thecrimes In Vienna, of those tried for murdering a child between 1704 and 1749 at least eleven women and one man murdered someone else’s child.100 An Austrian edict issued on March 22nd 1706 specifically mentioned this type of crime and issued specific and severe penalties for these and several other cases of murder of children.101 Low social status, powerlessness, and poverty were quite common among these murderers. Tine Reeh and Ralf Hemmingsen state about some of the cases they have studied: ”[T]he marginalized position of the perpetrator may have been aco-determinant for doing something exceedingly dramatic to attract attention”.102 Sometimes, despair at such a desperate situation clearly was the key factor in committing a murder. Anton Leikowsky had slept in a cold shack, with nothing to eat and only water to drink for nine days when on December 1st 1787 in his hometown Stolzenberg near Danzig he killed a young man in order to be executed himself. Once his situation improved by being in gaol, he no longer held the views, described by some as insanity, which had led to the murder. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.103 At this period, it was not uncommon that these murderers were deemed insane and therefore not executed. A woman near Königsberg in 1778 first murdered a young girl she had met and then her own child and finally reported it to judicial officials and demanded to be punished with all the severity of the law. Due not least to her earlier period of insanity she was seen as having lapsed into insanity again and was treated for this instead of punished.104 Statistics give us vital clues especially to the occurrence of these crimes, but there is reason to be careful far beyond the lack of statistical knowledge in many countries and cities of the numbers of such killings. The reactions to the crimes and especially their motive could lead to the con99 Reeh and Hemmingsen 2018 p 122 sq, Odhelius 1842 p 47. 100 Hehenberger 2008 p 196 note 77. See also Stuart 2023 p 331 sqq. 101 Griesebner 2000 p 221, Stuart 2023 p 338 sqq. 102 Reeh and Hemmingsen 2018 p 131. 103 Klein 1789 p 109 sqq. 104 Brierre de Boismont 1826 p 407 sq. 50
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=