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Date: Sat Oct 12 19:54:26 1996
From: lrudolph@panix.com (Lee Rudolph)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Girl Who Kills Self on Gearshift

robcrowe@worldnet.att.net (Robert Crowe) writes:

>One or two grains = a massive dose? A grain is 1/7000 of a pound, 2/875 of
>an ounce, or approx. 8/125 of a gram. Seems like an incredibly powerful
>toxin. What is the LD50%? Additional cites please.

Hell, I can't do arithmetic. But here's some more "popular crime" material on the case, with more figures--work it out if you care.

The misuse of drugs as alleged aphrodisiacs has frequently been the subject of criminal proceedings, where the defendant usually admits that he had no prior knowledge of the fatally toxic effect of the substance administered. Perhaps the most famous `aphrodisiac' of folk lore is `Spanish Fly' made from the dried beetle _Cantharis_ (Lytta) _vesicatoria_, which is widely found in areas of southern Europe. The active ingredient of the prepared insect is cantharidin, and the powdered product contains around 0.6 percent of the substance. Sometimes a tincture of cantharidin is made, and the fatal dose is usually reckoned at 1.5 to 3 grams of the powder, or about 200 millilitres of the tincture.
...
One of the most sensational cases involving cantharidin came to London's Old Bailey in 1954, when a wholesale chemist's manager named Arthur Kendrick Ford was tried on charges of manslaughter involving two of the girls who worked for him, 27-year-old Betty Grant and June Malins, a 17-year-old beauty queen.

Ford, 44 years old and apparently happily married, had conceived a desire for both Miss Grant and Miss Malins, and remembered the rumours he had heard about the alleged aphrodisiac effects of `Spanish Fly' in the army. One day he discovered that the technical term for Spanish fly was cantharidin, and that supplies were available at his place of work. He asked the firm's senior chemist, Mr Richard Lushington, if he could obtain some cantharidin because, said Ford, one of his neighbors was breeding rabbits and he felt that cantharidin might play `a useful part in the mating process'.

Mr Lushington told him that the drug was a `number one poison' and, if administered to a human being in anything in excess of half a milligram, could be fatal. Nevertheless he gave Ford--a man of previously unimpeachable character--a small quantity of the drug. Ford, who was a friendly and popular man, went out on 26 April 1954, and bought a bag of pink and white coconut ice candy. Back in the office, he admitted, he pushed quantities of the cantharidin into the candy with a pair of scissors, and gave a piece to Miss Grant, and a piece of Miss Malins, and ate a piece himself.

Within an hour all three were sick, and were taken to University College Hospital nearby. The next day the two girls died but Ford, though violently ill, survived. University College is a major hospital with a highly trained staff of toxicologists; the post-mortem on the two girls quickly revealed the presence of cantharidin in their bodies--their internal organs had been `literally burned away by the drug' according to evidence.

                        (from _Cause of Death_ by Frank Smyth,
                         Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980,
                         ISBN 0-442-20041-2)

He was sentenced to 5 years in prison. If he's still alive, he's 86.

Lee Rudolph

Date: Sat Apr 19 15:00:17 1997
From: lrudolph@panix.com (Lee Rudolph)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: ER vectors roofies

jav@os2bbs.no.spam.com (John Varela) writes:

>In <33539a43.4064559@wizard.pn.com>, leew@micrologic.com (Lee Webber) writes:
>
>>Chloral hydrate (and how much of an UL was that? did disreputable
>>bartenders actually stock the stuff?)
>
>Of course they did. They drugged sailors who when they awoke found they
>were bound 'round the Horn for China.

In this connection, I've found the following story in my recent researches into Sin. Has anyone else ever heard or read of the (pharmacologically ridiculous) claim that cantharides has been used as a component of ``knockout drops''?

           And over all this the management stood watch with
        apparent interest, waiting for the golden opportunity
        of despoilment that in dozens of cases, they knew,
        would come.  If the sailors had swallowed enough
        booze to make them unconscious or silly, the moment
        for action had arrived.
           For Albert, the heavy bartender, who had been
        watching over the proceedings, argus-eyed, had the
        love potion, the famous Marseilles knockout drop all
        ready for the ``simps.''  A potion, filled with
        cantharides or Spanish fly and for which the place
        was renowned, made the sailors pliable and hopelessly
        drunk.  And then the moment for the grand finale,
        that of ruthless despoilment had come.  Good for
        the girl, good for the pimp, good for the house.
        For they split three ways.
                        --_Sinful Cities of the Western World_
                          (Chapter 5, "Marseilles--L'Aiglon L----,
                          White Slave Hunter"), by Hendrik de Leeuw
                          (Citadel Press, New York, 1934)

Lee "if you can swallow this, you're a simp" Rudolph