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.
On this day..
- 1935: David Maskill Blake, wedding's eve murderer - 2020
- 1391: Agnese Visconti and Antonio da Scandiano, adulterous lovers? - 2019
- 1885: August Reinsdorf and Emil Kuchler, Kaiser Wilhelm I bombers - 2018
- 1940: Peter Barnes and James McCormack, the last IRA men hanged - 2017
- 1896: Benjamin Ratcliff, school shooter - 2016
- 1545: Cornelis Appelman and Willem Zeylmaker, Batenburgers - 2015
- 1931: The Longhua Martyrs and the Five Martyrs of the League of Left-Wing Writers - 2014
- 1902: Privates Edmond Dubose and Lewis Russell, deserters to the Philippine Resistance - 2013
- 1579: Thomas Sherwood, Catholic martyr - 2012
- 1714: Various rebel slaves in the Cape Colony - 2011
- 1920: The White Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak - 2009
- 1868: Susan, a 13-year-old - 2008
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
Martín Merino was not a Jesuit. He was originally a Franciscan friar, but left the order in 1821 and became a secular priest. See Spanish Wikipedia entry.
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