Poison-pen [adjective] 
“Composed or sent maliciously, as a letter, usually anonymously and for the purpose of damaging another's reputation or happiness.”
[Dictionary.com] First used 1910-1915.
 
Haven’t we all, at some stage, wanted to put pen to paper and tell someone what we really think of them? And wouldn’t it be good if we could avoid being identified so that there would be no recrimination?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Most of us get over our anger/resentment/hurt/jealousy and move on, but there are some who do not. They want to inflict pain or stir things up. They enjoy the thought of creating chaos; disseminating gossip; disconcerting their chosen victim; putting the cat among the pigeons. And how better than by cutting out letters from a newspaper, sticking them onto a sheet of paper, and sending an anonymous message to their target?

When I was writing my most recent novel, The White Feather Murders, I researched poison-pen letters, particularly those from the early years of the twentieth century. I was curious as to their prevalence, the effects that they had on communities, and the motivation of the writers.

In the process, I discovered that it was possible to make some generalisations about those who wrote them. In most cases, the author was usually anonymous and female. Why the latter? Did society at that time make women feel weak, trapped and powerless, so that the only way they could vent their frustrations was through the medium of anonymous letters?

The language used in these communications was not restrained by the conventions of everyday, normal life. It was often crude or malicious. And the motivation behind the person who wrote a poison-pen letter was often difficult to discern. Was it jealousy, resentment, revenge for a perceived slight, or a desire to inflict pain on the recipient? We can only speculate. Certainly, it is clear that the author was obsessed with their victim.

Enough theory. Let’s cut to the chase. What about looking into some of the fascinating and famous cases from the early twentieth century which made headlines, scandalised communities and ruined lives?

Mrs Pollard and her ‘Serpent Typewriter’

What happens when the authorities find it hard to believe that a fine, upstanding member of society is really the author of malicious and spiteful letters?
In 1909, hostilities were unleashed on the citizens of Elizabeth, a suburb near New York City, when accusations of scandalous behaviour were received in anonymous letters typed on a Remington typewriter. Imagine being the woman who was branded as a prostitute and bombarded with literature on obesity, insanity, alcoholism and drug addiction?

The ‘Poison Pen’ in this case was Mrs Anna Pollard, president of the Elizabeth Ladies’ Aid Society, a member of the congregation of the Christ Episcopal Church and a ‘Daughter of the American Revolution’. Despite overwhelming evidence at her trial, she was found not guilty. After her acquittal, the letters began again, but this time, Mrs Pollard confessed and was fined. Social humiliation was her true punishment rather than incarceration or paying a fine.

The Littlehampton Libels

One of the most famous cases is from the town of Littlehampton, on the south coast of England, which is depicted in the film Wicked Little Letters. The anonymous letter writer, in the period between 1920 and 1923, accused its residents of all manner of disgusting and disreputable behaviour. Reputations were ruined, suspicion abounded, and relationships crumbled. The actual case saw a miscarriage of justice when an innocent woman was incarcerated, while the real culprit escaped conviction until she was finally exposed as the poison-pen writer.

The ‘Unknown Hand’

During the same period, an influx of nasty, anonymous messages were dropped into the letter boxes of Sheringham residents in Norfolk, England. They were written by the ‘Unknown Hand’.

A former Girl Guide leader, Miss Dorothy Thurburn, was charged with 24 counts of sending defamatory letters to some of Sheringham’s most highly respected residents, including claims that the recipients had committed extra-marital affairs and fathered illegitimate children. More bizarre accusations attacked people for ‘walking like a duck’, having ‘yellow-dyed hair’ or having ‘odd hips and twitching eyes’.

Three court cases acquitted Miss Thurburn. Interestingly, in her second trial, she was represented by Sir Edward Marshall Hall, who had been briefed to defend the infamous serial killer, Dr Crippen, and represented the ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer, George Joseph Smith.

‘Tiger Eye’

Tulle, France was the scene of another Poison Pen infestation.

The [Sydney] Sun April 30, 1922, bore the headlines:

“TERRIBLE TIGER EYE
Strange Tale of Tulle
POISON-LETTERS STAMPEDE TOWN”

Anonymous letters of the most diabolical description were received by prominent townspeople from about 1917, with the author of the poisonous communications growing in audaciousness and daring. The letters, left in mailboxes and churches, on doorsteps and on windowsills, were signed ‘Tiger Eye’. Several suicides and relationship breakdowns were the result, and it was said that two men went mad due to the anxiety of being exposed.

‘Tiger-Eye’ mocked the justice system by claiming that no one would be able to identify their fingerprints because they wore gloves when they wrote. A hypnotist was even called in to expose the perpetrator, but to no avail. Dramatically and sadly, Angele Laval, the prime suspect, attempted suicide, even though the judge believed her to be innocent. Despite this, Miss Laval was incarcerated.

Poison-Pen Letters with a Twist

Poison-pen letters have been inspiration for novelists and film-makers alike. In my latest novel, The White Feather Murders, set in Melbourne, Australia in 1927, the ‘Poison Pen’ is an anonymous newspaper columnist who embarks on a crusade against a disparate group of Melbourne’s citizens: the president of the Melbourne Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a nurse, a politician, a doctor and a priest. But here’s the twist! After each column is published, the subject dies ‘accidentally’. And each is found clutching a white feather. It is up to Reggie da Costa, senior crime reporter for The Argus newspaper, to find the link between the victims and their accuser, and the reason why they have been targeted. Of critical importance is the significance of the white feather.

Poison-pen letters create anxiety and suspicion. They bring about breakdowns in relationships and drive people to suicide. For the recipients, they pose the questions: Who is privy to my secrets? Who is ridiculing me? Who is fabricating these lies about me? And, most importantly, why?

