The Tiszazug Poison-mixers: A dark chapter in Hungarian criminal history

The story of the Angel Makers of Nagyrév, or in other wird, the Tiszazug Poison-mixers remains one of the darkest and most shocking episodes in Hungarian criminal history. In the 1910s and 1920s, hundreds of women in the isolated villages of Tiszazug turned to arsenic to escape hopeless circumstances—abusive husbands, sick relatives, and unwanted children were among the victims.

The grim story of the Tiszazug Poison-mixers

In the early 20th century, Tiszazug—a remote region in the Great Hungarian Plain—became the scene of a chilling crime wave, remembered as one of Hungary’s most disturbing criminal cases. As Refresher reports, for nearly two decades, a group of women across the villages of Nagyrév and its surroundings used arsenic to cope with unbearable conditions: violent husbands, ailing or elderly family members—and in some cases—their own children.

A key figure in this tragic saga was local midwife Zsuzsanna Oláh, known as Mrs. Gyula Fazekas, who made and sold the poison that came to be infamously known as “fly water.” The wave of killings was driven by extreme poverty, domestic abuse, and a sense of total powerlessness in a patriarchal and isolated society. For many women, poison seemed the only way out.

In these Tiszazug villages, women’s lives were often predetermined—forced marriages, brutal husbands, and no legal path to divorce were the norm. The world wars only worsened conditions, with local men sent to POW camps and foreign soldiers taking their place, sparking clandestine affairs for many women.

The lack of contraception, unwanted pregnancies, widespread poverty, and the suffocatingly closed nature of rural life created a tense and oppressive atmosphere. In this bleak reality, the midwife played a central role in not only delivering babies but also performing secret abortions—and, as it turned out, aiding in murders. “Fly water” was a readily available poison, easily slipped into Sunday lunch or afternoon coffee.