IN THE early 1950s, sitting down to tea and scones became a life-threatening repast. Between 1948 and 1954, Sydney hospitals treated 103 people for stomach and leg cramps and dramatic, sudden hair loss.

Ten people died between March 1952 and May 1953, at least four bodies were exhumed and NSW saw three murder and three attempted murder trials.

The murder weapon in each case was thallium, a soft, grey metal that resembles tin.

Recipe For Murder, screening on ABC1 at 8.30pm Thursday, tells of three women accused of murder and attempted murder by thallium - also called "inheritance powder" and "the poisoner's poison" - in the early 1950s.

Chemists William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy in 1861 independently discovered the metal in residues of sulfuric acid production. Highly toxic, Australia permitted over-the-counter sales of a thallium-based rat poison, Thall-rat, from the 1920s.

Despite the glorified image of the 1950s as a white-picket-fence paradise, commentators suggest the early post-World War II period was a time of social upheaval. Returning soldiers often suffered untreated war trauma, housing conditions were poor and often over-crowded, and in the inner-city rats sometimes nibbled the faces and feet of sleeping children.

Thallium sulphate, sold at corner shops and chemists, killed rats that ate the bait and rats that ate the corpse. Odourless and tasteless, thallium became the murder and suicide poison of choice. One gram in cakes or scones or mixed in tea and hot-chocolate drinks could kill within two weeks.

The first thallium murder trial in Sydney began in September 1952. Young mother Yvonne Gladys Fletcher, of Newtown, was charged with the murder of her first husband Desmond Butler in 1948 and second husband Bertrand, or Bluey, Fletcher, a rat-bait layer who used thallium at work, in March 1952.

After a one-week trial and a four-hour jury deliberation, Fletcher, 30, was sentenced to death for the murder of her first husband, whose body had been exhumed. The judge found she had a "black hatred" towards Butler. A doctor who had treated Butler at Callan Park told Fletcher's trial she told him Butler had spent two years in jail, when she had cared for their children and saved money, which he wasted when he was released.

Fletcher told the doctor she could not cope with Butler and asked if he could be readmitted.

The court also heard Fletcher suffered serious physical abuse from Butler. On appeal,

Fletcher's life sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She was released in 1964.

In Bathurst in October 1952, grandmother Ruby Norton stood trial charged with murdering her daughter's fiance Allen Williams, who died of thallium poisoning at Cowra Hospital in July 1952. Despite allegations that Norton hated all the men in her family and Williams was an unwanted son-in-law, she was acquitted.

In 1953 Sydney witnessed three thallium trials, beginning with Beryl Hague, who was found guilty in July 1953 of "maliciously administering thallium and endangering her husband's life".

Hague confessed to buying Thall-rat from a corner shop to put in her husband's tea because she wanted to "give him a headache to repay the many headaches he had given me" in violent disputes.

In October 1953 diminutive Caroline Grills, 63, gripped the city's attention. The sweet-faced 1.21m grandmother was accused of killing four members of her family and attempting to murder another three by adding thallium to home-made treats. A suspicious son-in-law of an intended victim, blind from a previous poisoning, noticed Grills place her hand in her dress pocket, then put it over the cup as if dropping something into tea.

He switched the cup, poured the tea into a bottle and gave it to police. It contained a lethal dose of thallium. Thallium was found in the exhumed bodies of two of Grills's previous victims. Police found traces of thallium in the pocket of the dress Grills wore

the day she tried to give tea to the last victim. Grills spent the rest of her days at Long Bay jail where she was known by inmates as "Aunt Thally".

Veronica Monty, 45, was tried for attempted murder of her son-in-law, Balmain and Australian rugby league star Bobby Lulham, who was treated for thallium poisoning in 1952.

After separating from her husband, Monty had moved in with her daughter Judy and Lulham. The trial revealed Lulham and his mother-in-law enjoyed an "intimate relationship" while his wife was at Sunday mass. Monty killed herself with thallium in 1955.

44, was acquitted on charges of attempted murder by thallium of Clyde Pettit, who had been involved in an affair with Thompson's wife. The judge described Pettit as a "self-confessed deceiver" and said all parties appeared to have "very little interest in life beyond consumption of alcohol".

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donnellym@dailytelegraph.com.au

Originally published as Post-war days of thallium and old lace