Madame Popova (1879-1909), she charged small fee for the administering
of poison to kill undesirable russian husbands. She justified her killings by stating the need of
being free from living in fear. And
states that she has never killed another woman.. During her trial a mob formed
outside the court-room seeking to burn her at the stake for being an evil
witch, but was prevented.
A prolific poisoner who undertook her work as much from sympathy as for
the minor fees she charged, Madame Popova was an advocate of women's liberation
long before the cause was recognized. A native of Samara, Russia, she was so
distressed by the travail of peasant wives held "captive" by their
brutish husbands that she volunteered an inexpensive, lethal remedy. For thirty
years before her ultimate arrest, on March 2,1909, she ran a small disposal
service for her female neighbors, picking up spare change and executing her
commissions with dispatch.
Madame Popova confessed to "liberating" some 300 wives in her
career. In custody, she boasted of the fact that she "did excellent work
in freeing unhappy wives from their tyrants." All the murdered men were husbands whom the
woman wanted to get rid themselves of.
This woman charged a nominal sum
(20 rubles) prior to the murder and the remainder after the victim was killed,
(20 rubles). She would make the acquaintance of the man she was to kill and
then put poison in his food or drink.
After one woman whose husband had been murdered became stricken by her
guilty conscience she sent for the police, made a full confession, and a squad
of policemen were at once sent to the home of the Popova woman. In some way the
charge against the prisoner became known, and before the police started from
her home for the prison they were surrounded by a mob of several hundred
persons. They were infuriated at the atrociousness of the woman’s deeds, the
mob demanded that the prisoner be turned over to them and that they might burn
her at the stake. With drawn revolvers the police held the mob at bay until
soldiers, who had been sent for, arrived and drove the mob back. Then the woman
was taken to the jail. After she had been taken to the prison the woman made no
effort to conceal the fact that she had been a wholesale murderess. She
declared that she was justified in her work, for the only persons she killed
were men who had abused their wives and that her murdering them had saved the women
further misery.
In her own defense, Madame Popova told her captors she had never killed
a woman. Czarist soldiers saved her from a mob that sought to burn her at the
stake, and she was unrepentant as she stood before the firing squad. She was executed
on March 17, 1909, by firing squad.