S3 E12: Hell Hath No Fury

Throughout history, several women have earned notoriety for their actions and the impact they had on society. These women, often wielding considerable power and influence, left behind legacies marred by violence, cruelty, and controversy.

             One of the most infamous women in history is Elizabeth Báthory, who we've covered in a previous episode, but if you have listen to that one Elizabeth was a  Hungarian noblewoman from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Known as the "Blood Countess," Báthory is often cited as one of the most prolific female serial killers. She allegedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young girls, driven by a belief that bathing in their blood would preserve her youth. While some historians argue that the extent of her crimes might have been exaggerated or politically motivated, the brutality and scale of her actions have cemented her place in history as a symbol of extreme cruelty.

           Moving to the modern era, Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, played a significant role in China's Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. As the wife of Mao Zedong, she was a key member of the Gang of Four, a political faction that orchestrated widespread purges, persecution, and propaganda campaigns. Jiang Qing's influence led to the imprisonment, torture, and deaths of countless intellectuals, artists, and perceived political enemies. Her actions contributed to one of the darkest periods in Chinese history, marked by cultural destruction and mass suffering.

  we've got a few exciting things coming up on the show over the next month or two firstly I be working for the past couple of weeks with another podcast called the rainy day rabbit holes, this is a brilliant podcast hosted by Shea and Jody and its all about the history of the pacific northwest. Towards the end of next months we will be doing a feed swap where one of their episodes will be realised here and vice versa. The ladies delve into anything from the Seattle Coffee wars to mysterious severed wash up on beaches in the pacific northwest, but they always keep it light hearted with their infectious humour, I have literally binged every episode. So please go and give them a listen they are brilliant.

   Secondly, soon I will be doing a collaboration with another brilliant show called Headlines and History with Jon Molik. Jon is a great guy who is an intelligence officer and his show is about current affairs and the history behind them. If you want to try and make sense of what is going on in the world Headlines and History is the show to listen two. I will be giving you a sneak peak of Jon’s show later in the episode.

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Headlines and History By Jon Molik
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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Music
• 0:12 Opening Description
• 2:35 Hello And Welcome
• 4:56 The Tale Of Saint Olga Revenge
• 11:39 Short Break Headlines and History with Jon Molik
• 14:25 Dee Reading Of The Grim Crimes of Madam LaLaurie
• 21:28 Irema Grese the Hyena of Auschwitz
• 25:39 Thank You For Listening
• 28:56 Exit Music

Transcript

Hell Hath No Fury

Throughout history, several women have earned notoriety for their actions and the impact they had on society. These women, often wielding considerable power and influence, left behind legacies marred by violence, cruelty, and controversy.

             One of the most infamous women in history is Elizabeth Báthory, who we've covered in a previous episode, but if you have listen to that one Elizabeth was a  Hungarian noblewoman from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Known as the "Blood Countess," Báthory is often cited as one of the most prolific female serial killers. She allegedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young girls, driven by a belief that bathing in their blood would preserve her youth. While some historians argue that the extent of her crimes might have been exaggerated or politically motivated, the brutality and scale of her actions have cemented her place in history as a symbol of extreme cruelty.

           Moving to the modern era, Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, played a significant role in China's Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. As the wife of Mao Zedong, she was a key member of the Gang of Four, a political faction that orchestrated widespread purges, persecution, and propaganda campaigns. Jiang Qing's influence led to the imprisonment, torture, and deaths of countless intellectuals, artists, and perceived political enemies. Her actions contributed to one of the darkest periods in Chinese history, marked by cultural destruction and mass suffering.

       These women, through their actions and the power they wielded, have left indelible marks on history. Their legacies serve as stark reminders of the capacity for cruelty and the impact that individuals can have on society, often with devastating consequences.

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast are where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 12 Hell Hath No Fury, if you haven't have guessed today we will be looking into some of the bloody and dark tales of certain infamous women in history who were as cruel and down right evil as the men. before we start a couple of housekeeping items as this is a lady-oriented episode my beautiful and better half Dee will read one of our stories today so please show her some love. 

 also we've got a few exciting things coming up on the show over the next month or two firstly I be working for the past couple of weeks with another podcast called the rainy day rabbit holes, this is a brilliant podcast hosted by Shea and Jody and its all about the history of the pacific northwest. Towards the end of next months we will be doing a feed swap where one of their episodes will be realised here and vice versa. The ladies delve into anything from the Seattle Coffee wars to mysterious severed wash up on beaches in the pacific northwest, but they always keep it light hearted with their infectious humour, I have literally binged every episode. So please go and give them a listen they are brilliant.

