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Judicial Corporal Punishment Of Women: Stories And Novels

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[Continued]

“Stop those silly tears,” said the Colonel when she was triced up like the others. “Here, boy, flavor the pear for milady.” To Maria's horror the cold moistened choke was dug up her anus before being placed between her jaws. “Now give her four.” When that was done the Colonel said, “If you shit on the floor you'll get a dozen. When I said shit it out I meant the prick, that's all. Now go to her, Roberts, and let's see her eyeballs pop. Show her what a Grenadier's prick is like. Stuff her to the gills, man, and squirt her full of lead, quick.”
But the stable-boy was exclaiming-“Sir, sir. Hoheit!”
“What is it now? Eh, eh?” Maria Daunitz was weeping, head hung. The Colonel understood. “She a virgin, is that it? Very well, let her take them all up the arse. Ever buggered a virgin, Roberts?” The Count spoke to him in accented English.
“No, Your Grace,” grinned the English lad advancing manfully.
“Ever buggered a boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can make this young lady feel full to the gills?”
“Yes, sir.” He advanced even closer, grinning gleefully.
It was happening, it had to happen. Maria closed her eyes, opened them again at the touch of the cockhead nosing her most intimate entrance. No, no… merciful heaven, it could not happen like this. She was aware of Ingeborg on her right, standing straight to attention, expressionless, while to her left Wedell sighed and still rubbed the bruises on her bottom. Then she was lunging in her bonds with a whining grunt-“NGGG!”
The fat prickhead was inside her, swelling her unutterably, then with a couple of lubricating rubs the living limb slid up her-SLUCK! She gave a speechless scream, a soundless arching pant. She felt full up, jammed, every atom of her wanted to expel the monstrous intrusion. She was sweating steadily.
“Get it all up, man. The deeper you get the more you'll feel it.”
“Nnnnghhhhaaaaaah!”
In, out… in, out… two, three… out! Please, please…
It was swelling, inflating… the size was some impossible… air, air, where was air, for God's sake?
“Coming soon, Roberts?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, drill her full of it, man.”
Sluck!
“Ggggaooeqw!”
Once, twice, thrice, the shoot of semen thrashed her insides, jerking her straining torso like some fish. Four, five… one last gasping jetting. Then the long length of the pipe was sliding slowly out of her. Maria hung breathless, in utter sobbing relief, dangling like some side of beef.
“Give her brandy.” The neck of a flask rattled at her teeth. Seething fluid burnt her throat. “Now spread her wider, Kurt. That poor devil from England could hardly get in. She's got half a dozen more to take.”
“Shall I liven her up with a couple, Hoheit?”
(No, no, no…!)
“Not necessary, I think, Sergeant-Major. Proceed.”
The second was not so bad, nor the third. After the third she was leaking stained come in driblets to the floor. The fourth was mercifully quick. The fifth and sixth took their frightful time. The last… dear God, the last. But they had left their veritable colossus to the end.
He was not a large man, an Italian judging from his name, but the dimensions of his member as he came forward brought a whistle from even the watching Count.
“Good God, no mule is better set up than that.”
“Hoheit,” came Inge's beseeching on behalf of her friend.
“What's wrong now?”
“She's… virgin!”
The plea received but a guffaw-“Not there, I think.”
The Italian's eyes devoured the curves of the under-ass, saw the thighs twitching either side the dark pink of the tucked quim, then fingered his foreskin back so that the club-like head coned up firmly. His hands cupped under the cheeks, he laved his dong with a shot of spittle and sank into the puckered tissue with a sigh.
Maria beat her fists under his buggering. It was impossible to feel any fuller. The smack of his thighs on her hips as he thudded into her drew stifled wails that turned to gusts in her belly. She was going to be sick, she was going to vomit. The vicious ramming was too much. The column seemed to throb and rise within her guts.
“By Heavens, man, this is what I call buggery!”
Total hysteria took hold of her, then, as the coursing girth grew even greater in her guts, her nostrils flared, sweat streamed down, the cock pounded into her until she felt his hairy belly on her ass. Then she tasted the first fluid of her bile. She began to retch. Helplessly, hopelessly.
It was as if it drew the gism out of her adversary physically. The syrupy stuff surged deep into her, filling her with misery as her mouth overflowed, past the gag, with her own hot filth.
It was a rape, and when he had plucked out of her tender and irritated sphincter she lay in her bonds nerveless, soiled and disgusted, whimpering.
“A rotten exhibition,” said the Count calmly. “Give her eight.” And it was done. “That's better,” he said after the cruel belting, and then Maria knew the worst. He was walking towards her, she felt the sudden throb of his cock at the fringed pink buttonhole of her cunt.
“Noooaaaah!” she managed to exhale.
“I'm on fire for a fuck,” was all he said as he slid into her, felt the tuck of flesh inside vibrate a fraction, and then lunged, spearing her. It was a short lewd come under the spraddled rump and Maria Daunitz hardly knew she had lost her virginity. Her bottom hurt far more from another rod.
She was on her knees. Her senses turned blue-black. There was much stamping and shouting in the room. They had released her and were sloshing water on the floor, sloshing it over her. Ice-cold. On hands and knees she hung her head, gasping. Curd-lets of come oozed from cunt and bum, driblets of bile from her lips; she felt fucked to exhaustion, beaten and buggered, unable so much as to lift her eyes. Her limbs were hung with weights. But no one was paying any attention to her. She had done what was required of her. She had “serviced” the Guards. They were occupied with Wedell again- to be punished, it appeared, for her brief incontinence earlier. All Maria knew was, thank God it wasn't her. No pity. Not pity at all.
Ulrika Wedell was imploring.
“No, no, not th-that… I beseech you… pleease!”
“Grilled Rumpsteak,” the Count was declaiming, wiping his bloody penis, “I'll have mine done three seconds, Sergeant-Major.”
Ulrika Wedell was attached to the “martyr's pole” like the attendant Karl, with the exception that the pad had not been slid up under her pelvic region. She was bared of buttock, legs gripping the upright, knees lightly bent, and face… thoroughly frightened. The whiskery Sergeant-Major stood to the left behind her. Dark weals crossed her hips horizontally.
Suddenly Maria saw it. An upright iron frame was placed below Wedell's broad behind, centrally. From the brazier the youth Karl plucked out with a pair of tongs a glowing grille. This faded quickly but yet was hot enough, when he affixed it to the top rungs of the frame, some six inches under the mistress's base, to make her clench forward to the post in a trembling cry-“NOOOOOO!” A drip of curdled gism from her anus fell on a bar and spat, hissing there. She pressed herself, pleading, to the upright strut. The Count's streaked torn gave a jerk at these manifestations.
“While I count three,” he said pleasantly, feeling it.
The mistress seemed to know what was required of her. Her face became a comedy of concentration, and tortured doubts, as slowly, very slowly, she flexed her knees, lowering her large rump still closer to the hot bars. These were arranged so that they fell vertically, up her arse-cheeks. Maria watched, aghast.
Suddenly contact was made. The striped seat sat on the heated bars and Wedell straightened with a startled jump, screaming. “Auuuu…!”
The Count nodded.
Huish! Huissch!
The long cane wrapped itself beltingly about the startled buttocks. The mistress tried once more. This time she jerked off the inconceivably painful burn with four livid lines inscribed up her hams. Four cuts with the cane followed them. Wedell's bottom was becoming respectably tender.
“I haven't even begun to count, as yet,” drawled the Count watching, his ramrod high. “Thrash her again, Sergeant-Major. I like my meat well done.”
“Wait!”
With clenched teeth and starting eyes Ulrika Wedell lowered her buttocks the little allowed her by her fetters. With a grimace of agony she touched the bars, seemed to lift up, then held herself there. Slowly the Count said, “One.”
Her face screwed up with the effort of self-discipline, fighting down her riotous senses, her temples sweating.
“Two,” said the Commanding Officer gently. He waited an interminable period, then said, “Three.”
Ulrika Wedell fairly hurled herself in one strangled stifled yelp of agony upwards, her body crashing into the upright. Four fearsome blistered burn-marks crisscrossed her cane welts. Her bottom was a cauldron of white-hot coals. Never had Maria Daunitz seen, or imagined, its like before.
In the Army trap back Ulrika Wedell indeed had to kneel on the floor, weeping; she was too tender altogether to sit as yet. Ingeborg put her arm around her friend with a shudder.
“Too bad you lost your cherry,” was what she said.
“I'd sooner have lost ten than been buggered again,” Maria answered. “It was quite the most repulsive evening of my life.”
“Yet in the interests of Prussia,” opined the other passively. “What mammoth pricks,” she said with another shudder, and an undertone of pride.
“What was it he said to you as we left?” Maria asked quietly.
Ingeborg replied gloomily-“The contest. Between us and Wolfenbiittel. It's to take place shortly. And evidently at the barracks.”
“We have to,” said a voice through set teeth, as Ulrika Wedell spoke from the floor, “win!”
“What spirit,” commented Ingeborg Untermacher as she snuggled closer to her friend. Already she was recovering, a gentle warmth stealing over all her body, and there were inchoate delights ahead, when they returned.
 
