FULL TEXT: Vienna, November 30 [1906] . – An extraordinary
affair has just occurred at the small town of Knez, in the Temesvar district of
Hungary. Under instruction from the Public Prosecutor, no fewer than
twenty-five graves in the local churchyard were opened, and the bodies of men
and women who had died during the course of last year were exhumed. A medical
commission was appointed, and they removed certain portions of each corpse and
forwarded them to the Buda Pesth Central Institute of Medicine to undergo
analytical examination.
The board of the institute now reports that the whole of
these persons had been poisoned by arsenic. In consequence of this declaration
two peasant women have been arrested. The prisoners, it is alleged did a
regular trade in arsenic to men who desired to rid themselves of their wives,
and to women who wished to be relieved of their husbands.
Moreover, five male peasants and two women have been
arrested on charges of murdering their spouses, and it is expected that other
arrests will follow, as the investigation is by no means at an end. It appears
that vague rumours of something wrong had reached the authorities,, owing to
the suspicious deaths which had happened for months past. It is a remarkable
fact that in the same neighbourhood, which is principally inhabited by
Roumanians, the frequency with which the deaths of married persons occurred
some years ago attracted the attention of the officials. A large number of persons
were then arrested, and convicted, for arsenic poisoning, among them being a
woman who had married four men one after another, and had poisoned them all.
[“Great Poison Mystery.” The Wanganni Herald (New Zealand),
Jan. 4, 1907, p. 4]
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