On this date in 1879, Sweden conducted its first private execution, that of Anders Larsson.
Executioner Johan Fredrik Hjort.
Deep in the 19th century’s Long Depression, the farmer had murdered his pregnant wife in despair at providing for the whole family.
This positioned him to become the first* subject of an 1877 royal decree moving Sweden’s beheadings behind prison walls. The time and the location of the execution were also supposed to be concealed from the public — announced only after the fact, like present-day hangings in Japan — but in this instance word got around and the walls of Västerås county jail were thronged with would-be gawkers.
* There’s a complete list of modern Swedish executions here.
On this day..
- 1844: John Knatchbull, moral madman
- 1995: Franklin Thomas, David Thomas, and Douglas Hamlet, the last in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- 1818: Samuel Godfrey, American picaro
- 1945: 59 collaborationists in Bulgaria
- 1751: John Morrison, Francis McCoy, and Elizabeth Robinson, robbers
- 1864: Bizoton Affair executions
- 1859: Father Paul Loc, Vietnamese martyr
- 2009: Minurul Islam and two friends, for a dowry death
- 1892: Two Georgian bandits, witnessed by Stalin
- 1906: William Williams, the last hanged in Minnesota
- 1542: Kathryn Howard, the rose without a thorn
- 1942: Patrick Stanley Vaughan Heenan, Japanese spy