The Marsh Test - the story behind the creation of this bookwork

Marie Lafarge was found guilty of poisoning her husband Henri, in Paris, in 1840. Her trial was the first publicly documented use of James Marsh’s highly sensitive test for the detection of arsenic in natural compounds. Her husband had died of a gastric ailment in January 1840 after eating a slice of cake which had been baked by his new wife.

Henri’s maid testified that she had noticed Marie adding a white powder to his drink, Marie claimed that this was gum arabic, but in court, evidence was produced that she had purchased arsenic at least twice from the local chemist.

Joseph Bonaventure Orfila, a celebrity chemist, author and lecturer appeared for the defence and argued that the Marsh Test was unproven so the prosecution had no reason to refer to it. The court then challenged Orfila to perform the test and he complied. Unfortunately for Marie, Orfila found arsenic in Henri's stomach, liver, thorax, heart and brain.

The Arsenic Act of 1851 made it impossible to purchase arsenic without the buyer being known to the supplying chemist.

The act, more importantly insisted that arsenical compounds should be coloured from that date with soot or half an ounce of blue indigo per pound of arsenic. This meant that arsenic powder could no longer be ‘confused’ with flour or sugar, as many poisoners had previously argued in their defence.

The artist’s book made as an edition of 25 during this residency is based on The Marsh Test. The book is presented as a folio, bound in blue buckram as a series of letters discovered by a pathologist, Dr Lamson, in 1925.

The letters appear to have been written by Marie Lafarge to her mother, and mentions the Marsh Test. The folio also includes two fictitious print outs of photographs of Henri and Marie, a list given to the maid Elise and two actual diagrams of the Marsh Test, one etching which shows the original format of the test and one print which shows the enlarged flour particles.

The true version of the events (as written above) is included at the end of the book, and has been inserted behind the image of the blue ink bottle attached to the inside back cover.

Sarah completed The Marsh Test during a four week residency at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York in Nov/Dec 2002. Sarah's bookworks are included in collections such as Tate Britain and the V & A Museum, London; Yale Centre for British Art and MOMA, USA; and Institute of the Arts, Canberra, Australia

Sarah Bodman, 2003