I am once again grateful to P. N. Dedeaux for having inspired you to go down the Doris Ritter wormhole, nsur. It's a very interesting story. And again, I appreciate your painstaking research. I hope you are still working on a fictionalized retelling.

Dedeaux inspired me as well. I borrowed freely from his story "Clotilda" for the public whipping of Mina in my story "Mina Berkeley's Voyage." "Clotilda" was posted by Elephas on the first page of this thread, so I feel like I've come full circle.

BTW, when you suggested above that Voltaire may not have ever actually met Doris, I was a little confused, since I recalled that in an earlier post you had mentioned that Voltaire (had claimed) to have met with Doris and had bad mouthed her appearance and piano playing. So I wound up going back up the wormhole, and reviewed a good many previous posts, and realized I had forgotten a few other tidbits.

Okay, so yeah, if the Crown Prince was gay, then I can see he could have been attracted to Doris for reasons other than her appearance. And others suggest she was rather plain. By most accounts, however, she was innocent, chaste, and charming, but being straight myself, I also prefer to think of her as physically attractive as well (and being over the age of eighteen!)
 
I am once again grateful to P. N. Dedeaux for having inspired you to go down the Doris Ritter wormhole, nsur. It's a very interesting story. And again, I appreciate your painstaking research. I hope you are still working on a fictionalized retelling.

Dedeaux inspired me as well. I borrowed freely from his story "Clotilda" for the public whipping of Mina in my story "Mina Berkeley's Voyage." "Clotilda" was posted by Elephas on the first page of this thread, so I feel like I've come full circle.

BTW, when you suggested above that Voltaire may not have ever actually met Doris, I was a little confused, since I recalled that in an earlier post you had mentioned that Voltaire (had claimed) to have met with Doris and had bad mouthed her appearance and piano playing. So I wound up going back up the wormhole, and reviewed a good many previous posts, and realized I had forgotten a few other tidbits.

Okay, so yeah, if the Crown Prince was gay, then I can see he could have been attracted to Doris for reasons other than her appearance. And others suggest she was rather plain. By most accounts, however, she was innocent, chaste, and charming, but being straight myself, I also prefer to think of her as physically attractive as well (and being over the age of eighteen!)

Thanks, Jon. I have to admit to various inconsistencies between what I have posted before and now, mostly as and when I discovered new information. That was the main purpose for my most recent series of posts, systematically posting in full all known contemporaneous sources and leaving out everything that was cannot be confirmed from those sources, to have a more coherent and more validated story than my more patchwork earlier ones. In the case of Voltaire, I originally said that he met her because that's what later books generally say. However, for my latest post I have looked solely at his actual text, and although he describes her looks, he doesn't actually say that he met her, so I have hedged my bets.

In respect of the Crown Prince's sexuality, whole books have been written about that. It is clear that he avoided women in later life (including his wife) and was attracted to men. Whether he was a practicing homosexual, either later or in around 1730, nobody knows. His relationship with Katte has been described as romantic, but that is undocumented. There were certainly rumours on that point even at the time, though, as can be seen from Voltaire's account.

Having said that, he definitely had at least two sexual relationships with (noble) women, one just before and one just after whatever he had with Doris. Both resulted in illegitimate children, so sex was involved. That may have been a confused teenager exploring his sexuality, but on those grounds I wouldn't rule out that Doris and the Prince were lovers.

Having a sexually-repressed father wouldn't have helped. Friedrich Wilhelm I was almost unique amongst Baroque-era monarchs in never having a mistress. Very much unlike, for example, King August the Strong of Saxony who famously had at least 300 illegitimate children, many of which he acknowleded and legitimised. One of August's legitimised daughters was the Crown Prince's first lover in 1728, the Countess Orselska. The story of how that liaison came about shines a light onto the difference between Prussia and Saxony. During a state visit to Saxony in 1728, Friedrich Wilhelm I and his son met with August who casually drew back a curtain to reveal a stark naked girl (presumably in a deliberate attempt to make fun of Friedrich Wilhelm's stuffiness). Friedrich Wilhelm blushed and stammered "The lady is very beautiful" while holding his hat in front of his then 16-year-old son's eyes. August, seeing the Prince's reaction to the naked girl, then arranged for his own daughter to be made available to him...

