times, 1660s. This is when there's a royal family back in England, and she's just plodding around doing.
18:36 Speaker 02 She's on the run. She is getting money from her sister. She comes back to France and they do finally get her and arrest her. And then they torture her as well, and it's really nasty. They basically do like water torture. And they strap her down and they force her to drink buckets and buckets of water with like a funnel. It's awful. It's horrible. And so she does confess, but the confession is sort of like, well, you'd say anything, wouldn't you, really, at this point? And then we get all of these crazy rumours that start to swirl around, that she was actually trying to poison her children, and she was trying to poison her actual husband. And then stories emerged that she was volunteering at the hospital and she was experimenting on the patients there.
19:12 Speaker 01 Stop!
19:13 Speaker 02 We don't know if that's true, but it's definitely a rumour at the time.
19:16 Speaker 01 Tableau journalism.
19:16 Speaker 02 It could, it, it seems like she was working at the hospital, and I don't know. I don't know.
19:22 Speaker 01 That's what, like, kind of a patron-y nurse type thing, aristocratic.
19:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, like, I'm being a benevolent person here.
19:28 Speaker 01 But also maybe poisoning you.
19:29 Speaker 02 But also, I might be testing the poisons. I don't know if that's true, but certainly. A rumor that was flying around at the time. She confesses, the story gets way out of control. She's sentenced to be tortured and then executed. She's gonna, she's gonna be beheaded in public and then her body's gonna be burnt. And she goes to her death, basically saying, I don't know why I'm in trouble. Everybody does this, is one of the things that she says. And she alludes to the fact that the poisoning is a much, much bigger issue than just her. Like, she's kind of genuinely perplexed of just like, but everybody's doing this. Why am I in so much trouble? But the whole of Paris is scandalized because she's rich. This is a rich woman, a member of the aristocracy. Poor people, they just do this shit all the time. They, we don't really care about them. But a rich person
20:09 Speaker 02 doing it? That was so, so shocking. And watching a marquise be beheaded and then publicly burnt. It was absolutely, people were terrified. So then it starts off this like, fear that poisoning is widespread in Paris. And they, they've always thought of it as more of an Italian thing. That's what the Italians did. Oh, we do.
20:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:29 Speaker 02 But it kind, it goes away after she's executed, but it doesn't go all the way away.
20:35 Speaker 01 I love this because basically, I, I love a bit of a camp bitch in one sense because she gives a spoiler before she dies, going, as you just said, you think this is bad?
20:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:48 Speaker 01 Well, you see what everybody else is doing?
20:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:50 Speaker 01 Now take the head. Thanks very much. That's pretty camp. That like, that is, she is giving you story. She's giving you backstory. She's giving you legacy. And then she's giving you death. And I'm like, I'm here for it all. But what is fascinating about this is that this is only the tip of a very dark iceberg. That could be the episode in itself.
21:10 Speaker 02 That could be it, couldn't it?
21:11 Speaker 01 But it's not. So join us after this break, where we'll talk about the affair of the poisons. Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way. Same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.
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22:30 Speaker 01 Right, so you mentioned there that it kind of dies away for a little bit after she's, you know, she leaves this cliffhanger.
22:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:38 Speaker 01 And then it's like, okay, she mentioned something a bit weird. But then some of those things start to percolate a little bit and start to come to the surface. Talk us through what happens there.
22:47 Speaker 02 Right, so the first thing that you need to know is that this is Paris, France, 1670. And if you are, in many ways, it is a place of culture and it is the Enlightenment. And we've got philosophers coming in and artists and moving, but they're a very small percentage of it. By the time you get to how actually people lived their lives in the slums of Paris, there was a lot of superstition, there's a lot of belief in magic and witchcraft and potions and so it's not everybody was having a, an Enlightenment moment. These kind of beliefs are still absolutely there. So this all comes crashing down. So a woman called Magdalene de La Sange gets busted having faked a marriage and then poisoned
23:32 Speaker 02 the guy she said that she was married to.
23:33 Speaker 01 Oh, for money?