As that famous philosopher and singer, Cher, once sang:
“Words are like weapons; they wound sometimes.”
 
Laraine Stephens
 
Laraine Stephens lives in Beaumaris, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She worked as a teacher-librarian and Head of Library for over 35 years. After retiring at the end of 2013, she became a writer of historical crime fiction. Apart from writing, she is an avid golfer, loves travelling, going to the football and playing Mahjong, and enjoys reading, restaurants and films. For five years she worked as a volunteer guide at the Old Melbourne Gaol.
 
She is a member of Writers Victoria, Sisters in Crime (Australia), the Australian Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Novel Society of Australasia, the International Thriller Writers and the Crime Writers’ Association of the United Kingdom.
Laraine has a six-book contract with Level Best Books (USA).

I started out writing literary short stories and that’s all I did for the first five or six years of my writing life and I was lucky enough to have many of them published.
 
Then, I entered a novella competition called The Great Novella Search. I won that and part of the prize was publication and the book was called Drifting, a kind of love story road novel and that was in 2017 and it’s still out there on Amazon and other digital stores.
 
After that, if I wrote a short story and it was published I’d ask myself if the idea was bigger and that’s how I wrote my first crime novel Going All the Way. It’s about a footballer who got kicked out of the big time after fucking up and now works as a Night Manager in a seedy three star motel in Kings Cross. A sex worker is killed in the motel while he’s on shift and he makes a decision to find the killer. And he never gives up no matter what.
 
I kept on writing short stories and published three collections all available through Next Chapter Publishers. I also wrote a crime trilogy that started with a book called City of Sin and includes City of Fear and City of Vice.
 
About this time I also started taking a lot of photographs and entered a few competitions and got shortlisted and commended and I found I loved doing it. I went to Vietnam and Hong Kong a few times and I swear to God my camera was out constantly. I like point and shoot photography. I don’t do much editing at all, maybe a little sometimes but just with the Apple photo app or the Google App, and that’s very rare.
 
There was a story in one of those short story collections called Tokyo Jazz and it was the starting point for my novel The Bangkok Girl, which is the first novel of mine due to be published by Level Best Books in July 2025. The book features Bangkok-based, Australian PI Lee Jenson and there will be a three book series.
 
I’ve started writing another series that features a female PI, the first time a main character of mine has been a woman. I like the Andy Warhol quote, and I’m paraphrasing, where he says while other people decide if your art is good or bad just keep making art. For me, I’ll just keep writing and taking photos and let other people decide if it’s good or bad.
 
Thanks for the opportunity to blog here.

Where do memories go when we, to quote Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil”? I’ve been fascinated by this question for as long as I can remember. One way to preserve the past is to write a memoir while you’re still alive, but most of us lack the time or inclination to do so. Coming from a family of storytellers, my ancestral recollections have been passed down verbally from one generation to the next. Expanding on that tradition, I thought it would be fun to honor some of my stories by incorporating them into a mystery novel.
 
A Dark September Night is the first book in a new series set for release on August 12, 2025. It features Emmaline McCoy, named after my great-grandmother. Emma is the marketing director for a cruise company based in Los Angeles. I also worked for a major cruise company in the past. The story begins when a hit-and-run driver kills Emma’s beloved aunt Lydie, who is named after my grandmother Lydia. Emma travels to Justice Bay, a remote coastal town in Northern California, to settle her aunt’s estate. Don’t look for Justice Bay on a map; you won’t find it. The essence of the town is rooted in my memories of one of my favorite places—Camden, Maine.
 
In preparation for putting her aunt’s house on the market, Emma opens a pop-up store in town to sell the curios, antiques, and souvenirs her aunt collected during her travels around the world. She names the shop after Lydie’s Siberian Forest cat, who bears an uncanny resemblance to my cats, Princess Scootie and Riley. The cat’s official name is Cassandra, but everyone calls her Boo because she’s mysterious, some say scary.
 
As part of Cassandra’s Collectibles’ marketing strategy, Emma writes story cards that explain how and where each item was acquired. She has heard many of these tales from her aunt, but if not, she invents them. One example is the backstory of a weathered wooden decoy she found in her aunt’s house:
 
A merchant found the duck battered and bruised in the Marrakesh souk beside a pile of Berber carpets. There were rumors, but no one could confirm how he got from a Minnesota slough to a vendor’s stall in a Moroccan back alley. If you look deep into his glassy yellow eyes, perhaps he’ll reveal his secrets. But proceed with caution. Outside the well-lit tourist areas of this medieval red city where spies and wanderers dwell, they only whisper his name—Decoy.
 
All items for sale in Cassandra’s Collectibles are located in my home in Los Angeles. Most were either part of my “inheritance” or collected during my travels around the world, including the brown gourd mate cup with the metal straw from a trip to Argentina and the yellow and orange Tahitian pareo I wore to dance the Tamouré on the French Polynesian island of Moorea. The decoy has been passed down through my husband’s family in Minnesota for at least three generations.
 
As I mentioned earlier, while all the items for sale in Emma’s shop exist, not all the stories on her cards are true. I’ll let the reader decide which ones are accurate and which are figments of my imagination. After all, what’s the fun in revealing everything?

Patricia Smiley is the author of eight mystery novels. Her short fiction appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Two of the Deadliest, an anthology edited by Elizabeth George. Patty taught writing at various writers’ conferences in the U.S. and Canada. She is the former vice president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and served as president of Sisters in Crime Los Angeles. 
Smiley earned a BA from the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She lives in Los Angeles with her two loyal and opinionated Siberian Forest cats, and a backyard after-hours feeding station for possums, raccoons, marauding felines, and other critters in search of a snack and a cool sip of water. Despite the distractions, work continues on her next Justice Bay novel.