During the Prince's time with Doris, another state visit to Saxony in June 1730 set this entire crisis in motion -- the occasion was important enough to have its own (fairly long) Wikipedia entry. During the visit, Friedrich Wilhelm I humiliated and beat up his own son in front of all the assembled Prussian and Saxon nobility which was the final straw that resolved the Prince to make good his escape plans. But, he still managed to buy a gift for Doris in Saxony: as described in Doris's interrogation protocol of 1 September, he brought back 7 cubits of orange ribbon with silver from Saxony, and this was the only gift he gave to her in person on what must have been his very last visit, possibly to say farewell: the visit to Saxony ended on 28 June, after which it would have taken a few days to get back to Potsdam, so the Crown Prince would have been back only for a few days before he left again on 15 July for the King's next state visit, intending never to return. Summing it up like that, it does all sound quite romantic rather than an innocuous musical friendship. One doesn't exclude the other, of course -- the Prince was genuinely starved of opportunity to learn and practice music, and to read and discuss the latest books, as the King had forbidden both and had dismissed the Prince's educator, Duhan, and his music teacher, Quantz. If Doris had a harpsichord and was musically trained, this was a rare safe space in a tinpot provincial residence such as Potsdam.

As to Doris's looks, the only one who commented was Voltaire, who was describing her in late life (and as I said above may or may not have seen her in person). Ignore any other references that she was plain: they are not primary sources.

I now also have the chance to respond to your earlier comments:

Outstanding work, nsur!

I have a great deal of sympathy for the real, historical Doris Ritter, as opposed to Barbara Moore, who deserves everything she gets. It sounds to me like Doris was simply the scapegoat of a cruel tyrant. No doubt Friedrich had real concerns about conspiracies swirling around him, but even if Doris had been involved in some conspiracy up to her eyeballs, to have this young woman of 16 years flogged and confined to prison for life seems over the top, even for those times.

Do you have information about how the sentence was received publicly? I'm particularly curious if the public, who, I presume, was well aware of the injustice of this, nevertheless turned out for the flogging, and if there would have been enthusiastic support for such a spectacle.

Separating my sympathetic interest from my prurient interest, I must say that the fact that such a cruel sentence could and indeed was carried out (at least so far as the flogging and three years worth of, I'm sure, miserable, brutal imprisonment) is quite stimulating.

Thank you for sharing your careful, detailed research!

I have now posted everything we know about the public reaction to the sentence. There certainly is evidence that it was perceived as an injustice even at the time: we have six of the most prominent civic leaders and courtiers frantically conspiring on 6 September to find ways of changing the King's mind, and we have Guy-Dickens who said that he and everybody on the spot was incredulous at what was happening, immediately before recounting Doris's fate. So, this was certainly not within the range of ordinary royal behaviour. I have looked into other public penalties and floggings in Prussia at the time (a topic for another post), but have not found anybody who was punished with anything like this brutal severity. Being flogged multiple times by the hangman all around town was not part of normal judicial practice in Potsdam or anywhere in Germany a the time. As to how the public reacted? Nothing is reported, but I would expect with the same mix of prurient interest and affected outrage as would be the case today -- just because everybody knew it was unjust, wouldn't have stopped the people in the streets and market square from stopping and enjoying the spectacle, and possibly following the whipping party in a throng through the streets of Potsdam. Among the lower strata of society, there may also have been an element of enjoying a stuck-up middle-class girl getting her commuppance and being dragged down to their level, and below, to the very bottom of the social hierarchy with the thieves and whores.

And yes, of course whatever sympathy I feel is also mixed with a healthy dose of prurient interest -- I wouldn't be here otherwise...

This story has everything, doesn't it: Conspiracies and betrayals at the highest levels of power, with the potential to alter history; a son in conflict with his father, with an ultimate "reconciliation;" and an illicit, forbidden love between a beautiful young commoner and the Crown Prince.

I think it's safe to assume, contrary to how Voltaire described Doris in later life, that Doris was quite attractive, otherwise why would the Crown Prince, who could have had any common woman in the land, be attracted to her? Certainly he might have admired her for her musical talent or her character and personality, but those are not usually the traits that initially attract a man to a woman, and I think it's doubtful in any case that such superior qualities that she may have possessed would have inspired him to give her the material for a nightgown(!) The story also sheds light on the class consciousness of the time. As you indicate above, nsur, common people, no matter how well regarded and respectable they were among their own class, were seen as ultimately disposable, and to be treated according to the whims of the nobility. And certainly women, at all levels, were more or less regarded in this way.

How times have changed, lol!

In my view, class is absolutely central to this story, on two levels: the class divide between the Prince and the respectable commoner rector's daughter, and then the class divide between Doris's aspriring middle class family, a social equal of the Pastor of St Nikolai and the Mayor of Potsdam, and the masses of the working and under classes for whom penalties such as public floggings and the work house/Spinnhaus were intended to keep them in line.

This class divide is the central theme of Schiller's play Kabale und Liebe, which I have previously posted (for the opera buffs, Verdi's "Luisa Miller" is based on that play) -- I had noticed this myself, but in my reading I have come across several others who have remarked on just how closely Doris's story matches that of Schiller's Luise Miller. However, I think I am the only one who has drawn the fairly obvious inference that this must have been a deliberate choice on the part of Schiller, who must have known about Doris's fate. At least Doris and Friedrich both survived, unlike Schiller's tragic hero and heroine.
 
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One refers to Staupenschlag being reserved specifically for the crimes of arson and whoring.
Following on from the above reference to the role of public flogging in the judicial system of 18th century German (and specifically Prussian) law, I have come across a couple of accounts of specific women flogged in Prussia around the time of poor Doris Ritter. Possibly by coincidence, one of them was flogged for whoring and the other for arson, but both followed Doris to spend some time at the Spinnhaus.

