City and Female Criminals: Three Criminal Experiences at the Turn of the 20th Century

This research focuses on three women: 20-year-old Maria Shutek from Znesinnia [the area of Lychakivskyi District in Lviv, t\n], put on trial for the murder of her daughter Sofia in Lviv in May 1870; a 45-year-old midwife from Virmenska st. [Armenian street, t\n] named Klara Weisshaar, accused of complicity in the crime of abortion, which she helped to perform on a servant named Katarzyna Słodka in March 1905; and 35-year-old Elżbieta Wenne, convicted of pimping out her daughter in 1887. The stories told by these women are not the stories of victims. At least, it would be hard to call them that. These stories are about choices made, mistakes and their consequences, human relationships, difficult motherhood, and tragic childhood. These stories are about power and the experience of it: all three women committed their crimes against those who were weaker than them, meaning 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 the big narratives.