Lillian Thorman, Teenage Serial Killer of Children - 1906

FULL TEXT: York, Pa., Feb. 22 – Lillian B. Thorman, a thirteen-year-old girl, today fatally burned the three-year-old child of Robert Dorsey of this city.

The girl, who was employed to do light work around the house literally fried the child was writhing and screaming in its agony an aunt entered the room and rescued it, but the child had been roasted from head to foot and cannot live.

The servant girl in jail tonight confessed that she had fatally burned three other children in a similar manner, giving their parents the impression that they had fallen on the stove accidentally while climbing to reach something.

[“Fire Used To Kill. - Girls Says She Killed Three Children by Placing Them on the Stove.” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Oh.), Feb. 23, 1906, p. 1]

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For similar cases see: Baby-Sitter Serial Killers

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Margaret Waldegrave, International Female Serial Killer (USA & Cuba ) - 1852

BOOK TITLE: A Deeply Interesting Work. Just Published. Life, Career And Awful Death By The Garrotte, of Margaret C. Waldegrave: Otherwise Margaret C. Florence – Alias Mrs. Bellville, Mrs, Bolande, Mrs. Le Hocq, The poisoner and murderess, at Havanna, Cuba, June 9th 1852. For the Murder of Charles D. Ellias, Lorenzo Cordoval, and Pierre Dupont, April 14th, 1852, who were three Desperate Members of a Powerful and Sanguinary Band of Robbers, Counterfeiters, and Assassins, known as “The Alumni.”

DESCRIPTION: Margaret C. Waldegrave, the most remarkable woman of this age and generation – as all who read her life will testify – Lima, in the valley of the Genesee, of highly respectable parents, – her father being esteemed one of the wealthiest men in Western New York. Her mother dying at her birth, she was brought up with care, and at the age of twelve years was sent to a seminary to finish her education. At the age of fourteen she returned home, where she me with a cool reception from her step-mother – her father having married again during her absence. Soon a domestic revolution drove her from home, and she made her way to Buffalo, where she found employment in a fashionable millinery establishment. Her marvelous beauty attracted many young men who let slip no opportunity that offered to flatter her vanity by praising her beauty. The result was, Margaret was beguiled of herself by the luring smiles and siren songs of those who professed to be her friends and admirers. Her first step in the center of crime was the murder of a little child; and then to bide that she murdered the witness of the deed, by administering strychnine in liquor to him. She then flew to Canada, where she joined fortunes with a notorious gambler and swindler, who took her to Philadelphia, where she left him and flew to New Orleans with that notorious villain, LeHocq, perpetrating many dark and memorable deeds. From New Orleans she flew to Havana, where she finally murdered the members of “The Alumni.” Space will not admit of our saying much more. But full particulars are given in the book written by herself, and edited by Rev. A. Delos Velos of Havana, which shows at once the interest manifested in her fate.

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Rev. A. Delos Velos, Life, Career And Awful Death By The Garrotte, of Margaret C. Waldegrave .. New Orleans: Published by Arthur R. Orton, 1853 (illustrated).

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Ekaterini Dimetrea, Greek Female Serial Killer - 1962

FULL TEXT: Nauplion, Greece – A Greek woman has been sentenced to death four times for murdering her aged mother, her brother and two other close relatives.

The prosecutor in this Peloponnesian town alleged that the woman, Ekaterini Dimetrea, intended to poison the entire village.”

“She hated everybody,” one witness said.

The announcement of the four death sentences – one for each victim – was greeted in the criminal court here with shouts of “bravo.”

No one testified in defense of the 40-year-old “monster,” as the prosecution called her.

From May to September last year [1962], she poisoned her 80-year-old widowed mother, brother, aunt and five-year-old nephew.

In addition to the quadruple death sentence, she was given the 15-year sentence for attempting to poison a four-year-old girl.

The court listened in stunned silence as the murderess told how she poisoned her victims with an insecticide which she had put in their food and coffee.

Ekaterini said she had tried to poison her brother once before, but did not us enough to kill him. So she trued again and succeeded, just 10 days after he returned home from the hospital.

She told the court that her mother died after she had eaten food she had prepared for her brother. Her aunt drank the coffee she had also prepared for her brother.

The murderess, dressed in black and her head shrouded in her shawl, looked indifferent as the verdict was announced.

[“Greek Poisoner of Four Gets 4 Death Sentences,” syndicated (Reuters), The Washington Post (D.C.), Jul. 4, 1963, p. A14]

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Florence Nightingale & Her Disappointment With “Women’s Ways of Feeling”

This item copies a post that appeared in reddit on the subreddit Red Pill, posted in June 9, 2013 by HumanSockPuppet.

