finally somebody the perpetrator carried a grudge against, either personally or against an institution represented by the victim, such as a prison guard. Some criminals also confessed several murders, but what to do when several of them, or all, were difficult to investigate, or it even was hard to certify that the deaths had occurred? Were these individuals guilty of multiple homicides or just seeking to deceive the courts into executing them? Catharina Jacobin was finally executed despite weak evidence while Nicolaas Nordsten was imprisoned due to his insanity. As so often in history, this is also a question of power. Learned individuals wrote books or pamphlets, authorities made decisions or judgements and enacted laws, the general public let their views be known, but the real power in this history was held by someone powerless or even seemingly deprived of power. No formulated counterstrategy was needed against any strategy of the authorities unless when executions either ceased to be legal or were so restricted in law or practice that they would be difficult to strive for and the risk of failure would be too great. The fundamental interpretation of these individuals was that they were criminals. However, criminals, especially on the scaffold, could be understood in various ways. They were tools of the authorities – used to demonstrate who had power, that the law and justice were fulfilled, and for deterrence. The execution was devised to show the condemned in the way the authorities thought best. They strived to both reach and control those receiving the messages. The crowds at the public executions did not start to be problematic at any specific time as several problems probably had existed throughout the history of public executions, such as the crowd reviewing, complaining about, and even attacking an executioner not fulfilling his task properly.942 Eventually, however, beside the rowdy behaviour and the interpretations of the crowds, the focus came to be directed at which groups that in reality attended the public executions in contrast to those who were supposed by the authorities to attend them leading to the introduction of intramural executions from the end of the eighteenth century. 942 See e g Sandén 2016 p 141 sqq, 146 sqq. 269
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