City and Female Criminals:

This publication is dedicated to three women from the turn of the 20th century, who were associated with Lviv in a special way. Their stories came down to us more by chance than by any premeditated plan; probably neither of them imagined that precisely this episode would remain in the story of her life. Each of the three criminal cases in which our protagonists appear as the main accused is essentially an autobiography. Even though they were written rather against than due to one’s desire, these narratives (paradoxically) can claim a much greater balance of representations than classical autobiographies, since they were directly corrected by the testimony of others in the process of their creation. Given the requirements of legal procedure, what was told during the investigation was questioned and then refuted or confirmed by numerous accompanying documents, such as: conclusions provided by the administration of the community to which the accused belonged (so-called estate certificates); characteristics submitted by the priest of the parish of which the accused was a parishioner (certificates of moral character); testimony of witnesses; medical conclusions; parish registers; private correspondence (provided, of course, if such existed as most of the accused women were illiterate); material evidence, etc.

The first story focuses on 20-year-old  Maria Szutek  from Znesinnia, who was on trial for the murder of her daughter Zofia in Lviv in May 1870. The second story is devoted to a 45-year-old midwife from ul. Ormiańska (vul. Virmenska) named  Klara Weisshaar , who was accused of complicity in the crime of abortion, which she helped to perform on Katarzyna Słodka, a maid, in March 1905. The third story tells us about 35-year-old  Elżbieta Wenne , convicted of pimping her daughter in 1887.

The stories of the women described here are not stories of victims. At least, it would be difficult to call them that. These are stories about choices made, about mistakes and their price, about human relationships, about difficult motherhood and tragic childhood. These are stories about power and its experience: all three protagonists committed their crimes against those weaker than themselves, that is, other women or children. These are stories about guilt, the search for justice, and punishment. These are stories about the city and its inhabitants on the margins of larger narratives.

The plots preserved in criminal records, due to differences in charges brought against each of the protagonists, as well as their age, social status, life circumstances, ways in which each of them got to the dock, give an opportunity to look at the city of that time through the eyes of its different environments, thus allowing an attempt at "prosopography of the lower orders" (according to Carlo Ginzburg), or "decentering" of history (according to Natalie Zemon Davis), that is, its narration not by the ruling elites or the educated class but also by the voices of its (history's) less privileged agents. The fact that these voices make their way to us through criminal records, as almost the only available source for the reconstruction of the past of women from the social margins, those who have left no other evidence of their existence, obviously sets the narrative framework in advance, focusing attention on the crime committed by the accused. Despite these source accents, I still made an attempt to tell not so much about the crimes as about the people whose life experiences recorded because of these crimes. 

The noon of May 17, 1870, brought yet another disappointment for Maria (Marianna in official documents) Szutek, a maid. The job, which had been found for her by a midwife she knew in Lviv, just slipped right out of her hands, cutting off all the hopes related to it in a very untimely way. The job of a wet nurse, of course, was not the most attractive position, but she, a single mother with a baby and another child of several years, left at her parents' house in Znesinna, did not have much to choose from. Walking past the Rynok Square, Maria was summing up her short but rich 20-year life. Perhaps this was not what she had imagined her motherhood to be like, she probably had not wished such a fate for her children, so now she wondered how it happened that the man who had once promised to create a family with her, now repudiated her, leaving her alone with two children. A recent quarrel with her stepfather, who refused to "feed other people's children" in his home, added tragedy to the already seemingly hopeless situation. With such thoughts, Maria entered  one of the houses on the Rynok square  (№41) and sat down on the stairs to nurse the baby. In the materials of the court proceedings, which started shortly afterwards, she described the events as follows: "I went to a townhouse on the Rynok Square, to the same one to which the investigative commission later took me, then I sat on the stairs in the hall and, wanting to breastfeed the child, put her head, that is, lips and nose, to the breast, and I held the child at the breast for less than half an hour, and when I removed her from the breast, she was no longer alive" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/14013: 3).

The woman was imprisoned a week after the crime. The launched investigation determined the next three years of her life, which she would spend in the Mary Magdalene women prison in Lviv under conditions of "hard imprisonment", complicated by a one-day fast every week. 

Maria Szutek's case was not unique. The women accused of infanticide had a lot in common: they were very young, very poor, left with illegitimate children whom they either did not want or could not support. As can be seen from the cases, heard by the Provincial Court of Lviv in 1865-1905 (more than 80 criminal proceedings in total) and analyzed by me, the absolute majority of the accused were maids or hired workers who started earning their living quite early.

It is not known exactly when Maria started working, but we know from the case file that in 1864, at the age of 14, she was already working in the house of the relatives of her future children’s father, Piotr Koszuliński, where the couple actually met. At that time, Piotr, a 27-year-old conscript of a rifle regiment of the Austrian army, had just returned from service. Their relationship began rapidly, lasted several years, and had every chance to end in marriage. However, Piotr's family stood in his way, as they did not see their maid in the role of a daughter-in-law, threatening to leave their son without an inheritance in the event of his marriage to Maria. Piotr did not go against his parents' will, besides, in 1866 he was again drafted into the army, probably because of the Austro-Prussian war that started in June. 

Maria was very much counting on this marriage; at least that's how she explained to the investigator the birth of two children she shared with Piotr. Regardless of this, the woman could hardly call this relationship happy. The man periodically beat her. The facts of the beating were confirmed by the accused's mother, Magdalena, with whom, as can be seen from the case materials, Maria had a very warm relationship. 