The first is an extract from the parish records for the year of 1753/4 of the small Prussian town of Badingen, situated to the north of Magdeburg:

"1753, den 19. Juni um vier Uhr nachmittags kam zu Osterne in der Scheune Feuer aus und brannte selbige nebst dem herschaftl. [?] u. Meyerhause, auch Ställe, von Grunde aus. Sechs Wochen darauf, als am 31. Juli zur selben Uhrzeit, brannte wieder dortiger Schaf-Stall ab. Dieses sowohl als jenes Feuer ward angelegt ... [Einschub nicht lesbar] von einem 15 jährigen Mädchen, Anna Maria Brennikin, welche bey dasigem Meyers diente und ihrer Vorgabe nach von Osterne gerne gewollt hatte. Dieses gottlose Mensch ward von mir, weil man [?] wuste, was vor eine Sententz fallen würde; im Gefängniß seit dem 8. p. Trin. [August] biß den 1sten März ao. 1754, 52 mal bestraft worden; ... [nicht lesbar] und vom Vogt gegeben Ruthen-Schlag auf den Bloßen den 2. März auf 10 Jahre zum Spandau´schen Spinnhaus abgeführt wurde. Gott belehre diese Sünderin und erweiche ihr verstocktes
und gegen alle Ermahnung, gegen Wort u. Sacramente unempfindlich gebliebenes Herz. J. C. [Jesus Christus], der auch ihre Seele durch sein Blut erlöst [?] hat vom Verderben wolle zu derselben heiße [?] Buß-Thränen wieder und sein Geist einen solchen Brand nach ihr Heil entzünd, damit sie sich bessern und ewig seelig werde. Amen!"


Pretty convoluted language, and the transcriber apparently found some of the handwritting hard to decipher. It concerns a 15-year old peasant girl, Anna Maria Brennik, who (it is said) started two fires in a barn and a sheep stable on the farm where she worked in June and July 1753. It then says:

"This godless person was then, as it was known what her sentence would be, during her stay in prison from 8 August to 1 March 1754 punished by me 52 times; [illegible] and after being flogged with rods on the bare by the Vogt on 2 March, conducted for ten years to the Spinnhaus at Spandau."

This is followed by a rather hypocritical prayer for her soul and redemption. I am intrigued as to precisely what was involved in this young girl being "punished 52 times" while in prison, which over a six months period in the local jail would mean twice each week. Also, who precisely was the author of this entry, who says he was the one administering these punishments? The wording suggests some sort of preview of the public flogging to come, so maybe some private caning sessions. Anyway, it explictly says that the punishment was on bare skin, not clothed, although it is not clear whether "the bare" was bare back or bare bottom.

The other one is from a recent book on Prussian army wives which also deals in some detail with prostitution among the soldiery, and the efforts to suppress it (almost entirely without success, apparently). The book mentions French army regulations of the early 18th century that threatened prostitutes found to solicit French soldiers with having their noses cut off (it is not know if that threat was ever put in action) and the Prussian army regulation according to which whores found in camp were to be stripped to their shift before being banished -- I had cited that regulation in an earlier post, as according to the historian Kloosterhuis, this regulation would have been the judicial basis for the King's punishment for Doris Ritter, albeit in "sharpened" form (I say!).

However, even Doris's old maybe-lover Friedrich II clearly suffered no trauma whatsoever from the fate that his friendship inflicted on Doris, as 13 years later he was quite happy to personally order a prostitute to be flogged in public and sent to the Spinnhaus, once he came to the throne. This one happened in Potsdam, possibly at the same whipping post as used for Doris:

Flogging a prostitute in Potsdam.jpg

As a deterrent [to other whores] shortly before a large number of grenadiers, hussars and cavalrymen were garrisoned at Potsdam in autumn 1743, Friedrich II ordered the punishment of a woman suffering from syphilis who was said to work as prostitutes among the soldiers. A newspaper report from 28 September announced: "Today, an infected female by name of Maria Sophia Klein, born in Berlin, to deter other immoral womenfolk and so that no grenadiers would be infected, was punished with the Staupenschlag [public flogging] and brought to the Spinnhaus at Spandau until further notice." Prior to this punishment, a police raid was conducted in Potsdam after which six "immoral" women were rounded up and brought to Spandau for work at the Spinnhaus.

However, the book also says that this enforcement was very inconsistent indeed, and even in the days of the old prude Friedrich Wilhelm I with his laws against moral turpitude, there was a considerable element of official tolerance of prostitution in the army. As an example, the book cites the fact that in 1724, the roll list of one particular Potsdam army company headed by Captain von Roeder listed the occupation of the wife of one of his soldiers quite openly and plainly as "whore", meaning presumably that she was plying her trade with the knowledge and tolerance of the captain of her husband's company. Six years later, Captain von Roeder would be the officer who arrested and interrogated Doris Ritter on 1 September 1730...
 
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In respect of the Crown Prince's sexuality, whole books have been written about that. It is clear that he avoided women in later life (including his wife) and was attracted to men. Whether he was a practicing homosexual, either later or in around 1730, nobody knows. His relationship with Katte has been described as romantic, but that is undocumented. There were certainly rumours on that point even at the time, though, as can be seen from Voltaire's account.

Having said that, he definitely had at least two sexual relationships with (noble) women, one just before and one just after whatever he had with Doris. Both resulted in illegitimate children, so sex was involved. That may have been a confused teenager exploring his sexuality, but on those grounds I wouldn't rule out that Doris and the Prince were lovers.

It has only just occured to me that if there was a love triangle involving the Prince, Katte and Doris, Katte may have brought about Doris's doom in an act of jealous bitchiness -- it looks like it was his letter of 31 August that resulted in her arrest the following day:

1) Letter from Hans Hermann von Katte to Chief Minister von Grumbkow of 31 August 1730

"I recall that [the Prince] spoke of a girl that he had in Potsdam, whom he loved very much, the said cantor's daughter, perhaps she is the one, for whom he ruined himself financially by frequent gifts from his own pocket. I have never seen her and he has only told me of her once -- prior to his departure, when he regretted his absence."


From this, it appears that Katte didn't bring up Doris's name by himself, it was put to him in some fashion either in verbal questioning or in writing, and although he says he didn't know her, he thinks she might have been the girl Friedrich once told him about.

For the King, still looking for further co-conspirators to get to the bottom of the extent of the plot, the next step is obvious: an order to arrest the hitherto inconspicious and unknown girl was issued promptly and executed the next day, 1 September 1730.

In the end, Katte and Doris -- Friedrich's would-be lovers -- were the two who paid by far the highest price for the Prince's juvenile rebellion, one executed and the other one flogged, dishonoured and locked up in hell. The King, it appears, did think these were the two people in his son's circle whose punishment would hit home hardest. Given Friedrich's later behaviour, Katte's death was the ultimate trauma of his life, but there's no sign that he was all that bothered about what happened to Doris.
 
