Committing Suicide During Work
The Sad Departure of Mistress Karin, Bjuråker on Whitsun Eve in the Year 1760
The premodern Swedish society was structured by the Lutheran ideology of the three estates – ecclesia (Church), politia (State) and oeconomia (household). In each estate there were heads and dependants. In the household estate the master was supposed to be in charge. His authority also included a right to use chastisement. There has not yet been clarified how the limits of this right were set. As the problem of men’s violence towards related women is still of current interest, any deepened understanding of the issue by historical research is urgent.
In the case related here the peasant’s wife Karin committed suicide by drowning herself in a lake. A neighbour tried to prevent the action, and Karin told him about her shame, due to her own heavy drinking. She also shortly mentioned that she was beaten, but she did not say by whom. Later the same morning, when she had carried out some household tasks, Karin managed to drown herself although her neighbour and the servants tried to stop it.
During the legal proceedings that followed, the most discussed issue was the spouses’ habits of heavy drinking and swearing at each other. The husband admitted that he had beaten Karin some times, but he claimed that this was needed, as she had not acted as a good wife. Depositions of several witnesses made it clear, though, that the assault and battery of Karin by her husband had gone on for some years. In the final judgement, however, the husband was not punished for this, but for drinking and swearing. The case illuminates how the local court understood the Lutheran household order in such a way that one could not allow the authority of the master in a household to be threatened by drinking. If some of the master’s legally permitted chastisements went to far and even injured the wife, this was not looked upon as seriously as the risk of loosing authority as a master in the household.