23:34 Speaker 02 For money, yeah, absolutely, absolutely for money, for poison. And she gets arrested and this should just be a sort of an open and shut case of just it's somebody doing something crap. She's not particularly rich, but she is a fortune teller. She makes her money, as lots of people do at this time, telling fortunes, predicting the future, a bit of herbalism on the side, all that kind of stuff. She gets arrested and the problem that the French authorities have, in fact, anyone that uses this kind of method of torture, is that people will say anything to stop you doing that or to delay their execution. So she starts... Starts to say that, no, no, don't, don't kill me. I can tell you things. I've got, I've got more things. And then she says that there's a plot, there's a big poisoner plot to kill the king.
24:14 Speaker 02 And then the, the chief of the police, a guy called Llorin E, who is really interested in this. He's like, oh my God, like there, there's, there's a huge, huge plot. And that seems to corroborate an anonymous letter that has been found that said that there was a poisonous plot, a random letter. So to him, he's like, oh my God, this is it. So she's talking all kinds of crap to try and save her skin. And she starts mentioning other fortune tellers and other, they're like the abortionists and they are wise women and they are magicians. People that you would go to if you wanted a love spell or like your palm red. She starts to mention all of these names.
24:49 Speaker 02 And then it starts to sound like there is a real network in Paris. And the one that's really central to this is a woman who's called Catherine Monvoisson, but she's known as La Voisson. And she is at the centre of it. And she's somebody that you would go to if you wanted a love spell or if you wanted an abortion or your palm red or all this kind of stuff. And this, this kind of thing has been going on in Paris and indeed Europe for hundreds, hundreds of years.
25:14 Speaker 01 Almost like a trade.
25:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. And for the longest time, it was just like, it's not, it's nothing harmful. It's just, you know, people folklore magic, that, that kind of stuff. But now in the grip of this, it starts to seem like it's a poisoning syndicate. And worse than that, it's witchcraft.
25:31 Speaker 01 And women.
25:31 Speaker 02 And women, right? So there's another woman called Marie Bossé and another one called Marie Vigaro. And they're also brought in. They're, they're sort of in the same trade as La Voisson. And now all these women are being pitted against one another and they start blaming each other. She did it, she did it, she did it. And the stories are getting madder and madder. There's stories about how like La Voisson has got a thousand aborted fetuses buried in her garden and that she would burn children alive. And that there was Satanistic ritual sacrifices and that baby's blood was drunk and that people would, people wanted to poison, people go to her wanting poisons. And like the stories are getting madder and madder.
26:08 Speaker 01 And all these women are saying this, it's, it's very Salem witch trials.
26:11 Speaker 02 It is, isn't it?
26:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, and more dramatic.
26:13 Speaker 02 More dramatic. But the thing is, is like, like, you know that. When and they will find you guilty of this, you're going to be sentenced to be horrendously tortured and then burnt to death.
26:21 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:21 Speaker 02 That's what you know. So, but you also know that if you keep giving them information, it'll probably delay your trial date. It might make you useful. To them and also you want to blame other people. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It's it's it's Lavrois and she was the worst of the worst. And and then things start. So it's kind of contained at this point of like, oh, my God, we've got this poison syndicate in in in the slums of Paris. It's terrible. And the the police guy, Lorrini, opens up. It's called the Chambre al Dont, the Burning Chamber. And it's.
26:47 Speaker 01 Bloody hell.
26:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, bop, bop, bom. And it's like this court that's specially set up to deal with this situation. So at the moment, they think that it's just fortune tellers in Paris. Now they start rounding up everybody who is is involved in that trade. And as these things happen, to begin with, it was fortune tellers. But then by the time we got to the end of it, it's like somebody who saw somebody who might have had their palms red. At one time, it's like getting increasingly, and it might have been contained, except for the fact that these women realized if they start dropping big names.
27:17 Speaker 01 Hmm.
27:18 Speaker 02 Now we're going to start getting some attention. So when they were going, it was Stacy down the road or, you know, it was it was John that I knew from school. That's no good. But now they start dropping names, Marquises, Duchesses, Countesses, really, really big names. And now it's freaking Lorrini out.