It has only just occured to me that if there was a love triangle involving the Prince, Katte and Doris, Katte may have brought about Doris's doom in an act of jealous bitchiness -- it looks like it was his letter of 31 August that resulted in her arrest the following day:



In the end, Katte and Doris -- Friedrich's would-be lovers -- were the two who paid by far the highest price for the Prince's juvenile rebellion, one executed and the other one flogged, dishonoured and locked up in hell. The King, it appears, did think these were the two people in his son's circle whose punishment would hit home hardest. Given Friedrich's later behaviour, Katte's death was the ultimate trauma of his life, but there's no sign that he was all that bothered about what happened to Doris.
Brilliant idea! This really needs to be a book or a movie. A bisexual prince at the apex of a love triangle involving an innocent young woman and a jealous, scheming man, an aristocrat who is truly the love of the Prince's life. The homosexual angle would create a whole 'nother dynamic, especially given the repressive political, social, and sexual atmosphere of the time.
 
Brilliant idea! This really needs to be a book or a movie. A bisexual prince at the apex of a love triangle involving an innocent young woman and a jealous, scheming man, an aristocrat who is truly the love of the Prince's life. The homosexual angle would create a whole 'nother dynamic, especially given the repressive political, social, and sexual atmosphere of the time.
As we say in Yorkshire, "There`s nowt so queer as folk."
 
Brilliant idea! This really needs to be a book or a movie. A bisexual prince at the apex of a love triangle involving an innocent young woman and a jealous, scheming man, an aristocrat who is truly the love of the Prince's life. The homosexual angle would create a whole 'nother dynamic, especially given the repressive political, social, and sexual atmosphere of the time.
If you're so inclined, there are no fewer than 61(!) attempts at slash fiction for Friedrich and Katte at archiveofourown.com:


Unfortunately, only one of them mentions Doris Ritter as a featured character and that one is the opening chapter of an abandoned story with no interesting content.

You can also get a modern German opera written in 1999 by Siegfried Matthus with the matter-of-fact title "Kronprinz Friedrich" about Friedrich and Katte's relationship (both played by female mezzo sopranos), and also also featuring a singing role for a high soprano as Doris Ritter (the only other named roles are the King and Queen as well as Princess Wilhelmine):

Kronprinz Friedrich.jpg

Plot summary is: "In their opera “Crown Prince Frederic” Siegfried Matthus and Thomas Höft lead us back to an authentic episode of German 18th century history. The eighteen year old Frederic, later King Frederic “the Great”, is forced by his father, King Frederic William, into a strong and cruel military career. The king’s violence is notorious. Wife and children are often beaten up by him in public. The boy interested and gifted in arts, especially music and poetry, puts up resistance against his father’s despotic orders. He falls in love with his young military confidant lieutenant Katte and persuades him to plan to escape to Britain where his uncle reigns. But the secret is discovered, Frederic is arrested and his father forced him to watch the execution of Katte whose head is cut off in front of the crown prince’s prison. Frederic bows to the king’s will and changes into a cold and lifelong broken character. "

I can see the attraction of that storyline, but personally I don't find Katte a particularly appealing character so I'm unlikely to do more than have him in the background in my fictionalisation (yes, I'm still planning to write one, but the problem with doing more research is earlier plot layouts become superseded).
 
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It looks like I'm not the only one on the 'net going through the same sources -- I have just found a blog on dreamwidth.org, where there is a lively discussion (in English) on all things to do with Frederick II and his associates. As far as I can tell, the participants are into RPG playing in that world, but they're very keen on authenticity and so are debating the biographical source material. Discussions are mostly about his relations to his parents, Katte, Voltaire and Wilhelmine, but inevitably the name "Doris Ritter" comes up fairly regularly.

The link to the threads concerned with Frederick II is here - most of the individual threads have hundreds of replies, so there is a lot of ongoing discussion there:


I haven't read all of this, but a Google search on cahn.dreamwidth.org and "Doris" gives several interesting discussions, covering much of the ground and the same sources as I have done here.

A few selections:

1. The German TV adaptation "Der Thronfolger" from 1980. I had discussed this here:

Thanks, Jon. There is at least one other, the 1979 TV mini series "Der Thronfolger" (The Heir To The Throne), which has Dietlinde Turban cast as Doris, with the very famous Günter Strack as the old king. It's on DVD but not online, and I haven't seen it. Not sure if Doris is the girl seen in the bedroom scene directly to the right of the film title on the below DVD cover -- looks a bit like Dietlinde Turban:

Thronfolger.jpg

Also no idea if this treatment has the whipping scene -- a 1979 TV treatment may well have kept that off-screen. It's based on the 1930s novel "Vater und Sohn", which is highly non-historical and treats Doris as a hysterical teenager bringing on her own doom by imagining herself as the Prince's soulmate and defender, but it's possible the TV script treated her more sympathetically.

As it turns out, this mini series was briefly on Youtube, but has since been deleted. However, somebody on the blog kindly provided a (rather irreverently written) plot summary which tells us how they dealt with the Doris Ritter sub-plot, and also with Friedrich's first sexual encounter with the Countess Orselska in 1728 (as also described by me above). Insertions by me in [ ]:

[On the Saxon state visit in 1728]:
State visit to Dresden: Ensues, complete with party times and orgy in as much as German 1980 tv law allows

FW [King Friedrich Wilhelm] and F [Crown Prince Friedrich]: *are wide eyed, with even FW enjoying himself at first*
F: *also says hello to Quantz, introduced at this point as working in Dresden*
Orzelska: *is also introduced to the audience by gossiping courtiers as both August's bastard daughter and mistress*
Orzelska & Fritz: *catch each other's eyes while their fathers have a drinking competition*
August: *presents anonymous nude lady*
FW: *makes a step in her direction*
F: *makes two steps in her direction*
FW *has belated reality check* OMG! Fritz, avert your eyes! *drags his son outta there* OMG! Fritz, this is a really evil place! I only was playing along to be diplomatic, don't forget that when your mother asks!
F: Right. BTW, can't help but notice everyone is happy here.
FW: They're decadent. Also, Prussia is a poor country and we could never afford throwing money around like that. *Passes out*
Court dwarf: *beckons F to O*
F: imitates a French Rokoko novel in his instant Orzelska wooing; since he doesn't sound like that in the rest of the episode, including in his subsequent scenes with her, I'm assuming this is an intentional signal on the script's part that he's quoting and while being attracted essentially role playing*
F & O: *have sex, not shown, it's just signaled by closing bedroom door*

*transition to*
F, gleefully telling W [Princess Wilhelmine, his sister] about his Dresden adventures: ...and then August practically offered all the pretty women of the court to me if I leave Anna alone! He regards me as a rival!
W: So she's his mistress.
F: Yep.
W: While being his daughter.
F: Indeed.
W: That's disgusting.
F: *shrugs* Anything goes. I'm a sophisticated man of the world now, I don't mind. Hey, how about a pillow fight, sis?"


