Some common abuses of arsenic were a good deal grimmer even than real and fictional characters doing away with their unwanted spouses (at least as often for financial convenience, surely, than as Orwell suggests, passion). Many infants and children died from intestinal infections, an unknown number of which were actually deliberate arsenic poisoning. In 1849, Rebecca Smith was executed for killing eight of her babies after birth, having claimed in her defence that her husband was an alcoholic and that she feared her children ‘might come to want’ and die of starvation anyway. According to Whorton the poisoning of children ‘underwent a growth spurt’ when for a halfpenny a week ‘burial clubs’, an offshoot of the friendly societies, paid out for funeral expenses so that the children of the poor could avoid a pauper’s grave or being carved up by anatomists after death. ‘Manchester clubs, for example, paid out £3 as a rule, but some paid £4, or even £5; a basic funeral for a child could be financed for only £1 or £2. There was a saying among women in the Manchester tenements: “Aye, aye, that child will not live, it is in the burial club!”’ Membership rolls were known as ‘catalogues of the doomed’.

Jenny Diski at the LRB, Toxic Lozenges

so glad you came

Behind a glass wall there was that bank of recording equipment you see in pictures. In the main room, where we were, there were some mikes, a set of drums, a fridge and a sofa. I said that I was only 14 and he laughed. No, I wasn’t, he told me. I was, I said. He pushed me on to the sofa and I repeated that I was 14, and – I was pleading now, knowing I was in trouble – I was a virgin. I was at any rate young enough to think that telling him that would give him pause. No, I wasn’t, I was not 14 and I was certainly no virgin, he laughed, as he pushed up my skirt. I have no idea whether he believed what he was saying or not.

Jenny Diski on Polanski at the LRB

quis custodet ipsos custodes

Jenny Diski was invited to guest edit a student magazine, but failed lamentably to stay on-message.

"It is not possible for us to print your introduction in good conscience. The negative tone does not reflect the spirit of [the magazine], which is meant to be an encouraging platform for new and developing student writers ... we feel that three high-quality stories have been omitted from your final shortlist, and we would not be adequately performing our job as editors of the journal if we allowed those writers to go unrecognised. As a result of these concerns, we can no longer continue this working relationship.

Tsk.