A DIABOLICAL TRADE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2991, 26 October 1882, Page 3

A DIABOLICAL TRADE.

At Gross Beaskerek, South Hungary, the trial has commenced of Thekla. Popoy, a peasant woman, and over a hundred accomplices, who are charged with poisoning their . husbands. The goilt of the prisoners has been already proved in thirty-five: cases, and thirty more cases are said to he very strongly suspected. Thekla Popoy is a very remarkable character —destined to occupy at once a position unique and picturesque in the annals of crime. She is a gipsy,' and is now seventy years of age. She lived in a little village named Melenezo, and it may almost be said that, murder was her trade. People say she had her agents and emissaries, whose business it was to keep np her “ connection,” and it must have been a horrid and gruesome spectacle to see the grizzly hog seated in her armchair every day receiving her customers during business hours, and giving them the diabolical advice and aid they sought. They were all married women from the neighboring country side, eager, for some reason or another, to gof rid of husbands who obstinately refused to die .in the ordinary course of nature, but who by Tbekla’s friendly offices might be made amenable to the resources of art; These wretches paid the old gipsy a fee of from fifty to a hundred florins for each bottle of poison they bought, and were duly instructed by her in the safest methods of its , “ exhibiilion," Thekla Popoy’s clients were, however, not always married women. Sometimes she had dealings with young girls who quarrelled with their sweethearts, and who from jealousy or rage, had determined to kill them. This woman's terrible trade prospered amazingly for two years, and if it had not been for the confession made by her daughter, might have gone on for some considerable time. She excited no suspic'on, because the drugs she administered acted slowly though surely, and in their effect, simulated the sym toms of disease. Even now that the bodies of gome of her victims have been exhumed they show no signs of poisoning, though the stomachs are eaten away.