1852: Martin Merino, Jesuit assassin
February 7th, 2010 Headsman
On this date in 1852, a 63-year-old Jesuit priest was garroted outside Madrid’s Toledo Gate for attempting to assassinate Queen Isabella II.
Only five days before, Martin Merino y Gomez (Spanish Wikipedia link) had slipped into the palace wearing his clerical robes, and planted a dagger in the Queen’s side. (Non-fatally; her corset partly shielded the blow.)
Despite some speculation that he might have been connected to some more elaborate plot, investigation found him to be a lone nut, “crazed with Liberal doctrines, disordered vanity, and bilious disease.”
Neither a clear motive nor a real link to any other actor was ever established. Merino died as a lone nut, and then his parricidal remains were burned to ashes and scattered to the winds.
Also on this date
- 1902: Privates Edmond Dubose and Lewis Russell, deserters to the Philippine Resistance
- 1579: Thomas Sherwood, Catholic martyr
- 1714: Various rebel slaves in the Cape Colony
- 1920: The White Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak
- 1868: Susan, a 13-year-old
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Assassins,Attempted Murder,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Garrote,History,Notable for their Victims,Public Executions,Religious Figures,Spain,Strangled,Treason
Tags: 1850s, 1852, february 7, isabel ii, isabella ii, jesuit, madrid, martin merino, toledo gate
August 4th, 2010 at 11:52 am
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