Aqua Tofana: The 17th Century Husband Killer

I wouldn’t present it as a fact. Note that even the article is uncertain how much of that was urban legend or moral panic - perhaps fueled by comments like the parent comment.

> “This elaboration of claims resulted in belief in a poison that was very widely feared, but never actually existed,” Dash wrote. He further suggests that many deaths attributed to Aqua Tofana were likely due to natural causes and that its notorious reputation was largely the result of a moral panic.

I read it as motive rather than an excuse.

Some of these'll be genuine murders, sure.

Some will be self-defense by battered spouses in an situation where divorce was not really a option.

Murder is not a case of legitimate self-defense.

What’s lawful varies, in both time and jurisdiction. I’m glad our current setup lets people unilaterally end a marriage, thus presenting much better options for self-defense than battered spouses in medieval Italy.

All the same, it doesn't and didn't justify murder.

Sure it does. Even in the modern justice system it’s at least a mitigating circumstance, and that’s with people having the right to leave.

It doesn't justify it morally. (And it was illegal then and is now.)

Is being stuck as the property of an abusive spouse with no legal recourse moral?

What’s the moral choice for someone with zero 100% moral options?

Legal and moral aren’t the same. The Holocaust was legal under German law at the time; French partisans offing Nazis was illegal.