1905: Elisabeth Wiese, the angel-maker of St. Pauli
February 2nd, 2015 Headsman
On this date in 1905, “baby farmer” Elisabeth Wiese was beheaded in Hamburg.
In a luridly reported case “revolting in the extreme, proving the woman to be a monster of iniquity” Wiese stepped into a quintessential fin de siecle moral panic as a former convict whose larcenous past had forced her trade away from the legitimate field of midwifery towards the more shady precincts of mercenary fostering.
From scandal-averse single mothers in England as well as Germany, she collected children with maintenance fees running to US $1,000 plus a hush-money surcharge tacked on. For this donative, she represented a capacity to distribute these whelps to willing adoptive families: in reality, most of them she disposed of with morphine. (As an added inflammation to public opinion, she had also forced her own illegitimate daughter into prostitution; Paula, whose own infant was among Wiese’s victims, repaid that ill turn by appearing as a witness against her mother.)
When Wiese fell under suspicion, the neighbors’ reports of her kitchen glowing like hellfire and belching revolting stenches led police to the remains of these little ones burnt up in her stove.
Condemned for five murders — it’s thought that the true count must have run much higher — Wiese is known as the “angel-maker of St. Pauli” after the suburb where she plied her trade.
On this day..
- Feast Day of St. Apronian the Executioner - 2020
- 1610: Pierre Canal, Geneva sodomite - 2019
- 1715: Ann Wright, branded - 2018
- 1637: Tabaniyassi Mehmed Pasha, former Grand Vizier - 2017
- 1940: Mikhail Koltsov, Soviet journalist - 2016
- 1989: Vladimir Lulek, the last Czech executed - 2014
- 1708: Indian Sam and his female accomplice - 2013
- 1951: The first four of the Martinsville seven - 2012
- 1945: Carl Goerdeler, as penance for the German people - 2011
- Daily Double: 1945, and the legacy of Valkyrie - 2011
- 1461: Owen Tudor, sire of sires - 2010
- 1940: Vsevolod Meyerhold - 2009
- 1512: Hatuey, defied Spanish colonization - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Abortion and Infanticide,Beheaded,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Germany,Guillotine,History,Murder,Pelf,Women
Tags: 1900s, 1905, baby farmer, elisabeth wiese, february 2, hamburg, st. pauli
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