It was with her mother that Maria gave birth to both of her illegitimate children and raised the first child, whom she supported independently; although Piotr recognized this child as his own, he, on the word of the accused, did not give her money. After all, the law did not oblige him to do so in any particular way. According to Austrian law, an unmarried mother had the right to seek only a one-time compensation for the birth of a child and maintenance of the child during the first 6 weeks of life, the rest depending, in fact, on the conscientiousness of the illegitimate child’s father. Maria gave birth to her second child before the Easter of 1870, but this time Piotr refused to recognize this child as his own, suspecting Maria of relationships with other men. Therefore, he did not come to the christening of the baby, which took place a few days after the birth and to which the mother of the accused invited him. The newborn girl was named Zofia Szutek, after the mother's surname, as required by law (paragraph 165 of the Austrian Civil Code stipulated that illegitimate children had to be given the mother's surname and could not enjoy the same rights as legitimate ones, in particular the right to the father's family title, his social privileges and inheritance). 

Maria Szutek's mother, Magdalena, probably felt sorry for her daughter, whose fate could hardly be called happy in her traditional village society. The “common-law marriage” in which her daughter de facto lived during her 6-year-long relationship with Piotr Koszuliński meant for her not only the risk of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy but also a bad reputation. 

The need to support two children was added to the poverty that, despite the early start of earning her livelihood, accompanied Maria constantly. In the end, it was the inability to cope with the latter that became the main motive for her crime. "I felt so sorry," the accused explained to the judge, "that my lover had left me, that he did not give me anything for the child, that my stepfather kicked me out of the house" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/14013: 3 зв.). The absence of any property, the declaration of which was a mandatory part of the investigative procedure, indicated in particular that Maria did not inherit anything after the death of her own father. 

A circumstance complicating Maria's case was, among other things, the fact that along with the murder she was accused of, the woman was also accused of stealing things from the Koszulińskis' house. From their family chest she took "a kerchief and a dress" that belonged to Peter's mother, Anastasia Koszulińska, as well as Piotr's "vest and handkerchief." The court estimated the material damage caused at 7 Rhenish guldens, which the accused undertook to return. Maria did not deny the fact of theft but emphasized that she had taken these things to support the children, whom Piotr did not want to take care of. 

The trial of Maria Szutek was started by the Lviv Provincial Court on November 23, 1870. So, six months passed from the time of the crime in May to the beginning of the hearings. All this time Maria was under investigation. The Austrian criminal procedure, as amended in 1853, divided the investigation into two stages: the preparatory investigation (pol. śledztwo przygotowawcze) during which the very fact of the crime and the detainee's affiliation with it were established, and the detailed investigation (pol. śledztwo szczegółowe). Even then, the procedure duration raised questions, but it was difficult to somehow influence this process.

The trial began at 9 a.m. The provincial court counsellor Dziedzicki, presiding over the hearing, announced those present. Among them were four people who had the right to vote: provincial court counsellors Petuł and Wang, as well as the head of the county court Lewakowski and the provincial court assistant Dr. Szczurowski. The defendant Maria Szutek could not yet hope for a jury trial and their sympathy, especially in the cases of young infanticides, since this institution returned to Austrian criminal law in 1873 (the first attempt to introduce it was made in the wake of the Spring of Nations). On the part of the prosecutor's office, the prosecutor Sawczyński participated in the trial; the court assistant Grabowieński kept records.

The first sentence proposed by the prosecutor for Maria Szutek was the death penalty. However, the judges considered such a sentence too harsh. In the interpretation of the woman's guilt, some doubts were cast by doctors who were confused in determining the causes of the baby’s death, either violent, caused by Maria, or natural, as a result of pneumonia. Bearing in mind the lung problem found by the doctors in the deceased baby and taking into account the fact that pneumonia was one of the main causes of infant mortality, the latter probability was quite high. Maria's lawyer, Dr. Henryk Gottlieb, made this expert conflict the main argument in the defense of his client. Maria received his legal services free of charge, within the framework of the "defense of the poor" (pol. "obrońcy ubogich") institute provided for by law.

Maria Szutek's criminal case was special in its own way by, among other things, the presence of the child's father's testimony in it. In most similar criminal proceedings against unmarried mothers, there were no such testimonies; moreover, the names of the dead children’s fathers could be never mentioned at all. The child’s father was of interest to the judges only when the accused testified about his encouraging or persuading her to get rid of the newborn baby. If the fact of such encouragement could be confirmed in court, the man could also be charged. It was difficult to prove such involvement, but when it was possible, the investigation tended to punish men much more severely than women. 

This logic arose from the then law, according to which men were "responsible" for women. The legal restrictions imposed on women by legislation, provided for the obligation of male patronage in virtually all important events of a woman's life. Among the most cited norms of the civil code by feminists of those times, supposed to demonstrate the absurdity of the legal position of women, was the norm regarding their impossibility to be witnesses in testaments: "monks, people under 18 years of age, women, the insane, the blind, the deaf or the dumb, as well as those who do not understand the language of the deceased, cannot be witnesses in testaments" (Дністрянський, 1919: 174). The legal interpretation of all women "on the same level as madmen, minors, and idiots" (as an anonymous contributor to the periodical Zhinoche dilo (Women’s cause) ironically commented on this in 1912 (К-ська, 1912: 1)) could become their carte blanche when looking for an excuse in criminal cases. The argument was also the fact of "being seduced by a man", i.e. moral decline due to the "typical" (in accordance with the gender stereotypes of the time) credulity and naivety of women, which the legal restrictions imposed on them were supposed to prevent. In the case of Maria Szutek, the identity of her children’s father, Piotr Koszuliński, attracted the attention of the court, probably due to the defendant's motive for the act: an insult caused by the man's betrayal, first because of the failure to fulfill the promise to marry her and then because of the refusal to help with the children born. 

