Helena Katarina Löv was beheaded with an ax on this date in 1829 at Skanstull — now just a part of Stockholm but at the time, the city’s southerly toll gate and a traditional execution site — for murdering her master’s children.
Löv was not the last woman executed in Sweden, but she does have the distinction of being the last woman publicly executed. (Executions were moved behind prison walls in the 1870s, so we have some photos of the last public beheadings.) She was also the last Swede, man or woman, whose body was burned at the stake after decapitation.
On this day..
- 1791: George Dingler, proved guilty
- 1442: Nguyen Trai
- 2008: Kedisaletse Tsobane
- 1719: Frans Anneessens, Brussels guildmaster
- 1851: Aaron Stookey, clemency denied
- 1946: Ernst Lohmeyer, theologian
- 1729: Jephthah Big, ineffective extortionist
- 2011: Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki, sorcerer
- 1902: Fred Hardy, the first hanged in Alaska
- 1902: Ernest Loveswar, the last hanging in Meade County
- 1692: Giles Corey, "more weight!"
- 46 B.C.E.: Vercingetorix the Gaul