27:35 Speaker 01 Can I ask?
27:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:36 Speaker 01 They start, yes, you're allowed. This, when they start dropping these names, are they saying? They are the targets or that they are doing the poisoning?
27:45 Speaker 02 Both, both. So they're saying that really, really influential people at court are coming to them, asking for spells, charms. Sometimes asking to kill people, asking for love powder. And the biggest name that gets dropped into this is Madame de Montespan.
28:02 Speaker 01 Okay.
28:03 Speaker 02 She is the favorite mistress of Louis XIV. So we've gone right.
28:09 Speaker 01 To the top.
28:09 Speaker 02 To the top of this, to give her her full name. Are you ready for this?
28:12 Speaker 01 Go on.
28:13 Speaker 02 Francois Attinay de Rochesois de Montemar de Muckes de Montespan.
28:18 Speaker 01 Ooh.
28:19 Speaker 02 Don't tell me I got that wrong. Don't tell me I got that wrong. Just clap me and be on your way.
28:24 Speaker 01 Here, can I tell you a little anecdote about Frenchness?
28:26 Speaker 02 Yes.
28:27 Speaker 01 So, again, yes. We are, so we are in 2001. I started university and I was doing history, but my minor degree was French, right?
28:37 Speaker 02 Oh, well done.
28:37 Speaker 01 And you only do it for a year and I nearly failed it. I passed it by 1% or something. I was, because I was good at the literature and history bit of it, but I was really bad at the grammar. Really, really bad at the grammar. Anyway, but on day one, you have to introduce yourself and you're in a small class and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, everyone was going around introducing themselves and I was like, okay, I'm ready. I'm ready for this. I'm, I'll do my introduction. And I thought I was being like immersive in the, in the world of what I was doing here. And I introduced myself as Antoine rather than Anthony. Now, I wasn't trying to make people think my name was Antoine. I just was like, that's the French of my name. Bearing in mind, I'm 17 years old. Okay. Just bear that in mind. And then I had to spend the rest of that year in French class, just going along with the idea that my name was Antoine and not Anthony.
29:22 Speaker 02 Oh.
29:22 Speaker 01 I know. I know. It was embarrassing.
29:25 Speaker 02 And you didn't correct anybody?
29:26 Speaker 01 I didn't really.
29:26 Speaker 02 Did you not know the, not know the French to be able to correct anybody?
29:30 Speaker 01 Yes. Excusez-moi. Actuellement, je me dis Anthony, not Antoine. Oh, English came in there. Yeah, I was like, but so mortified. Even thinking about it now, I'm sweating. You know, that kind of way where you're just like, oh, Jesus, Anthony, you could have just said what your actual name was. But I thought I was being, you know, like really dedicated to the, to the French tongue.
29:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, I can understand that. So there's still people wandering around that think that you're called Antoine?
29:54 Speaker 01 I can't imagine they think much about me. I was there for a year. If they do, they need to have a word with themselves. I have an image of la voisine. And if I remember correctly, I think la voisine means the neighbor, maybe, or something like that.
30:08 Speaker 02 Something. What does it mean?
30:09 Speaker 01 I think it might mean the neighbor.
30:10 Speaker 02 Right, okay.
30:11 Speaker 01 Again, you can tell me if I'm wrong about that because I'm not fluent in French. But so here we have her in this picture from the time and she is centered in the image. I'll put this on social media. And she's a very homely looking woman. She doesn't look particularly dangerous. She looks like she's, you know, a kind of a working woman. She's dressed very simply. Her, her face looks kind of very penitent, actually. But she's surrounded by what looks like. Devils and and serpents and dragons and all this kind of thing. And there it has it down at the end, almost handwritten, it looks like Catherine de Hayes.
30:52 Speaker 02 That was her real name.
30:53 Speaker 01 That's her real name, known as Lavosan. Okay, yeah. So what we have here is this idea of, and you know, there's a winged kind of devil holding up her image. So we have this idea that that darkness, devildom, witchcraft, as you're kind of describing there, is taking shape in these everyday women and that they're just walking amongst us. But actually, they're trying to bring down the whole system.
