11/08/2025
The review of the death sentence and Kjerstin’s time in custody
Note: This post contains a story about infanticide.
After Kjerstin drowned her daughter Märta in the Lillälven stream in August 1818, she was sentenced to death by the local court in November of the same year – first by the loss of her right hand, then she was to be beheaded and burned at the stake. On January 29, 1819, her case reached the Court of Appeal in Stockholm, which made the following decision: Kjerstin was pardoned from the death penalty. Instead, her sentence was changed to life imprisonment in the Stockholm penitentiary, 30 lashes with a rod, and a church penance on a Sunday.
On March 18, 1819, Kjerstin was transferred from the prison in Karlstad to the penitentiary in Stockholm, which later became known as the Central Prison in Norrmalm. After 22 years of imprisonment, she died there on March 13, 1840, of tuberculosis. She was 47 years old.
A tragic end to a tragic life. Kjerstin’s fate – from her childhood, through the crime, to her final days in the penitentiary – reminds us that behind every line in the archives lies a human fate that can show us a fragment of society in past times. Thanks to the digitized sources of the Swedish Riksarkivet and the new AI-based transcription function that makes court protocols searchable, such stories can be more easily discovered and followed in detail.
The next case is waiting to be told...
Image: ChatGPT
