Today’s Horrifying Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The most horrifying attacks against “witches” in the 16th century German lands were made in the Catholic territories. Though the new Protestant magistrates also prosecuted for witchcraft, they did not keep up with the prince-bishops and archbishop-electors of the Catholic ecclesiastical lands, executing one witch to the Catholics’ three. At Trier between 1587 and 1593, for example, under the direction of the Jesuit demonologist Peter Binsfeld, 368 witches were burned from twenty-two villages, a hunt so devastating that two villages were left with only one woman apiece. The abbot of Fulda was responsible for the deaths of over 700 witches at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A particularly vicious outbreak occurred at Ellwangen, where 390 person were burned between 1611 and 1618. The Teutonic Knights ordered the deaths of 124 in just two years, 1628 to 1630. In the conventual land of Quedlinburg, 133 witches were executed on one day in 1589. At Eichstätt, 274 person were burned at the stake apparently in one year, 1629.
Peter Binsfeld, what a dick!
The first wave of German trials victimized mainly women of the poor or middling sort, midwives like Walpurga Hausmänin, but as the supply of poor women ran low, accusers turned to women and men of the establishment. The nine hundred person put to death by the prince-bishop of Würzburg, for example, included nineteen of his priests and his own nephew. The archbishop-elector of Cologne ordered the deaths of the wives of his chancellor and his secretary. And at Bamberg the bishop executed six hundred witches, including his own chancellor and the burgermeister. Most grotesque was the execution of forty-one young children at Würzburg, a custom that grew in Germany until most major trials included children as both victims and accusers. These later witch hunters turned to younger victims, to men, and to persons of their own class. This last apparently led to a slackening of the craze (as in Offenburg), as the elite, fearful for their own lives, used their clout to stop the madness.
Poor Walpurga’s execution
Culled from: Witchcraze
Post-Mortem Portrait Du Jour!
Boy Rests With Eyes Half Open
Daguerreotype 1/6 Plate, Circa 1848
Culled from: Sleeping Beauty III
Garretdom: Race Riot Edition!
FOUR-MILE-RUN’S TRAGEDY
An Irishman Killed in a Fight, and an Italian Fatally Wounded.
PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 19.—Four-Mile-Run, in the Fourteenth ward, was the scene of a bloody race riot at noon to-day, in which two of the participants received fatal injuries. The fight was the result of bad feeling existing among the Irish and Italian laborers who have their abode in that neighborhood. On Saturday night, while Joseph Vernard, an Italian, was on his way home, he was attacked by a gang of Irishmen. There were six in the assailing party, and it is said they were under the leadership of two brothers named Daly. Vernard was terribly beaten, but managed to escape to his home. No more trouble occurred until noon to-day, when a gang of twenty Irishmen called at Vernard’s house and demanded admittance. A number of Italian boarders were in the house at the time, and the doors were quickly barred. The assailants, however, battered the doors down and rushed into the house.
A free fight followed, in the progress of which “Paddy” Rocco, an Italian, had his skull crushed with a chair, and Patrick Constantine, an Irishman, was shot in the abdomen. The sight of the prostrate men seemed to frighten the others, and a general stampede took place, so that by the time the police arrived all had escaped. The wounded men were removed to a hospital, where Constantine died a few hours later. Rocco is still living , but his recovery is considered doubtful. Five of the Italians were arrested this afternoon, but the Irishmen are still at liberty. It is believed that the latter intended to drive the Italians from the neighborhood.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook