How women who took the life of their husbands were dealt with in different countries

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For centuries, murder of a wife was punished far less severely than murder of a husband - or remained without punishment at all. But the manicide ended in a terrible execution. Most often, a woman was simply beaten to death by her husband's family, without reporting to anyone and not looking at the circumstances. But in some countries, the state took on the punishment.

England: killing husband equals treason

Although England is more often associated with hanging - this is how numerous thieves were executed, mostly deeply minors, as well as rebellious sailors, trust swindlers, robbers and, in general, most criminals, if they were sentenced to death, another type of punishment was practiced there. death. Some criminals were burned at the stake.

A painful death at the stake went not only to witches (women who were accused of being associated with Satan and worshiping him) and heretics (for example, Protestant priests were executed during the time of Mary the Bloody, the elder sister of Queen Elizabeth I). They were also sentenced to the fire for high treason, which included the making of counterfeit money and … the murder of her husband.

The logic was as follows: the family is, in a way, a model of the state, the brick of which it consists, and its small reflection. If a woman is ready to rebel against power in the family - even when she is beaten to death - she is ready to rebel against the government.

Bonfires with wives who killed their husbands burned not only in the Middle Ages - the entire eighteenth century. True, in England a specific indulgence towards women has already become fashionable. Pardoning the authorities was still considered impossible, but the executioners, after the fire was lit and the woman had time to feel all the horror of the possibility of being roasted alive, approached and tightened the stranglehold around the unfortunate's neck, or they moved the executioner so that she suffocated from the smoke before it's fried.

However, it did not always work out. When the executioner came across in solidarity with the murdered, when he simply did not have time to strangle the criminal. For example, the execution of the husband-killer Catherine Hayes was remembered by the English public for the fact that the fire flared up violently before the executioner managed to tighten the stranglehold on the being executed, and he had to retreat. The woman being roasted alive screamed terribly, and people hurriedly threw brushwood into the fire so that she died as quickly as possible. Some well-aimed man managed to throw a large piece of wood at Catherine's head, after which Mrs. Hayes finally suffered.

Russia: burying in the ground

When the school talks about the famous “Russian Truth” by Yaroslav the Wise as a manifestation of his statesmanship, they are silent about the fact that it contains an order for husbands to kill their wives if they steal from the house, as well as if they do magic, secretly practice paganism or make potions. Later, under the Romanovs, the murder of wives (mostly slow, with daily beatings) was not uncommon, but the punishment for it was the lightest. But for the wife who killed her husband, they came up with a particularly savage execution.

The woman was buried in the ground up to her shoulders and left to die of hunger, cold, heat or thirst. It was impossible to pardon either at the request of the adult children of the murdered man and the murderer, or even at the request of her husband's close relatives, who tried to intercede for the executed woman if she was simply trying to protect her life.

An archer was placed near the dug-in, who made sure that no one tried to reduce the suffering of the buried one in one way or another - whether by giving water or drunk to drink, or, conversely, quickly killing her. The public found the execution unheard of cruel, so there were enough sympathizers to need protection. Sometimes someone managed to cut off the torment of the unfortunate woman with a well-aimed throw of a heavy stone in the head; after that he had to hastily hide in the crowd.

The law was passed under Alexei Mikhailovich. This sovereign was very interested in progress and European art, which did not prevent him from being fierce. Under him, torture was legalized, including in the investigation of the smallest crimes; children who complained about their parents' cruelty were whipped without investigation; for infanticides and women murderers, the punishment was reduced to a year in prison and repentance. However, the custom of burying a husband-killer in the ground did not take root - already the tsar's eldest son, Fyodor Alekseevich, during his short reign, abolished the disgusting execution.

Muslim world: stoning

Although execution by stoning was usually practiced in relation to women who were raped or voluntarily unfaithful to their husbands, at different periods in different Muslim countries, the murder of a husband was also regarded as a violation of loyalty to him. Although most often husbands' murderers committed suicide or found themselves torn to pieces or beaten to death by their husband's relatives, in some places it came to a demonstrative public execution.

In this case, the woman was buried in the ground up to her waist, after which the crowd began to throw stones at her. The stones have traditionally been sized to cause real pain without killing the victim. Death during this execution is very long, painful and terrible - exactly the same as "home" death from beatings. Such an execution is practiced in our time, for example, it is prescribed by the laws of Iran and happens in Muslim countries of Africa.

The urge to kill in an orderly and fearful way is a constant companion of humanity and its neuroses. Not only Giordano Bruno: 5 scientists who were burned at the stake by Catholics.