Video: Bloodthirsty Saltychikha: how a landowner tortured more than a hundred serfs to death
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Cruel treatment of serfs was not uncommon on Russian estates. But this precedent went down in history as one of the most egregious cases of sadism. Landowner Daria Saltykovanicknamed Saltychikha, killed 138 of her serfs from the world. And a long time of crime sophisticated sadist and serial killer went unpunished.
Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova, nee Ivanova, was the daughter of a Duma dyak close to Peter I. She was related to the Musin-Pushkin, Davydov, Stroganov and Tolstoy. Born in 1730 in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow, after marriage she became the owner of several estates. Saltykova was widowed early and at the age of 26 she became the owner of estates in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces, in which there were about 600 serfs. Until the death of her husband, she did not show any sadistic inclinations. And soon after she was widowed, rumors of her cruel atrocities spread around the vicinity of the Troitsky estate.
Regular beatings of the servants began for any offense - poorly washed floor, poorly washed linen, etc. The reasons were found more and more often. First, she beat the peasant women herself with everything that came to hand - with a stick, a log, a whip, then the guilty grooms flogged, sometimes to death.
With hot curling irons, Saltychikha grabbed the victims by the ears, poured boiling water over them, burned their hairs and pulled them out with their hands, beat their heads against the wall, starved them to death, tied them naked to trees in the cold. Especially girls and women got it.
Her lover, the nobleman Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, also suffered at the hands of a sadist. When he left Saltykova and was about to marry, the landowner sent him a groom with a homemade bomb with the order to lay it under the house in which the traitor lived with the bride. The groom was afraid to carry out such an order and the murder did not take place.
The police did not start a case - the landowner paid generously for the fact that the disappeared peasants were called escaped and missing. According to official records, 50 people were considered "dead from disease", 72 people "were missing", 16 "went to their husbands" and "went on the run." So it would have continued further, if two serfs had not fled one day and went to the Empress herself with a complaint about the bloodthirsty mistress. One of the fugitives - Ermolai Ivanov - Saltychikha tortured three wives.
Serfs rarely complained about the landlords - in the 18th century. the nobles got away with a lot, and the serfs could be exiled to Siberia for any offense. But Catherine II, who recently ascended the throne, took this matter under her personal control - she was amazed at the number of people killed, and in the new "enlightened society" that she undertook to build, there was no place for such atrocities. First, Saltychikha was taken under house arrest, in 1764 a criminal case was opened against her. For about a year, they collected evidence and interviewed witnesses, of which there were more than 400 people. The killer denied her guilt, justifying herself by saying that "she was putting things in order in her estate." But her guilt was proven.
Saltychikha was deprived of her noble rank and all property, and a civil execution was carried out over her: she was chained to a pillory in the square and hung on her chest a sign "The torturer and murderer." The criminal spent the remaining 33 years of her life in captivity. And the most cruel female killer in history, on whose account there were 650 deaths, is considered a Hungarian aristocrat: truth and fiction about the bloody Countess Bathory
Recommended:
The capital of twins: a Ukrainian village where more than a hundred twins live
At first glance, the village of Velikaya Kopanya in Transcarpathia (Ukraine) is no different from hundreds of similar villages. However, it is regularly mentioned by local and world publications. The fact is that 61 pairs of twins live in this village. Twins can be found in every fifth family
How food was counterfeited more than a hundred years ago: Vitriol candies, dog butter and other "delicacies"
The nineteenth century seems to many to be the century of sincerity, purity and natural products - however, already in the nineteenth century, manufacturers and small entrepreneurs began to massively counterfeit everything and everyone. And first of all - food, so that, knowing the composition, a resident of the twenty-first century would never have taken food into his mouth, which was calmly bought and used by housewives and bachelors a little more than a hundred years ago
Torture with meat, salt and more: How people were tortured without resorting to instruments of torture
People are still horrified when they read about the medieval instruments of torture with which the unfortunate victims were tortured. But there were also other methods of torture, which did not leave obvious marks on the human body, but at the same time deprived them of their life or suppressed their personality. How people were destroyed with food and insomnia - further in the review
"Mother of Orphans" saved from death and raised more than 1400 abandoned children
“I am a mother to those who have no one,” says Sindhutai Sapkal, a 68-year-old activist who is referred to in India as the Mother of Orphans. She raised more than 1400 children who, for various reasons, were left without parents and guardianship, helped them not only to get an education, but also to create their own happy families. During her life, she received 750 awards, but she considers the love of her pupils to be real gratitude for her work
The secret meaning of Peter Bruegel's painting: more than a hundred encrypted proverbs
"Like head against a wall," "swim against the current," "lead each other by the nose" - we all know these proverbs, and, interestingly, they can be found almost unchanged in other languages. Moreover, they have existed for several centuries: back in the 16th century (1559), the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel painted the painting "Flemish Proverbs," in which he encrypted more than 100 proverbs of his time