[On Doris Ritter]:

F: *is at secret hideout with books, meets Dorothea "Doris" Ritter*
D: I live downstairs and heard your wonderful flute playing. Let's make music together! I also write poetry.
F: You have great taste in music. From you, even German poetry is okay by me.
*Romance "The Prince and the shy, musically gifted middle class girl" ensues*

SD [The Queen]: My children, my day of triumph has finally dawned. Today, your father will receive the English ambassador and make both your marriages definite.
F: Err.
W: Fritz, this is our day! Freedom at last! They're going to make you governor of Hannover and you'll be away from Dad's supervision for good!
F: *does not protest or mention Doris to anyone ever again*

British ambassador [our friend Guy-Dickens, the letter writter]: So, instead of us paying Princess Amelia a big dowry, she's getting Hannover itself in that your son is going to run it for us. Otoh, you won't have to pay a dowry for your daughter, either.
FW: Sounds good to me. You know, if you'd offered those terms, you could have had my daughter three years ago when she was a bit fresher and prettier than she's now. Women age so quickly, eh?
British ambassador: ...also, since we're doing all this in the spirit of British/Prussian harmony: dismiss Grumpkow, please. He's totally bribed by the Austrians and always hanging out with Seckendorff.
FW: How dare you insult my loyal servant Grumpkow!!! The marriages are off! *assaults British Ambassador, has to be pulled off him*
Katte: Bad news. Your father just assaulted the British ambassador.
F: Okay, Hans, get me a chat with the British ambassador alone, I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.
[...]

Meanwhile, on the road:
F: So, Keith, organize an escape horse for me. We're deserting.
Keith: *gulp*
Escape attempt: *fails*
Keith: *confesses all to FW*
FW vs F confrontation: *happens in several parts, including an almost son-stabbing prevented by loyal officer*
FW: *shows up at his wife's palace two minutes after his courier who was supposed to deliver a "prepare the Queen: this happened" letter to Frau von Ramen does, thus catches wife and daughter unawares*: Your son is dead!
SD: *breaks down*
FW:...to me, I mean he's dead to me!
W: what happened to Fritz?
FW: You are a traitor, too! *lunges, hair drags*
Frau von Ramen: Don't go Philipp and Peter the Great on us, your highness.
FW: I respect you for saying that. Take care of the queen. But as for you, Wilhelmine, punishment awaits!
*sadly, this is the last we see in this miniseries of Wilhelmine, this is how we leave her*

FW: *arrests Katte*
Katte: *is calm and loyal, but inadvertendly manages to let it slip Fritz owns books; Detective FW is on the case*
FW: *finds secret book hideout with poor Doris Ritter* : WHORE! Doctor and midwife, pray test that theory for me.
Doctor and midwife: Sorry, Sir, she's a virgin like she said she was.
FW: She stiill gets whipped in every public place in Potsdam and then locked up for life.
Doris Ritter: *exits this story*


So, it looks like they didn't show the whipping on screen, but they did name-check the virginity test (including obligatory midwife and surgeon) and showed the King condemning her. Not entirely surprising treatment for a 1980 TV drama. The suggestion that Doris was providing a hiding place to the Prince for his forbidden books comes from the 1930s novel that the TV adaption was based on but is entirely fictional: when Captain von Roeder searched the Ritter lodgings he found neither letters nor books from the Prince [there was a hidden library which the King ordered to be sold off, but Doris had nothing to do with it]. However, even this version has Katte dropping Doris in it.

[Continued in next post...]
 
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[Continued from previous post]

2. Speaking of which, another post on this blog discusses the Hinrichs book (which I haven't been able to get hold of) which apparently has the French original of Katte's letter of 31 August that I had quoted here:

But then, her name suddenly appears on the record in a letter written on 31 August by Katte to Grumbkow, presumably following on in some fashion from the aggressive questioning he was subjected to over the previous days. This letter is not reprinted by Ahnert, but quoted in parts in the thin book on Doris Ritter written by Anna Röhrig in 2003, translated by her from French (the court language) to German. So, this is our very first contemporaneous document. My English translation is:

1) Letter from Hans Hermann von Katte to Chief Minister von Grumbkow of 31 August 1730

"I recall that [the Prince] spoke of a girl that he had in Potsdam, whom he loved very much, the said cantor's daughter, perhaps she is the one, for whom he ruined himself financially by frequent gifts from his own pocket. I have never seen her and he has only told me of her once -- prior to his departure, when he regretted his absence."


From this, it appears that Katte didn't bring up Doris's name by himself, it was put to him in some fashion either in verbal questioning or in writing, and although he says he didn't know her, he thinks she might have been the girl Friedrich once told him about.

For the King, still looking for further co-conspirators to get to the bottom of the extent of the plot, the next step is obvious: an order to arrest the hitherto inconspicious and unknown girl was issued promptly and executed the next day, 1 September 1730.

The discussion on the blog gets the chronology a bit wrong: Doris's arrest was on 1 September, i.e. after (and probably caused by) Katte's letter of 31 August, whereas the below gives the misleading impression that Katte's letter postdates the arrest:

Personal note from FW to Grumbkow (in French): "You should interrogate day and night."
Protocol about the arrest of v. Ingersleben and poor Doris Ritter, and Doris' statements.
My God.The poor girl was only 16 (and a quarter). 16, and gets dragged into this and whipped all over Potsdam. Her and her parents things were all searched, but nothing was found there but what she had already said she'd been given by Fritz, which was:
1.) 30 Ducats.
2.) A second hand dressing gown made of "bleumorant Gros du Tour" with silvery threads for which she'd bought some additional material to stitch it on (this used to be one of Fritz', and she'd altered it for herself)
3.) A green "contouche" with stitched in flowers
4.) A pair of bracelets made of mother-of-pearl and gold
5.) 7 inches orange coloured ribbons with silver.
The guys in charge of the interrogation say this was all older stuff and not of good quality, they hadn't found anything else, the parents swear there had been nothing improper about the relationship and ask for the King's mercy for their arrested daughter. Grumbkow asked Katte on August 31st about Doris Ritter, and Katte wrote: je me rappelle , qu'il me parlait dans son dernier voyage ici à Berlin d'une fille qu' il avait à Potsdam , qu ' il aimait beaucoup, la disant fille de chantre, peut être que c'est elle , qui a donné des fréquentes saignées à sa bourse. Je ne l'ai jamais vue et il ne m 'en a parlé qu ' une fois avant son départ comme regrettant son absence .
Hinrichs then quotes FW's orders to have her whipped and put into a workhouse for the rest of her life. This is on page 70, and that's as far as I got. I must interrupt now.