Piotr's story in court was somewhat different. Although he confirmed the fact of having a relationship with Maria, as well as his desire to get married and his refusal due to his parents' ultimatum, the man denied his own non-participation in raising the first child and his unwillingness to take care of the second one. According to him, he helped, although he could not specify the precise amounts of such assistance. When asked by the judges as to whom he gave the money for the maintenance of the three-year-old boy, his first joint child with Maria, Piotr answered: "When that child comes to me, I always give him something, at least a piece of bread" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/ 14013: 8 зв.). In addition, the man tried to convince the judges that there was no need to give anything as Maria seemed to take everything herself. Because of this, however, she was accused of theft, with a corresponding complaint filed with the court. The trial in this case had begun even before the infanticide was committed, Maria attending the trial together with the newborn baby girl Zofia.  

Maria's case illustrates one of the variants of what the actual sole legal responsibility of mothers for illegitimate children, enshrined in legislation, looked like in practice. Her story also illustrates women's strategies for life as a single mother of an illegitimate child at that time, as well as the role that the city could play in these strategies. As mentioned at the beginning, after the scandal with her stepfather, Maria went with her baby to the city to take a position as a wet nurse for "a certain lady." However, she was unable to work with the child. Maria planned to give her baby to a village for a fee, as most city mothers of illegitimate children did. So for Maria, the city provided not only an opportunity to earn money but also a chance to get rid of the bad past in order to have a better future.

After all, it was not only poor single mothers that relied on such a feature of the city. For example, in the late 19th century, the growing need for private maternity hospitals, where pregnant women could wait for their child to be born, was explained in particular by the fact that "many people, especially unmarried women, belonging not only to the lower but also to the higher social strata, were flocking to Lviv, the capital of the province, from various neighbourhoods, looking for shelter" (ЦДІАЛ, 668/1/65: 3). The demand caused by the latter stimulated the creation of a maternity infrastructure suitable for their situation, since "staying [in the hospital] in conditions, completely unsuitable for them, and being exposed to disadvantages and too numerous and unrefined company" (ЦДІАЛ, 668/1/65: 3) did not meet either their status, or their capabilities. 

Maria Szutek, as we can see, did not use the city as a cover for the birth of her illegitimate children. Its role in her life was different: it was in the city that she looked for work for herself and shelter for her child, using a network of purely "female" acquaintances; thus, a "familiar midwife" found the job of a wet nurse for her, while, according to the version compiled for her mother on the way home after committing the crime, she supposedly gave her baby to a family from the village of Hodovytsia (about 15 km from Lviv), to "a man named Yasko and a woman named Kaska", whom she had found in Lviv. It was also in the city that Maria committed the crime itself, probably hoping that it would be easier to cover her tracks here. 

The then popular journalistic discourse about the "dirty" city as opposed to the romanticized image of the "pure and immaculate" village in relation to women, actually found its main arguments. The corruption of the city most often appealed to the topics of temptation, immorality and prostitution, with women as indispensable characters. However, they were most often treated without any special subjectivity, as victims of the brutal urban reality rather than its agents. Poor urban workers, mothers of illegitimate children, found their own particular victim narrative, depicted as "fallen women" paying for their mistake.

After the trial against Maria Szutek, we find a note in the minutes mentioning that "the defendant cried and showed regret during the hearing" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/14013: 12). A note of this kind is probably not accidental. Among the reasons that the defense most often pointed out in court, advocating for the mitigation of the sentence, were the defendant’s neglected upbringing (orphanage or excessive poverty of the parents, which forced such a woman to quickly learn to take care of herself), poverty, despair, feelings of shame and fear, young age, no previous convictions, and a guilty plea. It can be assumed that remorse, as one of the most effective factors in mitigating a punishment, was also promoted by the prison community, which Maria was able to get to know better during the six-month-long investigation. For example, in another case of infanticide analyzed (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/18161), the accused woman testified that she had been advised to confess by her cellmates and by a clerk who had convinced her that if she told the truth, she would get half the amount prescribed for her punishment. It is not known how much Maria's "regret" influenced the verdict. At the very least, the judges rejected the death penalty proposed by the prosecutor, replacing it with imprisonment. 

The Mary Magdalene penal institution for women was located at ul. Lipowa 1 (now vul. Ustyianovycha) in the premises of the former Dominican monastery, founded there through the efforts of Anna Petrkonska, one of the then Lviv landowners, in the early 17th century. After secularization in 1787, the monastery became secular property, and a women's prison began to be organized in part of its cells in 1841. The "Magdalenki" — this was the secular name of the prison — was governed by the nuns of mercy of the order of St. Vincent de Paul (better known under their Polish nickname szarytki) to whom the prison passed in 1856. Women sentenced to long terms (more than one year) were kept there. Probably, it was in this place that Maria spent the three years of imprisonment assigned to her.  

"Inexperienced" (without a criminal past) female criminals were treated by the supervising nuns in a special way. This was evidenced, in particular, by the internal rule not to house those imprisoned for the first time (actually, the majority of those convicted of infanticide) with those who had previous prison experiences, in order to avoid setting a bad example. The prison authorities, represented by the nuns of a Catholic Christian order, were obviously not only concerned with discipline. The educational function of the women's prison had its own special mission, specified by the very fact that penitentiary duties for women were to be performed by nuns authorized by the state. It was their young and inexperienced wards who the nuns probably considered to be their potentially most appreciative audience for whom the guiding Christian mission could be imagined to be most effective. 

One of the mandatory conditions of prison re-education was work. According to the prison statute, female prisoners had to work no less than 7 and no more than 10 hours a day, except for Sundays and holidays. In 1863, the Przegląd Katolicki, reporting on the Lviv women's prison, noted that "the corridors there were turned into workshops, where, under the care of just one nun, sometimes around a dozen unfortunate creatures, condemned to imprisonment by the sentence of the law and rejected from human honour, were getting used to hard work, which would protect them from desperate steps in the future and sweeten the bitterness of punishment with constant religious consolation for the salvation of their souls." Earned funds were credited to the prison's general account; the prisoner could receive the earned money after release. It was probably from this money that Maria undertook to return 7 Rhenish guldens, which covered the amount of what she had stolen.

