1686: A man and a woman broken on the wheel in Hamburg
March 22nd, 2012 Headsman
The New York Times of Dec. 30, 1900 provides this date’s entry, featuring the unusual scene of a woman being broken on the wheel.
In the diary of that remarkable man, Gen. Patrick Gordon, who left Scotland in 1651 a poor, unfriended wanderer, and, when he died, in 1699, had his eyes closed by the affectionate hands of his sorrowing master, the Czar Peter the Great, the following entry is to be found, under date Hamburg, March 22, 1686:
This day, a man and a woman, a burgher of the towne being the womans master, for murthering, were carted from the prisone to the house where the murder was committed; and there before this house, with hotte pinsers, the flesh was torren out of their armes, and from thence were carted to the place of justice without the towne, and there broken and layed on wheeles.
On this day..
- Feast Day of Saint Octavian, martyred by the Arian Vandals - 2020
- 1540: Hans Kohlhase, horse wild - 2019
- 1844: Samuel Mohawk - 2018
- 1945: Eliyahu Bet-Zuri and Eliyahu Hakim, Lord Moyne's assassins - 2017
- Themed Set: More like Drop-shire - 2016
- 1824: Richard Overfield, wicked stepfather - 2016
- 1864: Kastus Kalinouski, Belarus revolutionary - 2015
- 1819: Hannah Bocking, 16-year-old poisoner - 2014
- Themed Set: Arsenic - 2014
- 1881: George Parrott, future footwear - 2013
- 1733: John Julian, pirate and slave - 2011
- 1803: Thomas Hilliker, teen machine wrecker - 2010
- 1699: William Chaloner, Isaac Newton's prey - 2009
- 1796: Mastro Titta's first execution of many - 2008
Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Broken on the Wheel,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Germany,Gruesome Methods,History,Known But To God,Murder,Public Executions,Women
Tags: 1680s, 1686, hamburg, march 22, patrick gordon, peter i, peter the great
One wonders what prompted the NYT in 1900 to publish this. Perhaps a certain “Look at us Moderns entering a new century: see how we’ve progressed!” [Thence cometh the 20th century’s horrors…]