In the discussion thread immediately following that post, the blog denizens then cover the Friedrich-Katte-Doris love triangle, with a lot of sympathy for Doris (and not a lot for Voltaire calling her ugly):

Reply 1:
My God.The poor girl was only 16 (and a quarter). 16, and gets dragged into this and whipped all over Potsdam.
But the *important* thing is that she wasn't especially attractive in her middle age, right?
Sigh. Poor girl. I'm glad she got a happier ending after all that suffering.


Reply 2:
But the *important* thing is that she wasn't especially attractive in her middle age, right?

Sigh. Poor girl. I'm glad she got a happier ending after all that suffering.


Yep. And you know, for all the unfair accusations that Fritz didn't do anything for the Kattes - which he so did , and the debate as to whether or not he was unfair to Peter [Keith] - I think Doris Ritter would have had far more room to complain. Because the only (remote) contact she ever had with Fritz post 1730 was that when her husband wanted the license to run a rent-a-carriage enterprise in Berlin, he got it following her petition. And that's it. Whippings, being called a whore in public, three years of harsh labor before FW communicated her sentence, and she gets nothing. She can't even tell herself that she was in any way important to Fritz afterwards - whereas Katte and Peter (in differing degrees) certainly were - that it might have been worth it because there had been love.

I notice that Keyserlingk had to sleep in Fritz's bedroom starting January 21, 1730. Kloosterhuis says FW wrote the order for Peter to be shipped off to Wesel on January 21, 1730.

Wow. Somebody got caught fooling around with the page!


Definitely looks like it! And wasn't Katte away in London one last time in the winter of 29/30? The overlaping of Katte and Peter in Fritz' life is definitely something no fictional depiction other than Roes took into account. Monogamous, they were not, it seems. (Even leaving aside whatever Fritz thought he was doing with Doris Ritter and whether there was "some girl" Katte had in Berlin if "some girl" wasn't code for "must make sure Wilhelmine doesn't get implicated in the escape attempt".


Reply 3:
Monogamous, they were not, it seems.

Either that, or the Fritz/Katte relationship didn't turn romantic/sexual until after Peter left. Fritz and Katte only started to make friends in mid 1729 (we don't know exactly when). Katte seems not to have been included in the November 1729 escape plan. Which makes sense, since they'd only really known each other for a handful of months at that point. Peter leaves in January 1730. That leaves Fritz and Katte about six months to have an affair after Peter's gone.

Now, I do think they weren't exclusive. But the chronology does work if you want to make it exclusive. And it's possible to reconcile that with Wilhelmine's memories, if you go with Peter as still the primary significant other in Fritz's life until early 1730, with Katte and Fritz exchanging some words en passant in 1729 about music and literature, and with Katte and Keith overlapping as Fritzian friends but not lovers. Fritz may specifically have turned to his not-yet-close-friend Katte as a new confidant as a result of Peter being sent away.

Now, possibly Fritz and Katte were friends with benefits from early on, in 1729, and only after a few months of that did Katte become someone Fritz entrusted with his sensitive treasonous plans, but we just don't know.

(I personally am writing them poly in the fix-it fic, wherein Keith and Katte eventually hook up while Fritz is lying low and they're looking for him, and then when they all live happily ever after together, they carry on polyamorously. From the guy who told Fredersdorf to take a page or hunter with him, that seems reasonable.)

Plus, re Doris and the mysterious "some girl," as you've pointed out, Lehndorff demonstrates just how much bi men could compartmentalize their romantic lives by gender.


Reply 4:
Voltaire complaining about Doris Ritter‘s looks will never cease to amaze me in its, well, Voltaire-ness. I mean, it‘s besides the point in any case - the point being that she‘s a victim of royal injustice however she looks - but complaining that a woman who has gone through three years in the workhouse and public whippings and then somehow has managed to build a life for herself afterwards, with a husband and children, does not look like a romantic heroine is, well, to misquote Shaffer‘s Mozart: What can one say but - Voltaire!

3. Finally, they managed to dig up another (sort of) primary source for Doris, although an extremely unreliable one. This is from a book written by Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, who was very briefly Frederick the Great's personal physician just before his death in 1786, and on the back of this wrote a series of books about the late King supposedly based on their death bed chats and confidences. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (quoted by Wikipedia), "[t]hese writings display extraordinary personal vanity, and convey a wholly false impression of Frederick's character." I can't be bothered to read the books in full, but apparently, Zimmermann tried to defend Frederick from the then-already-widespread rumours of homosexuality by blaming his lack of female relations on a bout of STD plus the trauma of what happened to Doris. Or, as VERY loosely paraphrased on the blog:

"As we all know, Voltaire and countless other French bastards as well as some German ones have slandered our noble King by claiming he was into men. Even I, reader, had my doubts when someone claiming to have been his lover told me there was guy on guy action until shortly before the 7 Years War. But really, this is all nonsense. Let me things straight, and I do mean STRAIGHT.
Fritz loved women. Adored them, couldn’t get enough oft hem. But when poor Doris got whipped and locked up, he was traumatized. (I don’t name Doris Ritter by name, I just say „a girl cruelly punished by FW who didn’t even have sex with him“.) Never ever again would he endanger a woman he actually liked! So he went to whores instead. Lots of whores, because he was so utterly manly and potent. Inevitably, STD ensued.
Fritz then asked one of his dastardly Schwedt cousins for help. Heinrich von Schwedt made him consult that utter quack Malchow, who put him through a cure which was no such thing. Fritz, thinking himself cured, then married EC with a clear conscience. And sure, he was a bit disgruntled about his father having forced the marriage on him, but he couldn’t help but falling in love with her, seeing as she was pretty and devoted and docile. For six months, there was utter married bliss and sex sex sex. Then, alas, the STD returned.
Now we all know our noble king was a man of action, and as ruthless towards himself as to everyone else. To protect his beloved wife, he had an operation done. This operation actually just stopped his semen flowing, i.e. it was sterilization by cutting off the semen transmission, but the quack who did it was clumsy, and so Fritz thought he got castrated! Which he totally was not. I can’t emphasize enough that he was NOT a eunuch, he just thought he was, got major body issues, and never ever had sex with anyone again. However, being a satirist himself, he knew there’d be major satire to fear from all those people envious of his manliness. So he decided to throw them off the scent by faking an interest in gay Greeks, gay Romans, gay poetry and gay people. It worked, too.
Not that he ever stopped loving the ladies in his mind. Just look at what happened with Barbarina. Can you explain that other than him wanting her and believing himself unable to actually have her? You can’t. He even kept her portrait in his bedroom. Shed a tear for all the Fritz/Barbarina action that didn’t happen, readers. Our King even forbade anyone to look at his naked body after he died to protect his secret. The only reason why I am now divulging it is that those French bastards won’t shut up with their gay insinuations, and it’s my patriotic duty to set things STRAIGHT.
"
 
It looks like I'm not the only one on the 'net going through the same sources -- I have just found a blog on dreamwidth.org, where there is a lively discussion (in English) on all things to do with Frederick II and his associates. As far as I can tell, the participants are into RPG playing in that world, but they're very keen on authenticity and so are debating the biographical source material. Discussions are mostly about his relations to his parents, Katte, Voltaire and Wilhelmine, but inevitably the name "Doris Ritter" comes up fairly regularly.