It is not known whether Maria liked any of the kinds of work provided for the prisoners. Perhaps sewing or making stockings or gloves, which she learned in prison, could be useful to her after her release. According to what the local press reported, glove makers imprisoned in the “Magdalenki” were a significant competition to the local masters of this craft. Handicrafts produced by imprisoned women certainly brought image bonuses for the penal institution, being displayed, for example, at provincial exhibitions. At the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition of 1877 in Lviv, products made by Maria's hands could well have been exhibited. 

Of course, Maria had to do all this if she could work at all. One of the reasons why prisoners were released from work was illness. Epidemics of typhus and cholera were frequent phenomena of daily life in the "Magdalenki". A consistently high number of prisoners died of tuberculosis. According to Anna Pavlyk’s version, which she allegedly learned from the former residents of the "Magdalenki", the winter was a particularly dangerous season in the prison due to the fact that the premises were poorly heated. 

It was probably much easier for Maria Szutek, as a Greek Catholic, to fit into the religious and ritual routine of a prison run by the nuns of a Catholic religious congregation, than, for example, for a prisoner of the Jewish faith. However, she hardly managed to attend a service in her native rite: it was only in 1894 that the first Greek Catholic chaplain appeared in the "Magdalenki". It is not known whether (and to what extent) this circumstance was a problem for the woman. In the court minutes form, along with the declared Greek Catholic rite, Maria's language of communication was recorded as Polish.

For Salomea Bader, the wife of an imperial counsellor, March 1905 was probably a difficult month in running the household. Their maid, Katarzyna Słodka, was admitted to the city hospital with internal pains and a high fever. In a few days, 26-year-old Katarzyna would die, having previously shared the cause of her illness with her co-worker, the cook at the Bader household, Wiktorya Wisz. The day before, she had an abortion, not wanting to give birth to a third child out of wedlock. To have money for treatment, Katarzyna asked her friend to find the midwife who had performed the operation, so that she would return the money. It was about 54 crowns and a silver watch. Katarzyna, however, did not live to see them returned. Nevertheless, Wiktorya Wisz found the midwife described by her friend and began to demand the return of the money from her, planning to use it for Katarzyna's funeral. This midwife turned out to be Klara Weisshaar, the 45-year-old wife of Chaim Weisshaar, the owner of a barber shop on ul. Ruska, mother of eight, who lived at ul. Ormiańska 31.

As evidenced by the materials of the criminal case against Klara, the woman was charged following a collective appeal by Katarzyna's colleagues: in addition to the mentioned Wiktorya Wisz, the application also includes Zofia Danielec, the concierge of the house at pl. Franciszka Smolki 3 (now pl. Henerala Hryhorenka), where the deceased worked. Turning to the police was caused by Klara's refusal to return the money and her denial that she had allegedly performed an abortion on Katarzyna Słodka. By court verdict, Klara was sentenced to four months of hard imprisonment with a one-day fast every week for "being complicit in the crime of deprivation of a fetus under paragraph 5 of Article 144 of the Austrian Penal Code." Klara appealed the verdict twice, causing the case to acquire new and new details of illegal midwifery practice in the city, as well as interesting details of the coexistence of its different environments. 

The notion of abortion entered most European legislations in the 19th century, after the appearance of the Napoleonic codes and their penetration into the legal systems of the European countries of that time. Previously, what was related to pregnancy was mainly based on a woman's knowledge of her own body, which neither the state nor the church particularly delved into. With the development of medicine, demography, national ideologies and related policies, legal interest in the female body began to grow significantly. According to the French reformers of the 19th century, a well-organized state depended on a well-organized family: to have a well-organized family, it was necessary to control female sexuality and reproduction (Fuchs, 1992: 36).

In the Austrian Empire, along with the revised criminal code of 1852, abortion was considered a crime, for which responsibility was borne not only by the woman herself, but also by the person who performed the procedure, as well as by the man, the father of the child, in the case of instigating to and/or facilitating the abortion (for example, with money). Moreover, the punishment for those who "helped" could be more severe than the one imposed on the woman: she could get a maximum of five years in prison, while those who "helped" could get a maximum of ten years. It can be assumed, though, that terms like these were rare in practice. Judging from the abortion cases heard by the Provincial Court of Lviv in 1865-1905, most often the punishment was several months of arrest or prison. 

In fertility control, which women resorted to through folk practices, abortion surgery was apparently the last technique tried. Various popular abortion methods are mentioned in criminal cases: drinking "some kind of potion", carrying heavy weights ("a sack of potatoes", for example), "hot bathhouse." The above was supposed to restore the menstrual cycle, knowledge about which, judging by the testimonies of those accused in the cases of infanticide, child abandonment and abortion, was quite limited. Some women, for example, tried to convince the court that they had not realized they were pregnant until the very birth of the child. 

It is not known whether Katarzyna Słodka tried any of the above, but taking into account the two children born to her previously, she had some knowledge about pregnancy and its course. 

According to the testimony of Wiktorya Wisz, it was Katarzyna’s "groom" who helped her to find a midwife. It is not known whether he was the father of Katarzyna's children. His testimony is not included in the investigation materials. After all, finding a midwife in Lviv was probably not a particular problem at that time. Even outside the context of abortion cases, they are mentioned In criminal proceedings quite often. The accused Klara Weisshaar, for example, trying to convince the court that she was convicted wrongly, claimed that there were eight midwives living on ul. Ormiańska alone, so any of them could perform the abortion procedure on Katarzyna. 

