The Women Are Not Fine

The women in Nagyrev are desperate. They are suffering.

The Women Are Not Fine brings together newspapers, court documents and police records to explore "one of the biggest mass poisoning events in modern history" when midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas arrived at the village of Nagyrev in Hungary in 1911. When Fazekas began listening to the problems women were having at home, she offered a solution - arsenic - and a group of women, who became known as the "Angelmakers", began poisoning their husbands. Nearly 20 years later, it had turned into an epidemic, spiraling into the greatest poisoning case of the 20th century. In 1929, after an anonymous letter was sent to a newspaper in a nearby town, Szolnok, a police investigation unearthed 50 graves; 40 showed signs of arsenic poisoning. But estimates say that up to 300 people in Tiszazug -- a rural region south of Budapest, along the Tisza River -- may have been killed. Nagyrev was dubbed "the murder district" of Hungary. More than 100 women were held in Szolnok prison, charged with murder.