Marie Madeleine Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, 1676, after her imprisonment, portrait by Charles LeBrun.

The Marquise de Brinvilliers being tortured before her beheading.

Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630 – July 17, 1676) was a French serial killer.

[edit] Crimes

De Brinvilliers poisoned her father, daughter, both brothers, and two sisters in order to inherit their property, with the help of a person she loved, army captain Godin de Sainte-Croix, whom she also killed.^{[dubious – discuss]} The army captain did not share her love, and was able to save her family's lives. (in a letter from Madame De Sévigné). There were also rumours that she had poisoned poor people during her visits to hospitals.

The poison she used appears to have been the Tofana poison, an art which one of her lovers taught her. She was acquainted with Exili, another poisoner of the seventeenth century.^{[dubious – discuss]}

She fled but was arrested in Liège.

[edit] Execution

She was forced to confess, and sentenced to death. On July 17, 1676, she was tortured with the water cure (forced to drink sixteen pints of water), and then was beheaded and burned at the stake.

The trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers led to the Poison affair.

[edit] Fictional portrayals

Her case was portrayed fictionally by Arthur Conan Doyle in "The Leather Funnel", by Alexandre Dumas, père in "The Marquise de Brinvilliers", and by Émile Gaboriau in "Intrigues of a Poisoner". Robert Browning's 1846 poem "The Laboratory" imagines an incident in the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite d'Aubray Brinvilliers. Her capture & burning is mentioned in The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley. In the novel The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr, the plot concerns a murder that seems to have been committed by the ghost of Marie d'Aubray Brinvilliers. It is also being portrayed as a musical comedy called "Mimi - A Poisoner's Comedy" written by Allen Cole, Melody A. Johnson, and Rick Roberts. Its premiere is in Toronto, Canada, during September and October, 2009.

[edit] References

•  "Brinvilliers, Marie Madeleine Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
• Anne Somerset - The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (St. Martin's Press (October 12, 2003) ISBN 0-312-33017-0)