The Women Are Not Fine

Author(s): Hope Reese

Location(s): Nagyrév

Genre(s): Biography, Crime

Era(s): Early 20th Century

The dark history of a poisonous sisterhood

The women of Nagyrév are desperate.
They’re abused by their husbands.
They are feeding their newborns to livestock.

At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker – she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth; she assisted them with abortions; and she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable.

In response, Auntie Zsuzsi asked one question: “Why bother with them?”

Her solution was arsenic. Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands’ porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicenter of one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century – according to some estimates, up to 300 people in the region were murdered.

Why did they do it? How did these murders spin out of control? How did these women get away with their crimes for two decades?

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