Florence Nightingale [1820-1910] was a celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. [Wikipedia]

Nightingale in these remarks contrasts Victorian stereotypes about women’s superior capacity for sympathy to her extensive experience with those persons whom she came across and worked with  during her remarkable and famous career serving the needy.

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From reddit: I’ve been doing some reading on Florence Nightingale and I came across some fascinating commentary she made [in a letter] to a fiction writer [Madame Mohl] with regards to her misgivings about female nature.

Here are some choice quotes by Florence herself on the nature of women:

I have read half your book thro’, and am immensely charmed by it. But some things I disagree with and more I do not understand. This does not apply to the characters, but your conclusions, e.g. you say “women are more sympathetic than men”.

Now if I were to write a book out of my experience, I should begin Women have no sympathy. Yours is the tradition. Mine is the conviction of experience.

Now look at my experience of men. A statesman, past middle age, absorbed in politics for a quarter of a century, out of sympathy with me, remodels his whole life and policy - learns a science the driest, the most technical, the most difficult, that of administration, as far as it concerns the lives of men - not, as I learnt it, in the field from stirring experience, but by writing dry regulations in a London room by my sofa with me. This is what I call real sympathy.

Another (Alexander, whom I made Director-General) does very nearly the same thing. He is dead too. Clough, a poet born if ever there was one, takes to nursing administration in the same way, for me.

I only mention three whose whole lives were remodeled by sympathy for me. But I could mention very many others...

I have never found one woman who altered her life by one iota for me or my opinions.

Now just look at the degree in which women have sympathy - as far as my experience is concerned. And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. I have lived and slept in the same bed with English Countesses and Prussian Bauerinnen. No [other woman] has ever had charge of women of the different creeds that I have had. No woman has excited “passions” among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me. My doctrines have taken no hold among women...and I attribute this to a want of sympathy.

It makes me mad, the Women’s Rights talk about “the want of a field” for them - when I know that I would gladly give £500 a year for a Woman Secretary. And two English Lady Superintendents have told me the same. And we can’t get one ... they don’t know the names of the Cabinet Ministers. They don’t know the offices at the Horse Guards...Now I’m sure I did not know these things. When I went to the Crimea I did not know a Colonel from a Corporal. But there are such things as Army Lists and Almanacs. Yet I never could find a woman who, out of sympathy, would consult one for my work.

I do believe I am “like a man,” as Parthe says. But how? In having sympathy.

Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so...They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?

I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience.”

Full Google doc text available here. The quoted section begins at the bottom of page 13. [Sir Edward Tyas Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale: in Two Volumes, Vol. II, 1862-1910, MacMillan, 1914]

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Original post: Florence Nightingale: “Women Have No Sympathy” (self.TheRedPill)

The Red Pill subreddit, submitted June 9, 2013, by HumanSockPuppet

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This post resulted from a suggestion by A Voice for Men editor TyphonBlue.

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Husband-Killing Syndicates in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1882-1889

In the period dealt with here, “Hungary” was commonly used to refer to any region within the Austro-Hungarian Empire outside Austria proper. The husband-killing syndicates collected by The Unknown History of MISANDRY  contain cases which occurred in present-day Hungary, Romania and Romania which were reported as having taken place in “Hungary.” Some of the reports of this type of crime would refer to earlier cases noting that such organized poisoning rackets were common in the region. The following article is of particular interest in that in addition to the news report of a new case in 1899, it makes note of three earlier cases: from 1882, 1897 and 1890. Out of these four only one took place in present-day Hungary; two were in Serbia; one took place in Romania.

Below the article you will find the synopses of the four cases mentioned (taken from the comprehensive collection of “Husband-Killing Syndicates.” Such cases continued to be reported in the region up to the mid 1930s (1900, 1901, 1903, 1905, 1906, 1911, 1912, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933, 1935).

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FULL TEXT: London, July 4. – An extraordinary criminal trial has taken place in Hungary, 18 married women being charged with poisoning their husbands and children with arsenic.

Nine of them were acquitted, and the other nine were found guilty, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

[The wholesale poisoning of husbands by their wives is a crime that of late years has been peculiar to Hungary. In August, 1882, some 25 women were convicted of poisoning their husbands at Gross Bedakerch, a woman named Theckla Popov being said to be the head of the conspiracy. In July, 1890, 10 women were tried at Mitrowitz for poisoning their husbands with arsenic. Two were acquitted and four were sentenced to death, and four to penal servitude. In July, 1897, four women were sentenced to death for poisoning husbands, and other relatives, at Buda Pesth.

