An everyday execution in 16th century Montpellier, from the diary of Swiss medical student Felix Platter — whom we have already had cause to notice in these pages:

Beatrice, Catalan’s former servant girl, who had drawn off my boots when I had first arrived in Montpellier, was executed on the 3rd of December. She was hanged in the square, on a little gibbet that had only one arm. She had left us a year before to go into service in the house of a priest. She became pregnant, and when her child was born, she threw it into the latrine, where it was found dead. Beatrice’s body was taken to the anatomy theatre, and it remained several days in the College. The womb was still swollen, for the birth of the child had occurred no more than eight days before. Afterwards the hangman came to collect the pieces, wrapped them in a sheet, and hung them on a gibbet outside the town.

Part of the Themed Set: Filicide.

On this day..

• 1917: Private Joseph Bateman, shot at dawn
• 2009: Bobby Wayne Woods
• Feast Day of St. Cassian of Tangier
• 1678: Edward Colman, Popish Plot victim
• 1948: Sam Shockley and Miran Thompson, for the Battle of Alcatraz
• Themed Set: Filicide
• 1864: Bill Sketoe, hole haunt
• An unspecified Monday: Fagin
• 1920: Tom Johnson and Jim McDonald, criminal assailants
• 1849: Anna Koch of Appenzell
• 1876: The samurai leaders of the Hagi and Akizuki rebellions
• 1990: Pastor Hossein Soodmand, apostate
• 1952: Rudolf Slansky and 10 "conspirators"