ABSTRACT
We all harbour secret fantasies about getting rid of other people, quietly and with the minimum of fuss if possible. In the comedy How To Murder Your Wife, Jack Lemmon, defending himself in court, draws a chalk button on the courtroom rail and invites the all-male jury to consider what life would be like if they could make their own wife vanish by pressing it. They realise the possibilities and the acquitted hero is borne out of the courtroom in triumph on their shoulders. The difference between the poisoner and the fantasist is essentially one of a moral sense of affect, the appreciation of the value and rights of others, however disagreeable they may be. But an appreciable minority of citizens would press the button if they knew they would get away with it. Part of the mythology of the Victorian age stems from the ease with which people could get hold of poisons, and the hit-or-miss quality of many of the forensic investigations, which made success a distinct possibility.
