If you delve into the history of The Hague, you occasionally come across a less pleasant fact. Still, we want to share it with you. Because exactly 200 years ago, at the place we now know as Place, the guillotine was last used to behead someone.
Advertisement is loading…
With blood spatter and already in the display case at the Gevangenpoort museum: the guillotine. A wooden device with a razor-sharp blade that severed your head from your torso in one fell swoop. On May 1 210 the guillotine was last used in The Hague.
Het Groene Zoodje
The Groene Zoodje used to be located at the intersection of the Place (a square with cozy terraces) and the Lange Vijverberg. People used to be sentenced to death on the Groene Zoodje. Among others, the
Beheading
People were also beheaded on the Groene Zoodje, for example using the guillotine. In The Hague, the guillotine was used twice. On 17 September 1812 for a man sentenced to knife for manslaughter. And on May 1 1813 nineteen-year-old Adriana Bouwman was beheaded for theft and arson.
What happened to the guillotine from The Hague is unknown, but in the Gevangenpoort museum, on the where the Groene Zoodje used to be, you can find a real guillotine.
Advertisement is loading…
The guillotine in the Prison Gate
The guillotine in the Prison Gate, which is coming from about 644, was not used in the Netherlands, but probably in France or Italy. The machine is not yet complete. There is still an ax missing, in case the execution did not succeed at first.
Last execution
You don’t actually hear anything about the very last execution that took place in The Hague. Fortunately, Ronald van der Spiegel has the answer. “The last execution at Het Groene Zoodje in The Hague was in 1814, of a woman who had poisoned her husband.” says Ronald. “She would have been strangled to a pole.”
Ronald: “Or after 1837 executions still took place in The Hague, but in a different place than Het Groene Zoodje, I don’t know .”
Death penalty in the Netherlands
In our frog country the very last execution took place on 31 October 1813 in Maastricht: Johannes Nathan, convicted of murdering his mother-in-law, was sentenced that day at 05.00 hung up in the morning. The death penalty in the Netherlands is in 1870 abolished.
Sources: Gevangenpoort,
We found a lot more for you…
The Hague sheep are being sheared again: see here where and when
After the winter, the sheep on the city farms in The Hague no longer need their warm woolen coats. By a special…
Comments are closed.