Lynne’s Reviews > A Hangman's Diary: The Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg, 1573-1617 > Status Update

Some of the accounts of the crimes for which people were executed are very hard to read. What the hell is wrong with people? :( Thus has it ever been, apparently.

One entry particularly struck a chord with me: a woman was hanged because she had carnal knowledge of a man and his son, and her husband watched or something. Husband was whipped out of town, but stopped to write on the church wall that the man and his son should have been 'treated as she was' and that he was going to the King for help because 'justice has not been done.' I'd have to say I agree.

"Kloss Renckhart of Feylsdorf, a murderer, who committed three murders with an associate...They shot the miller dead, did violence to the miller's wife and the maid, obliged them to fry some eggs in fat and laid these on the dead miller's body, then forced the miller's wife to join in eating them." Daaang, murderers in 16th century Nuremberg didn't play! :O