Katarzyna Słodka died of sepsis. Blood contamination could be caused by broken hygiene standards and the midwife’s infected hands or by the instrument used to perform the abortion, a rubber catheter, one end of which had been left in the woman's uterus to drain abortion blood. A few days after the procedure, Katarzyna was supposed to see midwife again; however, she did not come as she ended up in the hospital. This material evidence was provided to the court by Wiktorya Wisz, who found it among Katarzyna's belongings.

Of the two children born to Katarzyna Słodka, only one was alive. The cause of the other's death was not of interest to the investigation, so it is not mentioned in the case file. As she was a single (unmarried) mother, the child support was probably a significant part of a her expenses. Katarzyna's reluctance to give birth a third time could be connected with this. Among the reasons could also be other personal motives, which the court, however, did not discuss in this case. The cost of the operation for which the woman had to pay not only with money but also with a silver watch (by the way, it was never found during the searches of the Weisshaars' residence), makes it possible to assume that Katarzyna had to prepare for this decision for some time. According to Wiktorya Wisz, Katarzyna still had to add 20 crowns to the amount she had paid to the midwife. 

In the Baders’ household, the woman had worked as a maid for two and a half years, first hired as a wet nurse and then as a maid. By the standards of that time, this period of service was sufficient for the job to be regarded as stable. Unfortunately, we do not know many details about his conditions and earnings. It is known that, after Katarzyna confessed to the mistress of the house, Salomea Bader, that she had had an abortion and was feeling sick, the latter called a midwife she knew, Róża Sonne, who lived at pl. Smolki 3. The midwife "attested to the patient’s dangerous condition and demanded that she be taken to the hospital," which was done. 

It can be assumed that the status of the Bader family (apart from the title of imperial counsellor, the head of the family was also a merchant, according to the details provided by Salomea Bader about herself) made their home an attractive place to work in, at least, due to the fact that there were two hired women in the house: a maid and a cook. Therefore, Katarzyna, as a maid, did not need to perform the work of a cook, which could be combined in many cases of domestic service. In addition, the cook, by the standards of the domestic economy of those time, was a "true lady", that is, not everyone could afford hiring such a worker. 

Katarzyna's co-worker, 26-year-old cook Wiktorya Wisz, had the main role on the part of the prosecution. It was on her testimony that the investigation based most of the charges brought against Klara Weisshaar. After all, it was Wiktorya who pointed to Klara as the most likely midwife of Katarzyna Słodka, finding her according to the description of the deceased: she lived on ul. Ormiańska, was Jewish and the wife of a barber who owned a barbershop on ul. Ruska. Katarzyna never mentioned to Wiktorya her midwife’s name, perhaps she did not know it or forgot it.

Judging on the case materials, it is difficult to say how close Wiktorya was with the deceased, but the fact that she insisted on the return of the funds, which Katarzyna had paid for the abortion, intending to use them for her funeral may indicate that she did not consider Katarzyna a complete stranger. Klara Weisshaar's defense, represented by the law office of Dr. Tadeusz Dwernicki, however, had its own interpretation of Wiktorya's claims, imagining them to be far less altruistic. 

Chaje Sure Rosenstock was Klara's birth name, as evidenced by a document provided by the register authority of Borshchiv (the place of birth of the accused) at the request of the court. The woman became Klara later. It is not known exactly when: maybe after moving to Lviv or starting her midwifery practice. According to her testimony, at the time of the investigation, the 45-year-old woman had been engaged in midwifery for 30 years. Klara was the child of ritually married (according to Jewish religious tradition, not officially registered) Aron Rosenstok and Chane Schajer. She herself was ritually married to Chaim Weisshaar, a man 25 years older than her (he was 70 at the time of the investigation).

The guilty verdict announced by the court probably came as a surprise to the woman, at least this can explain the significant additions to her own testimony, which Klara provided in the appeals prepared after hearing the verdict and addressed to the Supreme Appellate Tribunal of Justice in Vienna. In them, the woman questioned the objectivity of the trial drawing attention, among other things, to an anti-Semitic phrase she heard from the suer, Wiktorya Wisz, during one of the visits, quoting: "czekaj ty szmatława żydówko, ja ci pokaże" ("wait, you shabby Jewess, I’ll show you") (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/22477: 110 зв). According to Klara, Wiktorya Wisz’s calumny was motivated by "racial hatred" of her. This phrase was not included in the testimony recorded in the case before the appeals. It remains only to speculate why: whether the clerk keeping the record deliberately omitted it or whether it was added later when preparing the appeal as a new argument addressed to the central authorities in Vienna. There, this phrase might seem less acceptable than in the context of Galician interreligious/interethnic relations. The suer, Wiktorya Wisz, was indeed of a different religious affiliation than the accused: she was a Roman Catholic, just like the deceased Katarzyna Słodka. Both of them earned their living in the house of the Bader family, who probably were assimilated Jews.

The appeals did not bring Klara the desired result, she still had to serve the punishment assigned to her. The woman tried to postpone her imprisonment for six weeks. In the document in which she explained this necessity, Klara claimed that she was the main breadwinner of her large family and her husband, "a 70-year-old old man, was completely deaf and deprived of the possibility to earn" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/22477: 118), so she had to prepare to a long absence from home. The maximum she was allowed was perhaps five days. At least this is evidenced by the period from the moment of writing the application for postponement on March 13, 1906, till the imprisonment, which Klara began to serve on March 17, 1906. 

It can be assumed that the guilty verdict was not least motivated by the collected incriminatory material about Klara, which was not directly related to the current case, but significantly undermined her reputation in the eyes of the judges. In this context, Michel Foucault's conclusion that the court was designed to punish not the deed but the soul of the criminal (Foucault, 1998: 25) is the most consistent. The investigation failed to prove the fact that it was Klara who was the midwife of Katarzyna Słodka, but the prosecutor claimed in the indictment that according to the data provided to him by the Police Directorate in Lviv, Klara "had the fame of a midwife engaged in removing fetuses and that the authorities had received anonymous reports on this matter" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/22477: 79). The investigator also managed to catch the woman in submitting incomplete information about herself, in particular in the "previous convictions" column, which was mandatory for all participants in the trial (including witnesses). According to the document provided to the court by the Lviv City Center Police Commissariat, Klara was "known to have been charged with theft."

