Elsjen Roelofs was broken on the wheel at Assen on this date in 1767 — an unusual fate for a woman, inflicted for poisoning her husband. The sources about her, and the links in this post, are almost exclusively in Dutch.
A farmer’s daughter who made a property-driven arranged marriage to another farmer, Roelofs was seemingly (so a neighbor described) driven to her desperate act when the said Jan Alberts purposed to move away, which would have separated her from her own family.
This poignant story is speculatively novelized by Janne IJmker in Achtendertig Nachten (Thirty-Eight Nights, which was the distance of time between the pregnant Roelofs delivering her daughter in prison on August 2, and the execution of the sentence). (Here’s a review.)
On this day..
- 906: Adalbert of Badenberg
- 1943: Jarmila Zivcova, correspondent
- 1659: Dara Shikoh, deposed Mughal heir
- 1853: Reese Evans, youthful murderer
- 1902: John C. Best
- 1817: James Lane
- 1681: Leticia Wigington, apprentice-flogger
- 1536: Skipper Clement, rebel
- 1861: Not William Scott, the Sleeping Sentinel
- 1437: Jan Rohác z Dubé, Hussite marshal
- 1986: Andrew Sibusiso Zondo and two other ANC cadres
- 1990: Samuel K. Doe