"ANGEL Makers of Nagyrev"

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"ANGEL Makers of Nagyrev"
Little is known of Julia Fazekas before 1911, when she suddenly appeared in the Hungarian village of Nagyrev, 60 miles southeast of Budapest on the River Tisza. She was pushing middle age, a widow by her own account, but no one seemed to know exactly what had happened to her husband. Between 1911 and 1921, midwife Fazekas was jailed 10 times for performing illegal abortions, but sympathetic judges acquitted her in each case. Meanwhile, apparently unnoticed by police, she had inaugurated one of Europe's most bizarre and deadly murder sprees.
The rash of homicides is traceable to World War I, when able-bodied men from Nagyrev were drafted to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the same time, rural Nagyrev was deemed an ideal site for camps containing Allied prisoners of war—a circumstance that catered to the wildest fantasies of women suddenly deprived of men. The prisoners most likely enjoyed a limited freedom within the village, and it soon became a point of pride for lonely wives in Nagyrev to boast a foreign lover, sometimes three or four. An atmosphere of rampant promiscuity prevailed, and husbands straggling home from combat found their women strangely "liberated," frequently dissatisfied with one man in the marriage bed.
As wives began to voice complaints of boredom and abuse, midwife Fazekas offered them relief: supplies of arsenic obtained by boiling flypaper and skimming off the lethal residue. Peter Hegedus was the first known victim, in 1914, and other husbands followed over time before the poisoning became a fad, the casualty list expanding to include parents, children, aunts, uncles, and neighbors.
By the mid-1920s, Nagyrev had earned its nickname as "the murder district." During that period an estimated 50 women used arsenic to trim their family trees. Julia Fazekas was the closest thing the village had to a physician, and her cousin was the clerk who filed all death certificates, thereby subverting homicide investigations in the embryonic stage. The final toll of victims is still unknown, but most reports suggest 300 as a reasonable estimate for 15 years of wholesale murder.
The "angel makers" saw their world unravel in July of 1929, when a choir master from neighboring Tiszakurt accused Mrs. Ladislaus Szabo of serving him poisoned wine. A stomach pump saved his life, and detectives were still pondering the charge when a second victim complained of being poisoned by his "nurse"—the same Mrs. Szabo. In custody, seeking leniency for herself, Szabo fingered a friend, Mrs. Bukenoveski, as a fellow practitioner. Bukenoveski, in turn, was the first to name Julia Fazekas. In 1924, she said, Fazekas had provided the arsenic used to kill Bukenoveski's 77-year-old mother, after which the old woman was dumped in the Tisza to simulate an accidental drowning.
Fazekas was hauled in for questioning and staunchly denied everything. Without solid evidence, police were forced to release her, but they mounted a roving surveillance, trailing Fazekas around Nagyrev as she cautioned her various clients, arresting each woman in turn. Thirtyeight were jailed on suspicion of murder, and police descended on the Fazekas home to seize the ringleader. They found her dead from a dose of her own medicine, surrounded by pots of flypaper soaking in water.
Twenty-six of the Nagyrev suspects were held for trial at Szolnok, where eight were sentenced to death, seven to life imprisonment, and the rest to lesser prison terms. The condemned included Susannah Olah, a self-styled witch who boasted of training venomous snakes to attack her victims in bed, competing with Fazekas in sales of "Aunt Susi's inheritance powders"; Olah's sister Lydia, a septuagenarian whose flat denials of guilt failed to impress the jury; Maria Kardos, who murdered her husband, a lover, and her sickly 23-year-old son, persuading the young man to sing her a song on his deathbed; Rosalie Sebestyen and Rose Hoyba, condemned for the murder of "boring" husbands; Lydia Csery, convicted of killing her parents; Maria Varga, who confessed to buying poison from Fazekas to kill her husband—a blind war hero—when he complained about her bringing lovers home; Juliane Lipke, whose seven victims included her stepmother, an aunt, a brother, a sister-inlaw, and the husband she poisoned on Christmas Eve; and Maria Szendi, a true liberationist who told the court she killed her husband because "he always had his way. It's terrible the way men have all the power."

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be ˌpushing '40, '50, etc.    (informal) to be nearly 40, 50, etc. years old
   接近 40 岁(或 50 岁等)

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inaugurate
in∙au∙gu∙rate / ɪnˈɔgjəˌret ; ɪˈnɔːgjʊreɪt /
◙verb [T]
1. to hold an official ceremony when someone starts doing an important job in government
• 为〔重要官员〕举行就职典礼:
»inaugurate sb as sth
»On 8 January 1959 De Gaulle was inaugurated as First President of the Republic.
  1959年 1 月 8 日举行了戴高乐作为法兰西共和国第一位总统的就职典礼。
2. to open a building or start an organisation, event etc for the first time
• 举行〔新建筑物〕落成典礼; 举行〔组织〕创建仪式; 为〔公共活动〕举行开幕式:
»The Turner Prize was inaugurated in 1984.
  特纳奖于 1984 年正式设立。
3. [formal] if an event inaugurates an important change or period of time, it comes at the beginning of it
• 开始〔一个重要变化〕; 开创…时代:
»The International Trade Agreement inaugurated a period of high economic growth.
  《国际贸易协定》开创了一个经济高速发展的时代。
♦inauguration / ɪnˌɔgjəˈreʃən ; ɪˌnɔːgjʊˈreɪʃən / noun [C,U]
»President Hoover's inauguration
  胡佛总统的就职典礼

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fad
fad / fæd ; fæd /
◙noun [C]
1. something that people like or do for a short time, or that is fashionable for a short time
• 一时的狂热; 时尚，风尚:
»Interest in organic food is not a fad, it's here to stay.
  对有机食品的兴趣不是一时的狂热，它是长久的。
♦faddish adj.
♦faddishness noun [U]

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unravel
un∙rav∙el / ʌnˈrævl ; ʌnˈrævəl /
◙verb unravelled, unravelling [BrE] , unraveled, unraveling [AmE]
1. T] to understand or explain something that is mysterious or complicated
• 理解; 解释，阐明:
»Detectives are still trying to unravel the mystery surrounding his death.
  侦探们仍在试图解开他的死亡之谜。
2. [I,T] if you unravel threads, string etc, or if they unravel, they stop being twisted together
• （使）解开，（使）松开
3. [I] if a system, plan, organization etc unravels, it starts to fail
• 〔系统、计划、组织等〕瓦解，崩溃:
»The company started to unravel when two of the directors were arrested.
两位董事被捕以后，公司开始分崩离析。

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roving
rov·ing / ˈrəuviŋ; NAmE ˈrou- /
adjective[usually before noun]
   travelling from six place to another and not staying anywhere permanently
   流动的；漂泊的；漫游的；巡回的:
   a roving reporter for ABC news
   美国广播公司的流动新闻记者
   Patrick's roving lifestyle takes him between London and Los Angeles.
   帕特里克漂泊不定的生活方式使他在伦敦和洛杉矶之间奔波。
IDIOMS
▪ have a roving 'eye    (old-fashioned) to always be looking for the chance to have a new sexual relationship
   总是找机会寻花问柳；眼神不安分