[“Hungary Poisoning. – Terrible Crimes In Hungary. – Nine Women Convicted.” The Argus (Melbourne, Australia), Jul. 6, 1899, p. 5]

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1882: HUNGARY (SERBIA) - Melencze, Gross Bedshereh

Leaders: Thekla Popov, active more than two years (1880-1882), Anna Minity, Sophia Ivanovitch;
over 100 women implicated; court cases continued into at least 1889
Method: bottles of "red liquid poison" priced at 50-100 florins
Victims: over 100

1890 – HUNGARY (SERBIA) – Mitrovitz (Sremska Mitrovica)

Leader: Esther Sarac (“witch or herbalist”); 10 women arrested

Method: arsenic extracted from flypaper

Victims: 60 estimated, over a period of 10 years 

1897: HUNGARY – Hodmozoe (Hod-Moyo-Vasarheky; Hódmezővásárhely)

Leader: Mari Azalai Jager
Accomplices: "a band of poisoners" 3 men & 2 women (including Gulyas Kis-Samuel, male)

Method: Three poisons, belladonna, arsenic and chloride of mercury

Jul. 24, 1897, Budapest: Trial of 12 women & 2 men; 4 sentenced to death; 1 to life in prison (man who killed his mother); 1 to 6 years in prison

Victims: estimated at over 100

1899: HUNGARY (ROMANIA) – Zesbeley (“Szebely”) (Ssebely, Szephely, Jebel) (Banat Region)

Leaders: George Korin, apothecary, ringleader, and Dr. Johann Mayer, village physician
Perpetrators: Maria Nikodem (murdered 2 husbands); Lisa Triku (murdered 4 husbands)
Method: arsenic
Victims: 14

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A note on names: It should be note that names of persons and places from there regions are spelled in numerous different ways since a great many ethnicities resided these and used a great variety of languages. For example, Serbian was spoken in Serbia, but German was the official language of the ruling empire while the following other languages being spoken there include Albanian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Rusyn, Croatian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romani, Czech, Bosnian, Vlach, Bunjevac, Macedonian, Montenegrin.

Further, English language transliterations of these names use many different spellings for the same name and vary in their choice of which original language form as the basis for their transliteration. In short, working with English language sources is extremely messy and confusing work.

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La Gizzi, Italian Female Serial Killer Bandit - 1867

FULL TEXT: The “Italia” of Naples announces the death of the famous “brigandess” La Gizzi, who was for some time the terror of the Volturara district. La Gizzi was a tall, muscular woman with beetling brows, covered with a thick mass of black shaggy hair that fell over her shoulders and breast, and was so bloodthirsty that she voluntarily performed the office of executioner on every captive doomed to death by her hand. It is related that on one occasion, after stabbing three of her captives, she collected the blood that flowed from their wounds in a jar and then poured it over the head of her lover, telling him that that should be his baptism of blood. Being sharply pursued by the troops, her consort and herself took refuge in the cottage of a peasant at Petrosa, and compelled him with frightful threats to give them food. The peasant laid some provisions before them; but while they were busied with their meal, he seized an axe, and attacked them with such fury that he struck both La Gizzi and her companion to the ground before they could defend themselves. He then ran to the neighboring village of Ricigliano, collected the national guard of the district, and returned with them to his cottage. Here they found the two dead bodies, and after decapitating them carried the heads of La Gizzi and her lover, together with their conqueror, in triumph through the district.

[From “Foreign Miscellenea.” The Oamaru Times and Waitaki Reporter (Oamaru, New Zealand), May 3, 1867, p. 4]

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“War-Marriage Vampires” & “Allotment Annies”

They were called “War-Marriage Vampires,” “Fake War Brides,” "Allotment Wives" and “Allotment Annies” – women who bigamously married multiple young men so they could fraudulently profit from the monthly government allotment checks they would receive for each husband and, if they were lucky, would receive a payment when they died in battle.

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►General Articles◄

World War I – “War Marriage Vampires” – USA (1918 article) (allotment racket)

World War I – “War-Marriage Vampires” – USA (1920 article) (allotment racket)

World War II – “Allotment Annies” – USA (allotment racket)

Korean War – “Allotment Annies” – USA (allotment racket)

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►Individual cases◄

 
World War I – Helen Drexler Ferguson – USA (allotment racket)

World War I – Florence Langley – England (allotment racket)

World War I – Ida Louise Milton – USA (allotment racket & Parental Kidnapping)

World War II – Mary Carol Harrington – USA (allotment racket)

 
World War II – Anne Aline Palmer – USA (allotment racket)

World War II – Mrs. Loyal Shafflebarger – USA (allotment racket)

World War II – Vilma Suberly – USA (allotment racket)

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►Other Military cases◄

Civil War – McCray – USA (parental kidnapping)

World War I – Clothida Cravana – Italy (serial killer)

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Review of "Allotment Wives," see: She Did it For Love:Allotment Wives (1945) by Guy Savage



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