Catherine Csassna, Slovakian Suspected Black Widow Serial Killer - 1880

FULL TEXT: At a town called Verbo, in Hungary [currently in Slovakia], not long since, a woman named Catherine Csassna buried her seventh husband. Her life appears to have been a strange succession of matrimonial adventures, none of which were very startling, but all of which make up a curious total. At the age of seventeen the buxom Catherine espoused a maker, who died after fifteen months of connubial felicity. The following year she married an aged widower, who said goodbye to her at the end of thirteen months. She remained a widow this time but one month, marrying for her third another widower, who lasted but four years. Doubtless determined to make a good choice sooner or later, sho married a stout young fellow of twenty-eight; but in just four years he also died of consumption. Catherine remained a widow eight weeks, at the end of which time she married tho village butcher, a fine fellow; but alas he was doomed to fade away, and in six years a cross in the little cemetery announced that he had gone over to the majority. For her sixth husband Catherine Csassna selected a man so robust and massive in physique that all the villagers in Verbo that he would survive Catherine, and great was the surprise and scandal when, four months after the celebration of the nuptials, this son of Anak was placed in the cheerless tomb. Many persons accused Catherine of being a female Bluebeard, of poisoning her unfortunate husbands, etc., but she snapped her fingers at them, and asked them to produce their proofs. As they could not well do this, the doughty Catherine married again, and, to the surprise and horror of every one, husband number seven cruelly deceived her by turning up his toes only a few days after the marriage. Catherine is now seeking an eighth husband, but all the men in Verbo tremble.