In spite of the fact that the whole case against Klara Weisshaar was, actually, dedicated to her profession, the woman said little about how she earned her living. Even in the most extensive "monologues", in the form of appeals, she was very tight-lipped about her work. For example, she never tried to convince the court that she had not performed abortions in her midwifery practice in principle: either because of moral convictions or due to legal prohibition. Only once did Klara mention her 30-year work experience, in a rather general description of herself. Instead, the woman spoke about her motherhood with many children not once: even in those days, eight living children was a lot. We know that one of her daughters was what is called a designer dressmaker in today's language.

Despite trying to avoid prison, Klara Weisshaar did serve her sentence, being released on July 17, 1906. According to Austrian law, the punishment in the form of deprivation of liberty existed in two types: ordinary imprisonment and severe imprisonment. Klara Weisshaar was assigned the latter. The main difference between the two types was that severe imprisonment was accompanied by additional aggravating conditions of serving the sentence: fasting, hard bed, solitary confinement or dungeon. Most often, the punishments assigned to women in the case of severe imprisonment were complicated by fasting, very rarely by dungeon.

Punishment by arrest also existed in two types: ordinary arrest and unconditional arrest. Ordinary arrest deprived the convict only of his personal freedom, without restrictions on eating at his own expense or engaging in certain types of activities. In the case of unconditional arrest, the convicted person was deprived of his freedom as well as benefits such as additional meals at his/her own expense, he/she was obliged to work, visits with relatives were granted only in the presence of a supervisor, and their conversation was subject to control. The lightest punishments, such as ordinary arrest, were assigned in "women's" cases for a crime "against the safety of life": when the defendants did not seek the necessary obstetric help and did not prepare for childbirth properly.

In the autumn of 1887, Elżbieta Wenne, a 35-year-old resident of Lviv, was on trial, suspected of pimping her daughter. In the indictment, the prosecutor claimed that from May to September 5, 1887, Elżbieta forced her young daughter, Anna, who was not yet 14 years old at that time, "to engage in extramarital intercourse, due to which she was used by two men." Obviously, the investigation managed to establish two cases for certain. Along with Elżbieta, Samuel Fenerstain also appeared as the culprit in the case. According to the investigation materials, he often visited Elżbieta's flat and brought "some gentlemen" with him.

From the preserved case materials, it is not clear on whose appeal Elżbieta Wenne was brought to justice. Perhaps the woman was reported by her neighbours. The accused rented a flat in the "gmach teatralny" (theater building), one of the residential premises located in the Skarbek Theater building (now the Maria Zankovetska Theater). Taking into account the content of the neighbours' testimonies and, in general, their number among the witnesses, this seems to be the most likely conclusion. Another possible link to Elżbieta Wenne's flat could be her close acquaintance with Samuel Fenerstain. The man was suspected of forcing women into prostitution. Apparently, in order to collect material necessary for the prosecution, the police had been following Samuel for a certain period, so his frequent visits to Wenne’s flat could be of particular interest. 

No matter what the link to, as the investigation showed, the elite brothel was, its mistress was punished with two months of unconditional arrest. Her accomplice, Samuel, got three months. During the investigation, it became clear that not only the youngest of Elżbieta's daughters, Anna, but also the eldest, Julia, were involved in their mother's criminal business model.

Little is known about Anna Wenne, the main victim in the case. The girl was probably born in wedlock, since her mother Elżbieta insisted that she was a married woman. We do not know anything about Anna's father and/or Elżbieta's husband; after all, the case file does not contain neither his testimonies, nor those of the victim herself. Anna and her sister Julia refused to testify in court against their mother. According to Austrian criminal law, every close relative of the defendant had this right. Despite the fact that the girl's minor age was an important argument for the prosecution, no document was attached to the case file that would establish exactly how old Anna was (such a document was most often a birth certificate). Elżbieta tried to convince the court that her youngest daughter, Anna, was 15. For the defense, the victim's age was important, because from the perspective of criminal law, 14 years was the cut-off age: a person younger than that was considered to be minor, while those between 14 and 20 years old were under-age. The punishment for a wrongdoing against a minor should have been more severe. 

In addition to the obvious assumptions about the difficult relationship between the victim and her mother, indicated by the case itself, the complexity of their relationship also became the subject of witness stories. Kateryna Stefaniuk, a witness, said, for example, that she had seen Elżbieta beating Anna, apparently "when she didn't want to do anything." Kateryna was treated at Wenne’s flat, using the defendant's midwifery services (Elżbieta, among other things, also worked as a midwife).

It is not known what kind of work the mother had in mind when she was beating Anna for being lazy. In the second half of the 19th century, child labour was quite common: according to statistical data collected in Galicia, children were the least paid workers after women (a woman received 75% of a man's earnings for the same work, while a child (referred to in statistics as "youth") could get 60%). In practice, the maximum age for starting work was determined not so much by legislation as by the parents’ decision, their social position, and economic need. For Alexander Granach, probably the best-known narrator of Galician childhood in the late 19th century, the description of his work as a child is one of the main lines in his memoir novel dedicated to the first half of his life. Having become a famous actor, the "little baker" from Verbivtsi (now Ivano-Frankivsk oblast) was ashamed of his large palms as an undoubted sign of the work-worn hands from his childhood.

