Dorothea Puente ran a good boarding home. Despite being in her 50s, she was still sprightly enough to care for the men and women who paid the $350 per month to enjoy her food and custom. The people for whom she cared were recovering from certain socially-awkward afflictions, and there didn’t seem to be anyone in her tenants’ immediate families available to look after them.

Winnie McKinnell thought that when she got married to Dr William Judd, it would lead to an exciting life.

Some women take to children easily. They have a knack for knowing how to hold a baby, how to soothe a newborn who is fretting, and generally make the whole process of child rearing look like the most natural thing in the world for a woman to do.

Marie Fikáčková was not one of those women.

The most important thing in a relationship or marriage is fidelity. Vera Renczi believed this, and throughout her life she came to see this belief as something more precious than life itself. The men who crossed her path also became well aware of how she felt about this. Although by the time it was brought to their attention the first grains of arsenic had already begun to dissolve.

Sometimes there are days where you feel like nothing is going right. The roast gets burnt, a sudden downpour soaks the washing just as it was ready to be brought in off the line, it can be any little thing. And it can be that one little thing that makes a woman snap and throw the peg basket, just out of sheer frustration.