The village where half a hundred women killed their husbands - BBC
The New York Times newspaper at that time reported that nearly 50 women were accused of poisoning men in the community. The newspaper noted that between 1911 and 1929, over fifty men in Nadyrév, a farming settlement about 130 kilometers south of Budapest, were killed with arsenic, according to thepublic.info citing BBC Ukraine.
Some of the accused women were executed, others imprisoned. During the trial, one name was repeatedly mentioned - Zuzanna Fazekash, a village midwife. In total, according to some estimates, women in this region could have killed up to three hundred men.
Life in Nadyrév
Nadyrév is a small rural community near the Tisza River in Hungary's largest wine-growing region - Kunság. Marriages in this area were often arranged: very young women were married off to much older men. Such arrangements usually involved contracts regarding land, inheritance, and legal obligations. Divorce was impossible. The start of the poisonings dates back to a period when the village was still under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
There were no local doctors or priests in Nadyrév, and Fazekash, thanks to her knowledge in medicine and pharmacy, was not only a midwife but also effectively a doctor.
"Thanks to her knowledge, people trusted her and turned to her," says Maria Gunya, who spoke with BBC in 2004. Gunya was still a young girl when her father, a local official, was asked by the police to help investigate a series of unexplained deaths in the village.
The midwife lived in a typical single-story house with windows facing the street. Gunya explained that women in the village often turned to Fazekash with their problems.
"She heard many stories about what was happening in families: men beating women, raping them, many of them being unfaithful. There was a lot of violence," recalls Gunya. She added that when women complained about drunken or aggressive men, Fazekash told them: "If there's a problem with him, I have a simple solution."
This solution was arsenic, which the midwife prepared by infusing a sticky fly strip in water. Later, according to the British newspaper The Times, bottles of poison were found buried in her garden.
Arrest
Over the years, the village cemetery began to fill up: between 1911 and 1929, about 50 men were buried in Nadyrév's cemetery. Most of them had wives and children. Eventually, authorities suspected something was wrong and began exhumations. Of the 50 bodies examined, 46 contained arsenic, confirming suspicions of poisoning.
All evidence pointed to Fazekash. On July 19, 1929, the police came to her house to arrest her.
"When she saw the gendarmes approaching, she realized it was the end. By the time they reached the house, she was already dead — she had drunk her own poison," recalls Gunya.
The first deaths
The first murders occurred in 1911, the same year Fazekash settled in the village. This year marked the beginning of a series of poisonings that lasted nearly two decades. But the midwife, it seems, was not the only culprit. In the neighboring town of Solnok, in 1929, 26 women stood trial. Eight received death sentences, the rest went to prison, seven of them for life. Few admitted guilt, and their motives were never fully explained.
There are many theories about motives. Poverty, greed, and boredom are just some of them. Some reports claim that women engaged in affairs with Russian prisoners of war. They were recruited to work on farms while local men fought on the front during World War I. When the men returned, women were outraged by the sudden loss of freedom and decided to act one after another.
Beyond Nadyrév
Perhaps they were not the only ones. In the neighboring town of Tisakurt, some exhumed bodies also contained arsenic, but no one was convicted for the deaths of these people. The total number of victims in this area could have reached 300 people, according to some estimates. Years have erased most painful memories of Nadyrév. Its name no longer causes concern among men in the surrounding region.
However, Gunya ironically notes that after the poisonings, men began to treat their wives much better.