Apparently, Anna did not meet her mother's expectations. Her resistance to the "work" that Elżbieta forced her to do was heard by the neighbours in the house. Anna Beisinger, a 30-year-old widow of a police auditor, lived next to the Wenne family. At the court, she claimed that "so many gentlemen came to her neighbour's flat that it was almost impossible to pass by" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/15863: 7 зв). The woman complained to her maid that she could not sleep at night because of Anna's cries, which could be heard through the wall: "a gentleman came and tortured the daughter [of Elżbieta Wenne — IC], who did not want to submit to him" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/ 15863: 9).

The man whose "torturing" the witness heard through the wall was named Gustaw Rosenzweig. A 32-year-old bank employee, he told the court the story of his visits to Wenne's flat. In the evening of September 4, 1887, he went to the flat on the city theater building’s third floor, accompanied by two friends. The hostess greeted the guests politely; leaving his companions in her room, she led Gustaw to another room, which was her daughter's. There, according to his testimony, he had a sexual intercourse with Anna. Gustaw did not say anything about the girl's resistance, adding only that her mother Elżbieta "could have thought of it and did not cause any obstacles" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/15863: 7). The investigation, in fact, did not raise any claims against Gustaw: the court was interested in the details of his "relationship" with the minor only to the extent that Elżbieta's pimping could be proven. This detail is interesting at least due to the fact that the word "rape" appeared in the wording of the guilt for which Elżbieta Wenne was tried. The woman was officially accused of "facilitating prostitution and complicity in the crime of rape." 

The preserved case file provides little evidence regarding legal interpretations of Gustaw Rosenzweig's actions. His status as a witness, however, enables us to assume that this case did not have any criminal consequences for him. This legal interpretation of the man's actions is difficult to explain without understanding the status of prostitution in the society of that time. The rapid progress of natural sciences during the 19th century gave rise to the temptation to see various social phenomena through the lens of biology. Authors (of the social sciences) willingly used the evolutionary theory principles to explain the functioning of human societies, the increased interest in heredity and the theory of degeneration providing tools to explain various social phenomena, including prostitution, by biological factors. State-regulated prostitution, therefore, was interpreted as an inevitable or even necessary evil due to which human vices could be restrained. For those benefiting from the sex trade, biological determinism of this kind was not only a convenient explanation but also a very effective argument. After all, judging by the reviewed case, this alone can explain the court's generally low interest in violence committed against a minor by a man. The factor of heredity could also have a different reading as both of Elżbieta Wenne's daughters were involved in prostitution through their mother: her coercion, bad example, or genes were not much distinguished among themselves in these circumstances.   

In this interpretation of Gustaw's involvement in the act against Anna, the role of the jurors — 12 men of a similar social status to Gustaw Rosenzweig's — also remains ambiguous. According to Austrian law, a juror had to be a citizen of Austria-Hungary with full civil rights, who was not younger than 30 years of age, had no convictions, could read and write, and paid taxes. Lawyers, engineers, owners of hotels, factories or other businesses, merchants, tavern-keepers, as well as craftsmen, such as tinsmiths, carpenters, masons, etc., were among the jurors in the cases I reviewed. The institution of the jury trial was often criticized by legal experts. Statistically, juries brought in acquittals about 10% more often than professional judges did. Thus, in 1885 Galician jury courts returned 74.5% guilty and 25.5% acquittal verdicts, while in professional judges it was 86.5% and 13.5%, respectively. 

Mandatory clarification of the prosecutor's charges in rape cases was the wording about "non-marital physical contact [marked in italic by the author]." Obviously, this clarification was not accidental since, according to Austrian law, marital rape was not a crime. The corresponding norm of matrimonial law asserted "that each spouse had the right to sexual intercourse with the other spouse, so the coercion of a woman (wife) by a man (husband) to physical intercourse could not be considered rape" (Дністрянський, 1900: 128). In the wake of social revisions of the institution of marriage and the complexity of divorce (for the Catholics, it existed, in fact, only in the form of separation), actively conducted beginning from the last third of the 19th century, this legislative collision became the object of special public concern. 

"Due to public morality", the court hearing in the case against Elżbieta Wenne took place behind closed doors. The defendant denied the charges brought against her. She also did not know what happened on the night of September 5 in her daughter Anna's room, where she brought Gustaw Rosenzweig: "Ich hab nichts gewusst" ("I knew nothing") is Elżbieta's verbatim answer to the question (the woman gave all her testimony in German, her native language). The chosen defense strategy probably worked: only two of the twelve jurors voted for the defendant's guilt on one of the main voting issues. Additional questions asked in the case of jurors denying the "main" voting questions caused more discussion. In the end, with revisions and amendments made to their wording, the jurors unanimously voted for Elżbieta's being guilty in "living on prostitution of other persons in September 1887" (ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/15863: 13). Elżbieta did not appeal the sentence of two-month-long arrest. 

The jury's consensus essentially denied any harm to Anna Wenne: neither forced prostitution nor rape was mentioned in the verdict that would ultimately punish her mother Elżbieta. The question to the girl (to which Anna did not answer in court due to her refusal to testify), which interested the judges first, concerned her previous (before Gustaw) sexual experience. Proved or only suspected as possible, the fact of previous experience was sufficient for no longer legally considering Anna  a rape victim .

The preserved case materials do not say anything about how Anna Wenne's fate developed after her mother's trial. The issue of changing maternal custody over the girl was not raised in court. It is unlikely that this happened. As evidenced by the criminal cases of single women for crimes committed against their own children, which I have analyzed, even in the case of actual abandonment of the child, women were obliged to take care of their children after serving their sentence. Of course, the decisive factor in such cases was the fact of their single, most often unmarried, motherhood. In the case of Elżbieta Wenne, the legitimacy of her children's parentage remains unclear. If Anna had had a legal father, the question of his custody should have arisen, at least in terms of the contemporary family law. According to it, married women’s guardianship had limitations. According to the jurist Oleksandr Ohonovsky, "women are generally incapable of embracing guardianship, the only exception being (§198 of the Code) the paternal grandmother, but even with that, a co-guardian must be added (§211)" (Огоновський, 1880: 97). In practice, legal norms obviously did not always correspond to the theory.

