Lore · Aaron Mahnke

Lore 302: Bedside Manner

March 23, 2026·34 min·2 clips

Lydia Sherman paid 10 cents for arsenic, mixed enough into her husband's oatmeal to kill an elephant, and the doctor ruled it consumption.

The rivals called Godfrey and Dalby were not two men in a duel. They were Victorian patent medicines, Godfrey's Cordial and Dalby's Carminative, named for their creators and sold for the same household problem. Babies cried, and adults needed quiet. Ads called the remedies mother's friends, with promises about wind, watery pipes, fluxes, and other stomach troubles. The pitch was bluntly useful. For working mothers and nannies, a quiet infant meant time, income, and one less demand in a packed day. The tinctures delivered. A few spoonfuls from those green glass bottles could settle even difficult babies into sudden silence because both were made mostly of opium. Then the story moves to Lydia, a woman with a dead second husband, children who had died in her care, and a strange gift for getting trusted again. Charm helped. After her second husband's friends gave her a baby to care for, she came into Horatio Sherman's life. Horatio needed help. A local woman had died in childbirth, one infant was sickly, three other children were still in the house, and his mother-in-law was making life miserable. Lydia looked useful. Married in September of 1870, she became Lydia Sherman, the name tied to her infamy. The first victim was the infant. Lydia believed the baby kept Horatio's mother-in-law in the house, so she chose the plainest possible answer. Arsenic went into Frankie's milk. He died that night. The old woman stayed anyway, still saying Horatio owed her money for a piano. Horror often gets room to work when ordinary people confuse convenience with care.

As heard by us

A grim history of remedies that soothed babies and could also poison them.

The episode treats medicine as something that can comfort and harm in the same breath. It moves from Victorian patent medicines sold as "mother's friends" to the grim domestic logic of Lydia Sherman, and the effect is a history of care with a blade tucked inside it.

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Why you'd press play

For when Victorian patent medicine and family life turn uncomfortably close.

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