Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1894-10-17
THE WICKEDEST WOMAN.
She Was a Countess and Murdered $50
Girls.

She Was a Countess and Murdered 25O
t. Girls.
Talking of tortures, however, we hear
a great deal at present about the wick
edness of modern days and many sighs
for the good old times. Yet Paris has
just been edited by work treating of
the life and proceedings of lady of
the sixteenth century, who carried her
care for her beauty to the utmost limits.
This is not fairy tale, but sober, his.
torial fact, backed by many official
documents of undoubted authenticity,
and the lady's amiable weakness is de-
scribed with wealth of detail and
forcible simplicity of description that
is apt to turn the reader sick.
The lady in question was named
Elizabeth Bathory, Comtesse Nadasy,
having married at the age of 15 in 1895
Comte Francois Nadasy, who was not
of too mild nature himself, as, when
his wife complained one day that her
maid had been impertinent, he ordered
the erring handmaiden stripped,
smeared with honey and laid on a
wasps' nest, from the effects of which
gentle admonition she subsequently
died. The Countess Elizabeth was left
widow in 1904 and began simply at
first to try to keep up the rigorous dis
cipline enforced by her late husband.
Unhappily, one day she struck her
waitingmaid, and SO wounded her. that
her mistress hands were covered with
blood. When they were washed the
Countess remarked her hands were
whittier and the skin more supple and
firm, and thenceforward her naturally
cruel nature was spurred by the frenzi-
ed desire to retain her waning beauty
at any price. Odd though it may seem
in the present day, she used as cos.
metic from that time on bath of hu-
man blood, and the tradition goes that
anything 30 superb in its brilliant fair
ness as her complexion can not be
imagined. She murdered all her wait
ingmaids, one by one, aided by three
accomplices, her old nurse being one of
them, and when she could get no wo-
man to enter her service she coolly
sent her emissaries to kidnap the peas.
ant girls of the neighborhood.
At last. however, the ghastly scandal
rose to such pitch that even Hungary
in the Middle Ages could not afford to
close its ears to the wall of bereaved
families; and the culprit's first cousin,
Governor of the Province, entered the
castle on Christmas eve, 1910, to inquire
into the truth of these horrible stories,
and discovered his fair and honored
relative, her fair chin propped by her
exquisite hand, calmly watching the
death agonies of three girls, while her
attendants were filling bath with the
life blood that was to preserve her
beauty. The Countess herself was too
great parsonage to incur capital pun
ishment, but for thirty years she was
shut up in solitary confinement in the
castle of Cseibhe, in Hungary, where
she finally starved herself to death. AS
for her accomplices, they had their
hands cut off, and were subsequently
burned at the stake, as, being common
people, there was no reason for sparing
their lives. 1t is said that this fair
dame sacrificed 600 girls to her radiance
of skin, but the biographer states sob
erly that documentary evidence exists
of the murder of only $50. which was a
very respectable number to get rid of
in six years. time; therefore we will
give her the benefit of the doubt.
Whether in after years she considered
thirty years of solitary confinement too
high price to pay for six years of un-
impaired beauty, it is hard to say, but
the inference is that she did, since she
killed herself at last. Although her
idea was not patented, in spite of the
alleged success of this queer cosmetic,
there is no proof that it ever has been
tried since. An account of the lady's
proceedings has just been read before
the French Academy of Medicine, and
she has been pronounced to have been
undoubtedly insane; but IL 30, it must
be confessed that her madness was
curiously methodical.