   Secondly, soon I will be doing a collaboration with another brilliant show called Headlines and History with Jon Molik. Jon is a great guy who is an intelligence officer and his show is about current affairs and the history behind them. If you want to try and make sense of what is going on in the world Headlines and History is the show to listen two. I will be giving you a sneak peak of Jon’s show later in the episode.

   Anyway without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.

Our first story today takes us back to the 10th century and the story of a saint who bring new meaning to hell hath no fury like a women scorned. 

          Olga of Kiev was born around 900 C.E. in what is today Pskov, Russia, near the border with Estonia. But at the time, the city was part of a vast inland Viking empire known as Kievan Rus.

            Olga herself was a Varangian, which is a person descended from the first Vikings who settled in the empire, and she was no older than 15 when she married Grand Prince Igor I, ruler of Kievan Rus.

A generation earlier, Igor’s predecessor and adoptive father, Prince Oleg, had consolidated power and established a new capital of Kyiv.

     However, there was one tribe that he couldn't fully subdue: the Drevlians. With their distinct identity and ambitions, the Drevlians often aligned with the Kievan Rus in conflicts against the Byzantine Empire and paid tribute to Oleg. But after his death in 945 C.E., they stopped paying tribute. When Prince Igor traveled to their capital, the modern city of Korosten in northern Ukraine, to collect the tribute, they viciously killed him. As recorded by a Byzantine chronicler, "They bent down two birch trees, tied them to the prince's legs, and then released the trees, tearing his body apart."

                        The Drevlians severely underestimated his wife, Princess Olga of Kiev. At the time, Olga was around 20 years old and had a three-year-old son, Sviatoslav. Since he was too young to rule, Olga assumed the position of regent of Kievan Rus.

       Before Igor’s body was cold, Mal, the drevlian leader,  sent twenty dignitaries to Kyiv to convince Olga to marry him. But Olga had no intention of marrying the man who helped slaughter her husband.

Yet the Drevlian proposal gave Olga an opening. Instead of outright rejecting the proposal, Olga welcomed the envoys to Kyiv and promised to honor them. Then, she ordered her soldiers to dig a ditch.

The next day, the dignitaries arrived dressed in their finest robes. Olga led them to the edge of the ditch, and her soldiers threw them to the bottom. As Olga watched, her soldiers buried the men alive.

         As the dignitaries struggled for breath, Olga stood at the brink of the trench, observing them closely. With a cold demeanor, she inquired if they found the taste of honor to their liking. Gasping for air, the dying men cried out that their agony surpassed even the death of Igor. Yet, Olga remained unfulfilled.

          After burying the Drevlian envoys alive, Olga of Kiev began plotting her next move for revenge. Before word of her gruesome act could reach the Drevlians, she sent a letter to Prince Mal. Feigning interest in marriage, Olga requested that Mal send his finest men to Kyiv to escort her back to him.

         Unaware of Olga's wrath and oblivious to the fact that she had already executed twenty of his men, Mal sent a delegation of distinguished chieftains to Kyiv. Upon their arrival, Olga graciously offered them the use of her bathhouse to refresh themselves after their journey. However, once they were inside, she locked the doors and set the building ablaze, ensuring that no one survived.

Despite this, Olga's thirst for vengeance remained unsatisfied, compelling her to act swiftly.

        .       By then, the Drevlians were terrified that Olga of Kiev would not rest until she had exterminated their entire tribe. In desperation, the survivors begged Olga to accept their tributes and return to Kyiv. 

            Olga listened to their pleas but refused their offer. Instead, she laid siege to their capital for over a year until they were desperate for mercy. When they could endure no more, Olga finally proposed terms for peace.

           "Give me three pigeons and three sparrows from each house," Olga demanded, according to the Old East Slavic chronicle, the Tale of Bygone Years. "I do not wish to impose a heavy tribute like my husband did. I ask only for this modest gift from you."

                       The Drevlians readily agreed, astonished by the seemingly small price for peace, and quickly collected the birds. However, Olga had a different plan in mind.

                "Olga distributed a pigeon or a sparrow to each of her soldiers and instructed them to tie a piece of sulfur wrapped in small cloths to the birds," mi

            That night, Olga told her soldiers to release the birds. When the flocks landed back in their thatched nests in the Drevlians’ houses, they lit them on fire.

“There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught on fire at once,” according to the Kievan Rus chronicle.

