Today’s Metallic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The death of an eighty-seven-year-old woman named Christina Mickelson in Sydney, Australia in 1947 seemed a natural enough occurrence. When family friend Angeline Thomas died not long afterward this too seemed reasonable, given that the lady was also in her eighties. But the death of a much younger relative, sixty-year-old John Lundberg, a year later was more suspicious. Lundberg’s hair had fallen out before his death, which made it all the more alarming when another member of the family, Mary Ann Mickelson, fell ill with similar symptoms, and finally she too died.
One factor common to all four deaths was the presence of Caroline Grills, the sixty-three-year-old stepdaughter-in-law of the first victim. Grills, who had married Mrs. Mickelson’s stepson nearly forty years earlier, had nursed the old lady through her final illness. When Angeline Thomas fell ill, Grills had helped care for her too, preparing endless cups of tea to lift the invalid’s spirits. She had also been there to minister to John Lundberg and Mary Ann Mickelson and, one after another, her patients’ conditions had all deteriorated until eventually they died.
In 1948, the mystery sickness had begun to threaten the lives of John Lundberg’s widow and daughter, both of whose conditions were worsening in spite of Caroline Grills’ attentive care. Both women were losing their hair and complained of a heavy lassitude and difficulty in moving their limbs. Eventually a suspicious relative alerted the local police, who removed one of the cups of tea prepared for the suffering women and subjected it to forensic analysis. The fact that the victim’s hair had fallen out during their illness suggested the presence of thallium as a poison. The laboratory checked by using the Reinsch test, which involves adding the suspect material to a solution of hydrochloric acid. A copper strip is dipped into the resulting mixture, and any metallic deposit forming on it indicates the presence of a heavy metal such as arsenic, antimony, or thallium. The specific identify of the contamination is then confirmed by further analysis.
Thallium was found to have been added to the tea. Discovery was made in time to save the lives of Mrs. Lundberg and her daughter, although Mrs. Lundberg lost her sight as a result of the poison absorbed into her system.
Caroline Grills was tried and found guilty of the attempted murder of Mrs. Lundberg. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and, bizarrely, became popular among other inmates who came to know her simply as “Aunt Thally”.
Good ol’ Aunt Thally!
Culled from: Hidden Evidence: Forty True Crimes and How Forensic Science Helped Solve Them
Sideshow “Freak” Du Jour!
Blanche Gray
Fat Lady (c. 1879)
Blanche Gray was born in November 1856 in Detroit. She was so large at birth, over twenty-five pounds, that her mother died within minutes of the delivery. When she grew to her maximum height of 56 inches at the age of twelve she weighed 250 pounds.
In the late ’70s Blanche made her debut as a professional fat lady at the Bowery Concert Hall. There she met David Moses, an attaché, and was soon married. As Mrs. David Moses she continued her career until the fall of 1883 when she suddenly began to put on additional weight at an alarming rate. In two months she gained 67 pounds and her health began to deteriorate rapidly. While playing Herzog’s Dime Museum in Baltimore toward the end of October she was forced to take to bed at her boarding house. She died of fatty degeneration of the heart on October 26, 1883. At the time of her death the twenty-seven-year-old Blanche had an eight-five inch bust and her upper arms were more than two feet in circumference.
Blanche Gray
Fat Lady (c. 1879)
Culled from: Monsters: Human Freaks in America’s Gilded Age