In a village of Saxon Upper Lusatia, the first infant died without anyone suspecting foul play. Three years later, when a second newborn was discovered lifeless beneath the same roof, the midwife recalled that earlier cradle. Between those two nights, the meaning of death had altered: from an unfortunate accident, it had become a question which the magistrates could no longer suffer to rest.
The Neue Pitaval, which related the case in 1864, omits the woman’s full name. Its damaged print preserves only uncertain initials, “Jsch.”; the village likewise remains nameless. One must therefore abide by this anonymity. The chronicle depicts a prosperous household. The husband traded in cattle; after seventeen years of wedlock, the couple had acquired two innkeeping properties. Two sons born of this marriage still survived, aged seventeen and fourteen at the time of the inquiry. Yet this household had its domestic discords: the chronicle notes the wife’s jealousy and the husband’s harsh temper. It records these matters through the prejudices of its age; it does not establish that these quarrels were the cause of the crimes.
On the 14th of March 1855, the woman was delivered of a daughter. The midwife attended the birth and returned that evening. Mother and child, she observed, were doing well. She offered to watch through the night in the house, but the mother dismissed her, pleading weariness and a desire to sleep. After some brief exchanges, the midwife departed towards nine o'clock. The young mother remained alone with the babe.
A little later, the husband entered the chamber where his wife lay. She announced to him that the little girl was dead. He verified the death, and his wife spoke of a convulsion. The chronicle records no accusation at that time. On the morrow, the midwife examined the infant in the small bed wherein she had swaddled her the previous evening. She discovered neither external injury nor visible anomaly. Another woman, summoned to wash the corpse, met with objections from the mother, who insisted that everything had already been done. She brushed these protests aside and undressed the child, finding no livid spots or bruises. Questioned by this woman as to the cause of the demise, the mother replied that she was herself ignorant of it: when she had wished to look, the infant was already dead. The child was buried; the years slipped by, and the village never conceived that a crime had been committed.
On the 18th of November 1858, the same midwife attended a second confinement. The infant girl, according to the report, was at full term, healthy and robust; the mother appeared in a normal condition. The midwife once again offered to remain for the night. The husband urged his wife to consent. She refused with great insistence, declaring that she could not sleep in the presence of a stranger. She promised to call her husband later, who slept in an adjoining chamber. The midwife yielded. The husband opened the door for her and escorted her outside.
He then returned to his own room, undressed, and went to bed. He did not go to his wife, believing she was asleep and unwilling to disturb her. The house fell silent. The account in the Pitaval attributes to the night a stillness which the judicial record, at that moment, could not truly measure: the mother was alone with the infant, while the other inmates slept.
Shortly thereafter, vigorous blows roused the husband from his slumber. He hurried in. His wife said to him: “Alas, come quickly, do you not hear? I have called out several times already; the child is dead again.” He expressed astonishment that a newborn could perish so swiftly and asked whether she had bound the swaddling clothes too tightly. She denied it: the child, she claimed, had suddenly heaved several times; when she took her in her arms, life was already gone. To her husband’s reproaches regarding the dismissal of the midwife, she replied that the woman would have been poorly accommodated. Then she cut him short: she was weary and wished to sleep. She insisted on keeping the corpse beside her. The husband returned to his room.
At eight o'clock, the midwife returned. The mother immediately announced the death. The infant, cold and lifeless, lay no longer in its bed, but upon a sofa. The midwife perceived upon both sides of the neck blue marks which appeared to her to proceed from pressure. She questioned the mother, who answered that she had done nothing. The midwife warned her that she would be compelled to report the matter. Thereupon the woman implored her not to bring ruin upon her and her children, offering to give her whatever she might desire. The threat of denunciation had provoked an attempt at bribery.
The husband entered in his turn. Distraught by the midwife’s suspicions, he demanded of his wife what she had done. She attempted first to pacify him: “Leave it be, all will be well; I shall pray until it is forgotten.” This declaration allayed nothing. That very day, a magistrate from the court conducted an initial interrogation; the body was subjected to the post-mortem examination recorded in the chronicle. The wife confessed to having slain the infant girl. She described a deliberate suffocation, and then specified that she had also employed a cloth around the neck. The report indicates that the autopsy corroborated her narrative of the death, establishing that the child had been born alive and viable. It was not, therefore, merely the frightened utterance of a distraught woman: the confession could be measured against the physical inspection of the corpse. These medical particulars reach us, however, solely through this chronicle, without independent reference to the original court registers.
The investigation did not halt at the second corpse. The marks upon the neck and the confession led to the reopening of the events of 1855. This time, the woman admitted to having strangled the first infant with a cloth, shortly after the midwife had departed. The original story of convulsions was replaced by an admission of homicide. The body was neither exhumed nor autopsied: this distinction was of consequence. For the second child, medical findings accompanied the confession; for the first, buried three years prior, the judges had only the confession and the recollections of the household. The first death, interred beneath the guise of misfortune, thus entered into the proceedings.
Why had she done it? The chronicle suggests several motives, though none can be established with the same certainty as the confessions. According to the account, the inquiry revealed that the first infant was the fruit of an adulterous liaison. The mother maintained that the second was her husband’s, even when it was pointed out to her that such a distinction exposed her to a heavier penalty. Adultery, however, did not alone explain the first murder, nor did it shed light upon the second. The compiler also conjectures a fear of dividing the estate amassed by the couple, and a desire to secure a more advantageous future for the sons already born. These are the speculations of a chronicler who read the affair through the moral and social notions of his century; none should be mistaken for evidence of motive recognized at the trial.
The woman, for her part, admitted having harbored the design of killing the second child several weeks before its birth. She maintained that she had taken her final resolution only after the midwife had left. The compiler disputed this last point, contending that her insistence upon sending the witness away revealed a purpose already fixed. Concerning the second infant, she stated that she had felt troubled by her husband’s treatment of her, had struggled for a time against the temptation, and had even sought to call out to him from the neighboring room. She acknowledged knowing that it was a sin and that a severe penalty threatened the murderer; yet, she added, the impulse returned with great force. The court weighed this explanation, but the chronicle concludes that nothing demonstrated an alienation of reason. Its language regarding the weakness of the mind and the feminine temperament belongs to the compiler of 1864, not to a modern medical opinion that one might adopt as one’s own.
The court distinguished between the two deaths in its sentence. For the murder of the second child, born in wedlock, the woman was condemned to death. Capital punishment having been decreed for this second crime, no additional sentence was pronounced for the murder of the first infant. The chronicle explains, moreover, that the applicable law dealt less severely with the destruction of a newborn born out of wedlock; it does not, however, present this distinction as an acquittal for the crime of 1855. The capital sentence was nonetheless not executed: royal clemency commuted it to perpetual imprisonment.
Thus concluded, according to the Neue Pitaval, an affair that the first burial had closed too soon. It was neither village gossip nor a dramatic exhumation that reopened the past, but the return of the same midwife beside another cradle. She recognized a mark, put a question, and refused to be turned aside. The second child did not by itself disclose what had transpired in 1855; it did, however, compel the household to answer for its silences.