“Eins, zwei, and before I say drei, I hope you go to hell!”

A few stories about domestic homicide from the pre-constitutional era in Carniola

Abstract

At a time when women were completely subordinate to men both socially and economically, it was extremely difficult for them to leave their husbands despite harrowing circumstances in the marriage because they had no material means to support themselves and they would also become outcasts from society. It was easier for the husband because the wife had to be obedient – the husband had the right to demand that obedience by force because the corresponding social threshold of tolerance was very high. The husband could afford much in the relationship and beyond it that the wife could not. Some abused and dissatisfied women tried to find a way out of a desperate situation by murdering their husbands. Men, on the other hand, had almost no reason to kill their wives because they could get away with almost everything. They thus killed their wives in drunkenness or in fits of anger. Men also perpetrated more successful murders than attempts at murder– precisely the opposite from women. In the murder cases from the 18th and 19th centuries presented in this article, women most often tried to poison their husbands, while men beat their spouses to death.