her child guilty than other murderers. Others also had greater possibilities of going free by denying the charge. Infanticide was therefore not an increasingly usual crime, an epidemic, but it seemed that way, because it was more often prosecuted and those prosecuted being found guilty.429 This explanation could rather easy be applied also on cases of crimes in order to be executed. Such a criminal was generally not interested in concealing the crime. In court no denying of it or arguing for lenience was done. Finally, applications for mercy, at least with some effort, were not written. The result would be the same as Rautelin has found for infanticide – the crime has been more visible due to more sentences and probably more executions.430 It may also have been compounded by the dramatic fall in the number of homicides in Europe, with huge differences at least between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century.431 Could the fewer murders and therefore executions have made these murders more visible? There was, however, a contrast between the reactions applied in different countries. Some countries came to create new legislation to be used in these cases. In others, the awareness of the cases often led to alternative reactions while in some countries, the authorities seem not to have been aware of these crimes as a possible specific category of crime. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century the areas of interest here evolved from one empire to two with a long intermediate period. The empires, however, were not of particular interest for this study due to criminal legislation, trials, and executions generally being the privilege of the, originally hundreds of individual states or cities. Sadly, but naturally, laws and cases from just a few of them will be used. German states different realities and reactions 429 Rautelin 2009 p 456 sqq, see also Lewis 2016 p 9. 430 Maybe it is due to such factors and the increasing debate concerning crimes in order to be executed that Lewis suggests that the number of such murders rose in Germany in the 1770’s and the 1780’s, Lewis 2016 p 157. 431 See e g Eisner 2003 esp p 99. 125
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