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Why did so many women in a tiny Hungarian village poison their husbands?
By investigating what happened in Nagyrév in 1929, we come closer to understanding what ails our society today
Hope Reese
16 Aug 2025
It was Friday 13 December – Luca Day in Hungary. The village of Nagyrév, steeped in customs and superstitions, viewed Luca Day as an opportunity to ward off evil forces and manifest plentiful crops. On this day, villagers would perform harvesting rituals, craft, tell fortunes – predicting who would marry and how the weather would turn out.
They spread home-made bread, cabbage and sweet poppy-seed rolls across long, wooden tables. All to honour Saint Lucy, a centuries-old Christian martyr who brought light into darkness.
Luca Day was known as the ‘day of witches’. Women were the focus of this folk holiday: seen as both the evil force to guard against, and the ripe source of a healthy harvest. On the Great Hungarian Plain where Nagyrév is situated, witches were deemed responsible for the success or failure of crops, of cows’ milk yield, of the survival or death of livestock.
But on this winter’s day in 1929, the focus in Nagyrév and beyond was not the farm: it was Szolnok’s regional courthouse, roughly 40km from the village. There, four women from Nagyrév were standing trial, all accused of murder by poison. The penalty: death.
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https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/nagyrev-hungary-village-women-poison-husbands/#Echobox=1755320672
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Not a sensational portrayal, but a sensitive one...
Similar tragedies are compounding worldwide, especially with a lack of choices for many women in desperate situations and lives.
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