31:18 Speaker 02 This was a witch hunt.
31:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:20 Speaker 02 This absolutely was. At one point, the king allows them to be interrogated for witchcraft. So it's brought in and that's what they're prosecuted with. And Lavosan really gets all of the heat on her. She's the one that's blamed for absolutely everything. And she's held up as this awful, despicable, horrendous creature who's doing all of these terrible things and is threatening everyone. I don't know, maybe maybe she wasn't very nice, but I don't think she was doing the things that that she was accused of doing.
31:44 Speaker 01 I could nearly guarantee you she didn't know a fellow with leather looking wings.
31:47 Speaker 02 No, no, almost certainly.
31:49 Speaker 01 Almost certainly. Okay, before we get to the the trial or tribunal more probably specifically, let's talk a little bit about the French royalty, because you were making a case there before I went off and told you about my French first year lessons, that it was starting to reach royalty, aristocracy. And so that starts to change things. How does the scandal got to do with these poisons start to impact that level of society?
32:14 Speaker 02 Right. So the thing is, the scandal is already big. People are being rounded up and arrested. And Lorraine is taking this really, really seriously and is making a big deal about how he's going to purge Paris of all of these horrendous poisons and witches. Now they start naming big names, big names, like right up to Madame de Montespan and kind of everybody underneath that as well. And that poses a big problem because he has to go after them as well. He can't not do that. He can't just say, well, because they're rich, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let them go. Can't do that. So he starts having to bring them in. Now, this is very different because they can hire lawyers and things to defend themselves. Some of them freak out, some of them do stand their ground and it's like I absolutely.
32:54 Speaker 01 What are you talking about?
32:55 Speaker 02 What the hell are you talking about? And that that makes the court look faintly ridiculous. But once they've got on to Madame de Montespan, the favorite mistress of Louis XIV, now all hell breaks loose because they've got their big name now and they start to say things like, she was involved in a ritual sacrifice, that there was a magician, a defrocked priest, who cut babies' throats open over her naked body. And that it was like, it's really like, it's as extreme as it possibly can be. And obviously Louis is being told all of this, he knows all of this. And as soon as it hits Montespan, he shuts it down.
33:31 Speaker 01 Ah.
33:32 Speaker 02 What he tries to do is he tries to get all records relating to her name taken out, like redacted. And it's very difficult for us to imagine today, but imagine that there is a huge scandal in which children are being hurt and very, very rich people are at the heart of this. And then it goes right up to the very top of government and instead of releasing all of the information, they release heavily redacted files and then just try to move on.
33:56 Speaker 01 Don't know what you're talking about. No.
33:59 Speaker 02 It's very, very difficult for us to imagine how hard that would be. And then imagine like some big cultural names are being implicated in this as well. People you never thought would be involved in it.
34:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:09 Speaker 02 It's very much like that. So now Lourinie is angry as well because he can't properly investigate this if he can't refer to Montespan.
34:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:18 Speaker 02 He can't. And it may have been one of the reasons why these women keep saying her name because they kind of know that is that that he's not going to prosecute them because it's too close to the king. And eventually, the king shuts it all down and eventually all the files are burnt. But not before like thirty seven people are burnt to death.
34:36 Speaker 01 Okay.
34:37 Speaker 02 As witches.
34:38 Speaker 01 We're gonna come to how that process comes about. I think where we find ourselves now is such a pivotal point in this history because we are essentially at Versailles, not just Versailles, but we have penetrated the walls of Versailles now. And of course, in that atmosphere, we have people vying for position to get as close as possible to the absolute monarch, by the way. This is also, you know, you talk about that idea. ...belief and superstition and witchcraft, but like, they believed the king was divinely appointed by God. So it's not that weird to think that actually somebody might have other powers elsewhere. And so now they're all vying for these positions. The king is upset that Montespan has been implicated here.
35:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:17 Speaker 01 When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about how those executions came about and what exactly it did to power structures in 17th century France.
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36:02 Speaker 01 Right, so you said Louis moves to shut this shit down.
36:05 Speaker 02 Yep.
