David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

Between 1979 and 1981, Peter Scott, a British computer programmer, made seven attempts to kill his 23-year-old wife after taking out a $530,000 insurance policy on her. First he put mercury into a strawberry flan, but he put in so much mercury that it slithered out. Next, Peter served Bernadette a poisoned mackerel, but she survived her meal. Once in Yugoslavia and again in England, Peter tried to get her to sit on the edge of a cliff, but she refused. When Bernadette was in bed with chicken pox, her husband set the house on fire, but the blaze was discovered in time. His next arson attempt met with the same result. Bernadette had her first suspicion of foul play when Peter convinced her to stand in the middle of the street while he drove their car toward her, saying he wanted to ‘test the suspension’. He accelerated, but he swerved away moments before impact. ‘I was going to run her over but I didn’t have the courage’, he later confessed to the police. Pleading guilty to several charges, he was jailed for life. The Scotts had been married for two years.

According to the Daily Mirror , after his wife left him, Urwin, a 46-year-old former miner from Sunderland, England, made seven suicide attempts in a three-month period in 1995. Having survived three drug overdoses, he wound an electrical wire about his body, got into a tub of water, and plugged the wires into an outlet. The fuse blew out and he suffered a minor electric shock. He then tried to hang himself with the same piece of wire, but it snapped and he fell to the floor, very much alive. For his sixth attempt, he broke a gas pipe in his bedroom and lay next to it. When this didn’t kill him, he lit a match. The explosion blew away the gable end of his semi-detached house, along with the windows and part of the roof. He was pulled out of the wreckage suffering nothing worse than some flash burns. He was convicted of arson and placed on two years’ probation. A few months later, he was on speaking terms with his ex-wife and was considerably more cheerful.

Raised by her grandmother, Agrippina was accused of having had incestuous relations with her brother Caligula. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (later called Nero) was the product of her first marriage. She was believed to have poisoned her second husband before embarking upon a third marriage, which was to her uncle, Emperor Claudius I. She held such sway over Claudius that she convinced him to set aside his own son and make her son Nero heir to the throne. When Nero was 16, she poisoned Claudius, thus setting the stage for Nero to be proclaimed emperor. Resentful of his mother’s continuing interference, Nero later arranged to have her assassinated.

Hannah belonged to a prominent family and when, as a young widow, she married Benedict Arnold III, she brought with her considerable wealth inherited from her first husband. Unfortunately, her new husband squandered this fortune, and as his ineptitude increased, Hannah assumed a dominant position in the household. She achieved a reputation as a long-suffering, pious woman, and she was pitied by her neighbours. When her young son, Benedict Arnold IV, was sent away to school, she wrote him long letters advising him as to proper Christian behaviour. Hannah lost five of her seven children in a yellow-fever epidemic, and thereafter she was obsessed by fears of death. She continually exhorted young Benedict and his sister to submit to God’s will and urged them to be prepared do die at any moment. Hannah herself died when her son Benedict was 18.

Eighteen-year-old Mary Ann was a London flower girl when she first met Junius Brutus Booth, a talented but dissolute tragedian. Already legally married, Junius fell madly in love with the gentle, warmhearted Mary Ann. In 1821, he accompanied her to the US. Eventually she bore Junius 10 children, and John Wilkes was her ninth and favourite child. Although she was acknowledged as his wife in America, Mary Ann’s existence was kept secret from Junius’s legal wife in England. However, in 1846, his double life was exposed, and in 1851 he obtained a divorce and at last wed Mary Ann. John Wilkes was devoted to his mother, and it is reputed that his dying words after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln were ‘Tell Mother… tell Mother… I died for my country.’

Born on June 8, 1925, Barbara Pierce grew up in Rye, New York, a wealthy suburb of New York City. Her father was an executive in the publishing industry. When Barbara was 16 years old, she met George Bush at a country club dance. Three years later she dropped out of Smith College so that the two could marry. While her husband pursued a career in the oil industry and eventually entered politics, Barbara gave birth to six children, of whom George Jr was the oldest. (A daughter, Robin, died of leukaemia at the age of four.) George Jr was not a perfect son. Saddled with a serious alcohol problem until the age of 40, he was arrested at least three times, once for stealing a wreath, once for public rowdiness at a Yale–Princeton football game and once, when he was 30 years old, for driving under the influence of alcohol. As First Lady of the United States, Barbara Bush worked hard to promote literacy programmes.

Born in Italy, Teresa emigrated with her husband to New York City, in 1893, where she worked as a seamstress to help support her family in Brooklyn’s Italian colony. Alfonso, Teresa’s fourth son, was forced to take over as head of the household when his father died in 1920. By that time, Al had already begun to establish his underworld connections. Later, during the periods when he was imprisoned, Teresa visited him regularly and she always maintained, ‘Al’s a good boy.’

Marie Élénore, lady-in-waiting in a royal family related to the de Sades, married the Count de Sade in 1733 and gave birth to a son, the future Marquis de Sade, in 1740. By 1750, the count had become increasingly difficult to live with, and as a result Marie Élénore removed herself to a Carmelite convent in Paris, where she remained until her death in 1777. Despite her pleas to the king, her son was imprisoned numerous times for his debauchery. Upon hearing of his mother’s impending death, he escaped from prison and hurried to Paris. Unfortunately, he arrived too late and was rearrested through the efforts of his mother-in-law. During his subsequent 13 years in prison the marquis wrote the books which made him infamous.

Vannozza was the mistress of Cardinal Rodgrigo Borgia (who later became Pope Alexander VI), and bore him at least four children, of whom Cesare was reputedly the first. During the course of her life Vannozza also had four husbands, the last one hand-picked by the pope. Always known for her piety, by the time of her death in 1518 she had left so much money to the Church where she was buried that Augustine monks were still saying masses for her soul 200 years later.

Born in 1856 in a Georgian village, Ekaterina was the daughter of serfs. After her marriage to Beso Dzhugashvili she supported her new family by working as a washerwoman and seamstress. When her son Joseph was born, she hoped he would become a priest, and throughout her life she was disappointed at his choice of a different career. Ekaterina never learned to speak Russian, and even after her son’s rise to power, she had no desire to leave her home in the Caucasus.