“The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them. Thus she took the city and burned it, and captured the elders of the city.” Olga then divided the captives: some were slaughtered, others were sold into slavery, and a fortunate few were allowed to rebuild the town.

                    With her vengeance finally fulfilled, Olga left the Drevlians utterly devastated, yet now willing to pay any tribute to remain in her favor.

Hi everyone Im going to take over from here,

Following on from saint Olga, who probably had a good reason to be so brutal, our next women does not. 

         Born Marie Delphine Macarty in March 1787, young Delphine grew up fairly privileged. Her parents, Louis Barthelemy Macarty and Marie-Jeanne L'Érable, were prominent European Creoles, high up in New Orleans' society. Delphine's uncle was the governor of two Spanish-American provinces when she was born; later, a cousin would become mayor of the city of New Orleans.

            At the time of Delphine's childhood, New Orleans and much of the rest of Louisiana were under Spanish control, from 1763 to 1801. In 1800 she married her first husband, Don Ramón de Lopez y Angulo, who was a highly ranked officer in Spain's royal army. As was common for people in their position, they traveled to Spain and its other territories, but Don Ramón fell ill within a few years and died in Havana, leaving Delphine a young widow with a baby.

                   In 1808, she married again, this time to a banker named Jean Blanque. Delphine had four children with Blanque, but he too died young, and she was a widow again in 1816.

        Delphine married for a third and final time in 1825. This time, her husband, Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie, was quite a bit younger than she was, and the two of them moved to a large mansion at 1140 Royal Street, in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter. This lavish home became the site of her violent crimes.

           There are numerous and varied accounts of Delphine LaLaurie's treatment of her enslaved people. What is for certain is that she and her husband did own a number of men and women as property. Although some contemporaries say she never mistreated them in public, and in general was civil to African Americans, it seems as though Delphine had a dark secret.

                     In the early 1830s, rumors began to make their way through the French Quarter, alleging that Delphine—and possibly her husband as well—were mistreating their enslaved people. While it was common, and legal, for enslavers to physically discipline the men and women they owned, there were certain guidelines laid out to discourage excessive physical cruelty. Laws were in place to maintain a certain standard of upkeep for enslaved peoples, but on at least two occasions, court representatives went to the LaLaurie home with reminders.

          British social theorist Harriet Martineau was a contemporary of Delphine's and wrote in 1836 of Delphine's suspected hypocrisy. She related a tale in which a neighbor saw a small child "flying across the yard towards the house, and Madame LaLaurie pursuing her, cowhide in hand," until they ended up on the roof. At that, Martineau said, "she heard the fall and saw the child taken up, her body bending and limbs hanging as if every bone were broken... at night she saw the body brought out, a shallow hole dug by torchlight, and the body covered over."

               After this incident, an investigation took place, and charges of unusual cruelty leveled against Delphine. Nine enslaved people were removed from her home. However, Delphine managed to use her family's connections to get them all back to Royal Street.

                          There were also allegations that she beat her two daughters, particularly when they showed any semblance of kindness toward their mother's enslaved people.

               In 1834, a fire broke out at the LaLaurie mansion. It began in the kitchen, and when authorities arrived on the scene, they found a 70-year-old Black woman chained to the stove. That's when the truth about Delphine's atrocities came out. The cook told the fire marshal that she had set the fire in order to commit suicide, because Delphine kept her chained up all day, and punished her for the slightest infraction.

                       In the process of extinguishing the fire and evacuating the house, bystanders eventually made their way to the attic, where the volunteers were greeted by the choking, overwhelming smell of death. The people had unwitting stumbled up the prison of madam LaLaurie slaves. Some were dead, some were alive, many had been horribly mutilated. Some were tied to tables, others confined in tiny cages. One had her limbs broken and reset so that she resembled a crab, some had their mouths sewn shut, and several had been brutally flayed with a whip and forced into spiked collars.

       When questioned, Delphine's husband told investigators that they needed to just mind their own business. Delphine herself escaped the house, but an angry mob stormed the structure and destroyed it after the discovery of the abused enslaved people was made public. Following the fire, two of the rescued enslaved people died from their injuries. In addition, the backyard was excavated and bodies were disinterred. Although one was the child who had fallen from the roof, reports vary as to how many others were buried in the yard.

             Not much is known about what became of Delphine after the fire. It is suspected that she fled to France, and according to archival records, is believed to have died in Paris in 1849. 

For our final story of today's episode we will travel to world war 2, which is a den of iniquity when it comes to evil people. So when you hear that a female nazi is called the hyina of Auschwitz you know she isn't to be messed with.

