Midwife Auntie Suzy was not the only busy bee.

She had the devil’s version of a spiritual partner far across the sea. For at the same time the midwife was cooking up poison potions in her kitchen in Nagyrev, Amy Archer-Gilligan was doing something of the same thing in the small town of Windsor, Connecticut.

Flypaper, Rat poison …  All the same when you’re trying to knock someone off, and Archer-Gilligan preferred arsenic-laden rat poison to kill tenants at her home for the elderly. Between 1910-1916, there were 64 deaths at the home, a very high death rate, even in a home for the elderly.

In 1917, Archer-Gilligan was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the murder of one person (although charges were filed against her for five murders). On appeal, her death sentence was reduced to life in prison.

A few years later, she was transferred from prison to a mental hospital, where she died in the 1960s.

I wonder what she thought of “Arsenic and Old Lace” when it became a smash hit on Broadway in 1941? It was, after all, inspired by her.