Zsuzsanna Fazekas & The Angel Makers of Nagyrév

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2024

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hungary during the first world war was a difficult place to live, especially if you happened to live in one of the many rural villages, far away from the grand city of Budapest, where the harsh conditions imposed on a country losing a war bit the hardest. Even if you managed to survive all the fighting, the riots, the violent occupations, or the Spanish Flu, there was always the possibility that your wife, daughter-in-law, or neighbour might decide that they had had enough of you and pay a visit to “Aunty Suzy,” the friendly local midwife. Outside of her duties as a medical practitioner, veterinary surgeon and fortune teller, Zsusanna Fazekas just so happened to run a booming business turning flypaper into poison, taking the term “pest control” to a whole new level. SOURCES McCracken, Patti (2023) The Angel Makers: The True Crime Story of the Most Astonishing Murder Ring in History. Mudlark, London, UK. Kemény, István (2005) History of Roma in Hungary. Issue 123 of Atlantic studies on society in change. Social Science Monographs, Michigan, USA. Valentiny, Pál (2020) Spanish Flu, Budapest, 1918. Hull Daily Mail (1929) Wholesale Exhumations. Hull Daily Mail, Fri 09 Aug 1929, p.7. Hull, UK. Evening Chronicle (1929) Arsenic Epidemic. Evening Chronicle, Fri 09 Aug 1929, p.14. USA. Omaha Sunday Bee (1929) One Hundred Self-Made Widows In One Jail - Husband Poisoners. Omaha Sunday Bee, Sun 24 Nov 1929, p43. Omaha, USA. The Morning Call (1931) Woman Convicted As A Mass Poisoner Is Hanged In Hungary. Wed 14 Jan 1931, p2. Patteson, USA. ------- For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hungary during the First World War was a difficult place to live, especially if you happen to live in one of the many rural villages,
0:08.0	far away from the grand city of Budapest, where the harsh conditions imposed on a country losing a war bit the hardest.
0:16.3	Even if you manage to survive all the fighting, the riots, the violent occupations, or the Spanish
0:21.5	flu, there was always the possibility that your wife, daughter-in-law, or
0:26.1	neighbor might decide that they'd had enough of you and pay a visit to Auntie Susie, the
0:31.8	friendly local midwife.
0:34.0	Outside of her duties as a medical practitioner,
0:37.0	veteranie surgeon and fortune teller,
0:39.0	Susanna Fesikus, just so happened to run a booming business, turning flypaper into poison,
0:45.0	taking the term pest control to a whole new level.
0:49.0	This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
0:56.2	Hello and welcome to Dark History season 8 episode 3.
0:59.8	I'm Ben as always and it's good to be back on the microphone.
1:03.2	This episode is a little late.
1:05.0	Well this year has been an interesting start, so I over Christmas I came down with COVID as I mentioned and
1:09.7	that took about half of January to really clear and as soon as that was over I managed to throw my back out
1:16.4	which has been equal parts frustrating comedy gold and painful really so it did set this episode back a little but what I've done is I've
1:28.3	jiggled around my workflow so that although this episode was going to be late because essentially what was
1:35.0	stopping me was sitting up straight in my chair for an hour recording but I've
1:39.9	managed to carry on working with the next episode so next episode is still
1:43.1	due next week so basically this episode I always I knew I had to I sort of
1:47.4	resign myself to this one being a little late but at least I could continue
	...

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