Born in the autumn of 1923, Irma Grese was one of five children. Her mother committed suicide 13 years later upon discovering her husband's affair with a local pub owner's daughter. Grese faced additional difficulties throughout her childhood, including problems at school. Her sister, Helene, testified that Grese was severely bullied and lacked the courage to defend herself, leading her to drop out as a young teenager.

                To support herself, Grese worked on a farm and in a shop. Like many Germans, she was captivated by Hitler's ideology and, at 19, found employment as a guard at the Ravensbruck concentration camp for female prisoners. In 1943, just one year later, she was transferred to Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous Nazi death camp. A loyal and dedicated Nazi, Grese quickly rose to the rank of senior SS supervisor, the second-highest position available to women in the SS.

          With such authority, Irma Grese unleashed a torrent of lethal sadism upon her prisoners. Although the details of Grese’s abuses are difficult to verify—and scholars like Wendy Lower note that much of what has been written about female Nazis is clouded by sexism and stereotypes—there is little doubt that Grese earned her nickname, “the Hyena of Auschwitz.”

           In her memoir Five Chimneys, Auschwitz survivor Olga Lengyel writes that Grese had many affairs with other Nazis, including Mengele. When it came time to select women for the gas chamber, Lengyel noted that Irma Grese would purposely pick out the beautiful female prisoners due to jealousy and spite. Grese had a sick fondness for striking women on their breasts and for forcing Jewish girls to be her lookout as she raped female inmates. As if this wasn’t enough, Grese would sick her dog on prisoners, whip them constantly, and kick them with her hobnailed jackboots until there was blood, she would also beat them truncheon or a wooden stick. She would often do so for no reason or for minor infractions. Grese was involved in the medical experiments conducted on prisoners, which often resulted in their death or serious injury. It was alleged that grease even had lampshades made from the skin of three dead prisoners.

              But as the Allies loosened the Nazis stranglehold on Europe, Grese went from destroying people’s lives to trying to save her own.

In the spring of 1945, the British arrested Grese, and, along with 45 other Nazis, Grese found herself accused of war crimes. Grese pleaded not guilty, but the testimony of witnesses and survivors of Grese’s mania got her convicted and sentenced to death.

On December 13, 1945, Irma Grese was hanged. At just 22 years old, Grese has the distinction of being the youngest woman hanged under British law during the 20th century.

thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this dark episode. So yeah hell had no fur compared to some these women. In the story of saint Olga of Kiev I don't think she's evil at all I believe she did what most women would do for their loved ones I just think it was a cool story but its hard to believe that after burning her enemies alive, burieing diplomats, and destroying entire towns she would be canonized as a saint, In the 10th century, when Olga ruled the Kievan Rus people, they were pagan. But the nearby Byzantines were on a mission to convert their neighbors to Christianity.

After completing her vengeance against the Drevlians, Emperor Constantine VII invited Olga to visit Constantinople. On that journey, Olga converted to Christianity. When she returned to Kyiv, she encouraged her subjects to convert and The Byzantines declared Olga “equal to the Apostles” for her conversion. When Emperor Constantine VII met Olga of Kiev, he asked for her hand in marriage. Olga turned him down. And this time, she did it without bloodshed.

Then, in 1547, the Russian Orthodox Church officially canonized her as Saint Olga of Kiev, the patron saint of widows and converts.

     As for madam lalaurie, we all know history and or reports at the time of any gruesome insident of can always be embellished there is no doubt Delphine LaLaurie abused her slaves, subjecting them to shocking cruelty. I don't think she reset somebody's bones to make them a crab but she has become a grisly legend who continues to horrify everyone who hears her ghastly story.

         As for Irema Grese she sounds like your run of the mill nazi really.

       Anyway, if you could please drop a review on the show it really does help the podcast out the more reviews the more the algarithm pushes the show out there. If you think friends and family may be interested in the podcast then share it with them. Links to all socials are below. I know Adverts can sometimes be a pain but if you would like ad free episodes the link to the show's patron is also below. Not only do you get ad free content, The patreon is for people who want to support the channel, but you don't have to. As always If you’ve been listening for a while and not subscribed please do it that way you never miss an episode. So with all that out the way Thank you to Dee for he cameio you may hear more of her in the future. Also don't forget to check out the rainy day rabbit holes podcast so the ladies over there some love Thank you again for listening, Join us next time, for our next episode, as we delve into another event and more dark history.

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