thecrimes certain of the motive in historical studies, especially as the utterances of the condemned rarely survive? Often short notes as to motive, written by someone else, are all that remains for us to interpret. Therefore, the figures might be too high or too low, although they are probably an indication of when these crimes were frequent. Several early murders have been found by Kathy Stuart, the earliest in Nuremberg in 1580 and also one in Württemberg in 1612.77 Research from Stockholm, conducted by several researchers, has found that a substantial part of the murders committed in parts of the seventeenth century and especially during the first half of the eighteenth century had as motive the strive for being executed. According to Arne Jansson in the seventeenth century, (excluding 1626–1635), nineteen of twenty-seven murders in Stockholm were of this kind, the first being in 1621. It peaked in 1710–1719 with nine certain and five probable cases. Hans Andersson for the late seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century has found an average of one such murder each year, while Maria Kaspersson studying the period 1720–1765 judges that about twenty per cent of the killings were of this type.78 Much of the statistics together with the attention paid to it in debate and legislation support the conclusion by Krogh: ”It appears that the phenomenon of the suicide murder peaked during the eighteenth century”. His numbers from Copenhagen indicate apeak between the 1720’s and the 1760’s or as he himself puts it ”after 1730”.79 We could also with some of the other historians consider a peak in the seventeenth century. According to Krogh murders that possibly was of this kind was committed in 1644 and 1654 in Copenhagen, and in 1696 in Elsinore. On Sjælland seventeen of seventy-three executions for murder during 1719– 1756 were for murder with no ordinary causes. This means an annual frequency of 0,5 per 100,000 inhabitants.In Copenhagen, in1697–1789 such murders were committed with an annual frequency of 1,5 per 100,000 inhabitants.80 77 Stuart 2023 p 7, Stuart 2008 p 421. 78 Jansson 1994 p 24, 50, Jansson 1998 p 50, Andersson 1998 p 103, Kaspersson 2000 p 96. 79 Krogh 2012 p 20 sq. 46
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