"Women's" opportunities of the city, regulated by legal norms and customary ethics, endowed and deprived specific destinies, given the character of each of their owners, as well as the situations they had to face in life. In writing the story of each of the women presented here, I was concerned not only to present their stories as possible versions of urban female experiences of the past but also to show their actions as choices they made that had their own narratives, motivations, and interpretations. Actually, through the narratives constructed by the accused and created about them in court, the similarities of each of the three stories, which do not seem similar at first glance, become noticeable. For example, we can see the extent to which the defendants were effective in creating women's horizontal networks; how legislative inconsistencies, in matrimonial law or in the regulation of prostitution, were not resolved in favour of women; how widespread victim narratives surrounding women could "work" against them in court or be used by them in search of their own justification.

In these cases, children and childhood deserve special attention. The legal vulnerability of children, evident in the analyzed criminal proceedings, made them hostages of their parents' life circumstances, personal failures or fatal choices. In poor families, it was often the mother who remained the only one responsible for the children, even despite the legal prejudices that official legislation maintained against women in this regard.

Story one:

1. Центральний державний історичний архів України у Львові (далі - ЦДІАЛ), 152/2/14013. 
2. ЦДІАЛ, 152/2/18161.
3. ЦДІАЛ, 668/1/65.
4. Archiwum Główny Akt Dawnych w Warszawie, 305 (C.K. Ministerstwo Sprawiedliwości), Sygn. 39, [Więziennictwo  we Lwowie: Zakład Karny dla kobiet] 1887-1912, K. 1254.
5. Цивільне право, видав Станіслав Дністрянський, Том 1, (Відень: Друкарня С. Гольцгавзена, 1919), 174-175.
6. [?] К-ська, "Справа жіночої рівноправности", Жіноче діло, 30 червня 1912, Nr. 1-2.
7. Анна Павлик, "Моjї j льуцькі [мої і людські] гріхи, а панська та попівська правда", Громада. Украjінська часопись, 1881, Nr. 2, 171.
8. "Zakład karny żeński", Przegląd Katolicki, 1863, Nr. 42, 667-668.
9. Felix Ackermann, "Territorialisation and Incarceration: The Nexus between Solitary Confinement, religious praxis and imperial Rule in nineteenth-century Poland and Lithuania", Acta Poloniae Historica, 2018, Nr. 118, 5-37.
10. Natalie Zemon Davis. "Decentering History: Local Voices and Cultural Crossing in a Global World", History and Theory, 2011, Vol. 50, Nr. 2, 188-205.
11. Carlo Ginzburg, "Microhistory: Two or Three Things that I Know About It", Critical Inquiry, 1993, (20)1, 10-35.
12. Maciej Gondek, "Austriacka procedura karna z 1853 i 1873 roku w praktyce orzeczniczej sądów krakowskich", Studia z Dziejów Państwa i Prawa Polskiego, XVI, 2013, Nr. 1, 245-267.
13. Stanisława Motyka, "Działalność charytatywna sióstr miłosierdzia prowincji Krakowskiej w latach 1859-1914", Nasza Przeszłość,1996, Nr. 86, 316.
14. Рима Праспальяускене, "Преступления стыда и страха: женская преступность в Литве в ХІХ веке", Гендерные истории Восточной Европы, ред. Елены Гаповой, Альмиры Усмановой, Андреа Пето (Минск, 2002), 324-330.

Story two:

1. Центральний державний історичний архів України у Львові, 152/2/22477.
2. Leopold Breitenecker and Rudiger Breitenecker, "Abortion in the German-Speaking Countries of Europe", Western Reserve Law Review, vol.17: 553, issue 2 (1965), pp. 553-568.
3. Rachel С. Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (Rutgers University Press, 1992).
4. Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
5. John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: a History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
6. Kamila Uzarczyk, "Dark Agents of Sex: Searching for the Sources of Prostitution in Early Twentieth Century Poland", Acta Poloniae Historica, 2016, Nr. 114, pp. 85-121.
7. І. Бойко, "Покарання на українських землях за кримінальним законодавством Австрії та Австро-Угорщини (1772–1918 рр.)", Вісник Львівського університету. Серія юридична, 2014, Вип. 79.
8. Мішель Фуко, Наглядати і карати. Народження в'язниці, переклад з франц. П. Таращук (Київ, 1998).

Story three:

1. Центральний державний історичний архів України у Львові, 152/2/15863: 24.
2. "Наша судочинство карне (дальше зъ соймової бесыды посла Мадейского)", Діло, 1889, Ч. 253, С.1. 
3. Станіслав Дністрянський, Право подружа, [Pукопис] (Львів, 1900).
4. Олександр Огоновський, Австрійське право приватне, 1880.
5. Wiadomości statystyczne o stosunkach krajowych, red.T. Piłat, Tom XX, Zeszyt I, Lwów, 1903, S. 26.
6. Monika Nawrot-Borowska, "Sources for Research on Childhood and Childhood History in Poland in the 19th and Early 20th Century – Selected Problems", Przegląd Badań Edukacyjnych Educational Studies Review, Nr. 35 (2/2021), 255–274.
7. Kamila Uzarczyk, "Dark Agents of Sex: Searching for the Sources of Prostitution in Early Twentieth Century Poland", Acta Poloniae Historica, Nr. 114, 2016, 85-121.
8. Тарас Галабурда, "Кримінальне судочинство у Галичині за Австрійським кримінально-процесуальним кодексом 1873 року". Дисертація на здобуття наукового ступеня доктора філософії (Львів, 2021).
9. Александр Гранах, Ось іде людина, переклад з німецької Галини Петросаняк (Київ, 2012).