36:07 Speaker 01 But at the same time, we know that there are executions afoot. So between the shutting down and making this go away, someone, quite a few people, are going to pay a price here. So how does that come about? How do we get investigations, even if it's not into Montespan?
36:24 Speaker 02 So it's mostly poor people that are investigated, fortune tellers, anyone who has any connection with that. Like I said, by the end of it, the accusation is getting increasingly tenuous. At the centre of this is La Voix Saint, Marie Bosse, and Marie Vigaro, and a few other magicians who were in this as well.
36:42 Speaker 01 All women?
36:42 Speaker 02 No, no, there were men involved. There was one guy, his name escapes me, and there was another one who was a defrocked priest. But they're all kind of being lumped in together, so it isn't just all women. They are all executed quite horribly as well. They are burnt alive. Some of the methods are really nasty. Hamelin, the servant who kind of kicked the soul off with Madame d'Aubry, he got broken on the wheel. It's a really nasty way to go. So people are paying the price. And then there's people that are just locked in prison, just awaiting trial, hundreds of them. Due process isn't a great thing at this point. So they're just kind of languishing in jails, wondering what the hell is going on. The
37:22 Speaker 02 king moves to shut this down, but now he has to also distance himself from Montespan.
37:28 Speaker 01 Right, because she's, the name has been sullied and.
37:33 Speaker 02 Well, we can see how this stuff works today. Like, I alluded to the Epstein list, but like, look at how that taint works. Even people, like, how many pictures do you see circulating of like, oh, you met Jeffrey Epstein? It's like, they may have just met him at a party and shaken his hand, but that picture's there, the name is there.
37:50 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
37:50 Speaker 02 And now there's a taint to it, isn't there? Forever. People, it doesn't matter if like, maybe that was the only time you met him is if your name is in that file, then there is a mark on you.
37:59 Speaker 01 We are recording this in May, twenty somethings of May, uh, twenty twenty six. And at this moment in time, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is clinging on for dear life, for various and many reasons. But central to that is his quite tenuous links
38:17 Speaker 02 It is tenuous.
38:18 Speaker 01 Because he is not in the Epstein files, but somebody he appointed to his government was quite a lot. And so this is the taint you're talking about. It undermines authority. You make that mistake, you hang out with that person.
38:31 Speaker 02 That's it.
38:32 Speaker 01 That's not, and you don't distance yourself enough from that. Then you kind of get to understand the position that Louis, even as an absolute monarch, he is surrounded by these powerful aristocrats and, and you can understand the tenuous position. It puts him in, I love this. I have some stats here from what you're talking about, about court life at this time and, and what's going on in terms of the numbers. Uh, and one of the things that's talking about during these investigations is that the court was hung in black, lit by torches. It's so dramatic. But here's some, um, numbers. They had four hundred and forty two suspects overall, three hundred and sixty seven orders of arrest. About, as you're saying, thirty odd people were sentenced to death for witchcraft and poisoning. Two additionally died during torture.
39:15 Speaker 01 Shitload, I think that's the official, uh, numerical gauge. A shitload of courtiers flee into exile. And loads of other people are, uh, sentenced to hard labor. And the, the numbers, it's not exactly, as with all of these things, it's hard to know the exact numbers of all of the things that are being really impacted by it. But certainly, the point being with all of these numbers. And allusions to numbers is this is widespread.
39:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:42 Speaker 01 This is, this is, it's all people are talking about across French high society, low and high.
39:48 Speaker 02 It's huge. And also there's a culture of fear now as well of like, like, do you believe what's happening? And like, and suddenly it just seemed like that anybody could be poisoned, anybody could be a victim. Who is this mysterious cabal of poisoners who go all the way up to high society? And people are believing the worst conspiracy theories. It was a really, really frightening and scary time. And we can be very blasé about the his, when we're talking about history, but to watch them all being burnt to death. Holy fuck, like that's, it would have been terrifying then, terrifying now. It's, and they're watching that like quite regularly happen and these people, and of course they're admitting it as well. That's the, that's the really scary thing is that they go, yep, yep, definitely I did that. Please don't torture me anymore.
