the trial. Her interaction with a priest before her death, considered with her confession, led the court to approve a Christian burial for her.73 Tyge Krogh mentions that in at least three cases in Denmark around 1720, people confessed to having signed a contract with the Devil as a method to seek execution.74 Elsewhere, arson was a crime that could be used to the same ends.75 The methods of making one’s way to the scaffold thus varied, but it should be noted that they were generally early in the history described here. Eventually, hardly any other crime than the intentional and unlawful killing of another person was reasonably likely to end in execution. Executions as penalty for other crimes became rarer and was eventually abolished. However, much more debated and studied have been the act of killing somebody else in order to secure the execution of oneself. In Europe, debates and governmental actions were mostly from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, although such murders occurred outside that period. Since a few decades, the research on these murders has mainly concentrated on a handful of cities – Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Hamburg – and has produced some statistical results. Older such findings also exist, such as an article from 1789 that claimed that, excluding infanticide, half the murders in Prussia were because the murderers were weary of life and hoped to be executed.76 The statistics are particularly problematic in this case, as the identification of the crimes depends on the motive, and how often can we be Murder thecrimes 73 Kounine 2014 (internet). See also Sörlin 1993 p 101 sq concerning two Swedish cases of false confessions of witchcraft around 1740 seeking to be executed. Four other German cases from Augsburg, Ellwangen, and Reutlingen in Stuart 2023 p 40 sqq. 74 Krogh 2012 p 59, Krogh 2000 p 229. See also Sörlin 1993 p 30 101. On contracts with the devil see Olli 2007 p 34 sqq, 132 sqq. In total Krogh found 21 cases of such contracts, Krogh 2000p127. 75 See e g Verlohner 1725 p 130 sqq, Klein 1791 p 3 sqq, and Weber 1937 p 167 sq. 76 Berlinische Monatsschrift 1789 p 536 sq. 45
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