40:30 Speaker 02 But they, they did and they do. And it wrecks French society and then it just, it has to get shut down by the king. It has to, he can't let this get to him. Montespan is accused of going to buy love spells to keep the king's interest. But also trying to poison his, his new favorite mistress.
40:46 Speaker 01 There's always a new favorite mistress. Now, what is the impact of this, do you think? Like, what does it tell us about that society, courtly society and wider society? In the mid to late 17th century in France, what is this letting us see about that period of time?
41:06 Speaker 02 How fragile it is, I suppose, is that it can be very, it can crumble very easily. And also that this is a time that's supposed to be of like enlightenment and reason and thought. And then just everything comes crashing down with these accusations of witchcraft and poison. So the thing is, is I think that some of it might have been true. Some, cause it's very easy for like to look back and go, it was all complete nonsense, that never happened. But you do have to remember is that they had a really strong belief in magic and potions and that you could affect the future. They would have been going to palm readers, they would have been going to fortune tellers. It was very fashionable. You might go and get somebody to brew you a love spell if you wanted to keep the king's attention.
41:49 Speaker 02 People might do that. They might go to somebody to say, could you give me some poison? We know that poisoning syndicates existed. I mean, it was all, I don't think that there were black masses and babies being sacrificed over the king's mistress. But I wouldn't put it past her to have paid for a love potion.
42:05 Speaker 01 Can I ask as well, just as a way of closing the conversation out, we started talking about Marie Daubray.
42:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:11 Speaker 01 And then we're finishing with Lavosane and the king and all that. Is there ever a direct, that we know of, a direct allusion back to Marie Daubray? Do they ever go, well, she said this, she kept saying there was a network? Or is it just used afterwards as a, oh yeah, she actually, and she happened to say this? Is it kind of coincidental link or do they refer back?
42:30 Speaker 02 It was the same police officer.
42:32 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
42:33 Speaker 02 Laurenti, who was investigating all of this. So he would have been, I don't think there's anything on record of him going, look, see, she said that.
42:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:40 Speaker 02 But he investigated all of this. So he'd been hot on the trail right from the beginning, from the early days of this. And there's no doubt that the Muckes de Branville's case influenced what went on. And as you said, set the stage for this, look, there's more people doing this. I do think this is, there probably was. Life was cheap, and as we said right at the beginning, poison is a horrendously effective way to get rid of a lot of problems. It was called inheritance powder at the time.
43:08 Speaker 01 Hmm, there's something in that, isn't there?
43:10 Speaker 02 There's like, people were doing this. So you've got this half mixture of truth, but also like nonsense and paranoia and fear. But a culture of palmistry and like folkloric stuff that people have been doing for centuries, which now all of a sudden looks like witchcraft.
43:30 Speaker 01 It's very easy, I think, as well, to forget the difference in 17th century France between how we view the correspondence between life and death now and how they viewed it then. And how murder and killing, and killing they wouldn't always have associated with murder, how those things were more part of everyday life. People are armed, people are wearing their swords.
43:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:53 Speaker 01 For a reason.
43:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:54 Speaker 01 There are different expectations of what taking a life could mean than we have today. So we do see this thing of going, oh my God, but you have to sit down and plot the demise, the murderous demise of somebody else. That's a very 21st century mindset on the ending of one's life in many ways. And we, I think, is what, that's one of the things that we would find difficult to put ourselves in that mindset, and we can't, of going, how we as humans could have manipulated the lifespan in the 17th century, there were different parameters.
44:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:33 Speaker 01 Murder was still murder, was still illegal, don't get me wrong, that, there were still laws in place, but the, the ways in which we relate to death in the 17th century, it's not the same.
44:43 Speaker 02 It's not the same at all. You would have been surrounded by death, you would certainly have known people that died, siblings probably would have died, it'd be absolutely everywhere. And now today, we are much more compassionate and we have, you know, like, like, all lives matter and all lives are important, not in 17th century France, no.
44:59 Speaker 01 No.
44:59 Speaker 02 No, if, if you talk to an aristocrat, they couldn't give a shit about you.
45:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:02 Speaker 02 They would unplug your life support machine to charge their phone, they could not give two stuffs.
45:06 Speaker 01 And famously, they had phones and life support machines in 17th century France.
45:11 Speaker 02 They, like, life is, is cheap, and, and as we said right at the beginning, is that there are systems set up where the only way that you might be able to get out of something is to kill somebody. Don't do it, like.
45:22 Speaker 01 No, again, I think we said that quite a lot.
45:24 Speaker 02 Divorce is a wonderful thing.
45:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great, it's a great, like, I haven't availed of it myself, but at least I know it's there.
45:29 Speaker 02 Don't be like going to find fortune tellers and palmists in the Yorkshire area.
45:34 Speaker 01 Have you ever been to an Etsy witch? Not been to, have you ever employed an Etsy witch?
45:38 Speaker 02 I have never employed, sometimes when I get a bad review, I think about doing it. Cause you can't, you can't reply publicly, but you can curse people privately.
45:46 Speaker 01 I've never done it, but I hear people all the time now are like, a go to an Etsy witch.
45:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, you want to be careful, because if there's another brouhaha, they'll be the first people called in.
45:55 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, good, good.
45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, can't be cursing people.
45:59 Speaker 01 We're on very shaky ground at the minute.
46:01 Speaker 02 See, but then things, you'd have to admit it, and then like, maybe this podcast would be played back of like, you were laughing there, you were talking about going to see an Etsy witch, is that something that could be evidence and you can see how this just all snowballs ridiculously?
46:12 Speaker 01 Listen, they'll go for you before they go for me.
46:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, that is, that is true.
46:16 Speaker 01 There's no way that they can, you'll be, you'll be.
46:19 Speaker 02 Do you reckon?
46:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I'll just kind of disappear.
46:21 Speaker 02 You'll just play the male privilege card and just be like, excuse me, patriarchy? She's a woman over there.
46:26 Speaker 01 There is no way that I will be.
46:27 Speaker 02 She talks about sex, get her.
46:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, have you listened to her podcast? The filth.
46:32 Speaker 02 I wouldn't stand a chance.
46:33 Speaker 01 No, it's not doing it. Right, that's enough of us for this episode. Thank you for joining us on After Dark. If you are not already joining us on YouTube, we now film and broadcast all of these episodes. So if you're only listening on podcast platforms, go over to our YouTube channel and you can find us there. If you have an idea for an episode, you can email us on [email protected] . You can find me at Anthony Delaney History. Kate, where can they find you?
46:58 Speaker 02 Oh, they can find me at at Dr Kate Lister.
47:01 Speaker 01 On TikTok and?
47:03 Speaker 02 On, definitely on Instagram. I think TikTok is slightly different. I think it's just Kate Lister, but it's got the blue tick, so you'll know me.
47:08 Speaker 01 Find her, she's there.
47:09 Speaker 02 I'm there.
47:10 Speaker 01 And it is the first of four episodes that we're going to be doing with Kate. You're going to find far more sexy dark histories in the coming weeks. Leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people to discover us as well. And if you're in the mood to discover, have you heard of Betwixt the Sheets? Kate, tell them what they can find on your very own podcast.
47:31 Speaker 02 They can find a lot of sex scandal and the history of society. We have a bit of a giggle rooting around in the pants of history.
47:38 Speaker 01 Oh, that's good. You've said, that's a thing, isn't it? I'm just not, yeah, yeah. That's it, rooting around the pants of history. And also award winning, if you don't mind.
47:45 Speaker 02 I am award winning, yes, yes, finally, not award nominated. Endlessly award nominated.
47:51 Speaker 01 We're still award nominated, we're still in the wreckage. She broke through. She's the pioneer.
47:56 Speaker 02 It's only the worst, it's just I got, we never won.
48:00 Speaker 01 But you have now.
48:00 Speaker 02 I have now, yep, award winning.
48:02 Speaker 01 Right, go and listen to Betwixt the Sheets, listen to us and watch us on YouTube and I'll see you next time. Thank you.
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