The link to the threads concerned with Frederick II is here - most of the individual threads have hundreds of replies, so there is a lot of ongoing discussion there:


I haven't read all of this, but a Google search on cahn.dreamwidth.org and "Doris" gives several interesting discussions, covering much of the ground and the same sources as I have done here.

A few selections:

1. The German TV adaptation "Der Thronfolger" from 1980. I had discussed this here:



As it turns out, this mini series was briefly on Youtube, but has since been deleted. However, somebody on the blog kindly provided a (rather irreverently written) plot summary which tells us how they dealt with the Doris Ritter sub-plot, and also with Friedrich's first sexual encounter with the Countess Orselska in 1728 (as also described by me above). Insertions by me in [ ]:

[On the Saxon state visit in 1728]:
State visit to Dresden: Ensues, complete with party times and orgy in as much as German 1980 tv law allows

FW [King Friedrich Wilhelm] and F [Crown Prince Friedrich]: *are wide eyed, with even FW enjoying himself at first*
F: *also says hello to Quantz, introduced at this point as working in Dresden*
Orzelska: *is also introduced to the audience by gossiping courtiers as both August's bastard daughter and mistress*
Orzelska & Fritz: *catch each other's eyes while their fathers have a drinking competition*
August: *presents anonymous nude lady*
FW: *makes a step in her direction*
F: *makes two steps in her direction*
FW *has belated reality check* OMG! Fritz, avert your eyes! *drags his son outta there* OMG! Fritz, this is a really evil place! I only was playing along to be diplomatic, don't forget that when your mother asks!
F: Right. BTW, can't help but notice everyone is happy here.
FW: They're decadent. Also, Prussia is a poor country and we could never afford throwing money around like that. *Passes out*
Court dwarf: *beckons F to O*
F: imitates a French Rokoko novel in his instant Orzelska wooing; since he doesn't sound like that in the rest of the episode, including in his subsequent scenes with her, I'm assuming this is an intentional signal on the script's part that he's quoting and while being attracted essentially role playing*
F & O: *have sex, not shown, it's just signaled by closing bedroom door*

*transition to*
F, gleefully telling W [Princess Wilhelmine, his sister] about his Dresden adventures: ...and then August practically offered all the pretty women of the court to me if I leave Anna alone! He regards me as a rival!
W: So she's his mistress.
F: Yep.
W: While being his daughter.
F: Indeed.
W: That's disgusting.
F: *shrugs* Anything goes. I'm a sophisticated man of the world now, I don't mind. Hey, how about a pillow fight, sis?"


[On Doris Ritter]:

F: *is at secret hideout with books, meets Dorothea "Doris" Ritter*
D: I live downstairs and heard your wonderful flute playing. Let's make music together! I also write poetry.
F: You have great taste in music. From you, even German poetry is okay by me.
*Romance "The Prince and the shy, musically gifted middle class girl" ensues*

SD [The Queen]: My children, my day of triumph has finally dawned. Today, your father will receive the English ambassador and make both your marriages definite.
F: Err.
W: Fritz, this is our day! Freedom at last! They're going to make you governor of Hannover and you'll be away from Dad's supervision for good!
F: *does not protest or mention Doris to anyone ever again*

British ambassador [our friend Guy-Dickens, the letter writter]: So, instead of us paying Princess Amelia a big dowry, she's getting Hannover itself in that your son is going to run it for us. Otoh, you won't have to pay a dowry for your daughter, either.
FW: Sounds good to me. You know, if you'd offered those terms, you could have had my daughter three years ago when she was a bit fresher and prettier than she's now. Women age so quickly, eh?
British ambassador: ...also, since we're doing all this in the spirit of British/Prussian harmony: dismiss Grumpkow, please. He's totally bribed by the Austrians and always hanging out with Seckendorff.
FW: How dare you insult my loyal servant Grumpkow!!! The marriages are off! *assaults British Ambassador, has to be pulled off him*
Katte: Bad news. Your father just assaulted the British ambassador.
F: Okay, Hans, get me a chat with the British ambassador alone, I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.
[...]

Meanwhile, on the road:
F: So, Keith, organize an escape horse for me. We're deserting.
Keith: *gulp*
Escape attempt: *fails*
Keith: *confesses all to FW*
FW vs F confrontation: *happens in several parts, including an almost son-stabbing prevented by loyal officer*
FW: *shows up at his wife's palace two minutes after his courier who was supposed to deliver a "prepare the Queen: this happened" letter to Frau von Ramen does, thus catches wife and daughter unawares*: Your son is dead!
SD: *breaks down*
FW:...to me, I mean he's dead to me!
W: what happened to Fritz?
FW: You are a traitor, too! *lunges, hair drags*
Frau von Ramen: Don't go Philipp and Peter the Great on us, your highness.
FW: I respect you for saying that. Take care of the queen. But as for you, Wilhelmine, punishment awaits!
*sadly, this is the last we see in this miniseries of Wilhelmine, this is how we leave her*

FW: *arrests Katte*
Katte: *is calm and loyal, but inadvertendly manages to let it slip Fritz owns books; Detective FW is on the case*
FW: *finds secret book hideout with poor Doris Ritter* : WHORE! Doctor and midwife, pray test that theory for me.
Doctor and midwife: Sorry, Sir, she's a virgin like she said she was.
FW: She stiill gets whipped in every public place in Potsdam and then locked up for life.
Doris Ritter: *exits this story*


So, it looks like they didn't show the whipping on screen, but they did name-check the virginity test (including obligatory midwife and surgeon) and showed the King condemning her. Not entirely surprising treatment for a 1980 TV drama. The suggestion that Doris was providing a hiding place to the Prince for his forbidden books comes from the 1930s novel that the TV adaption was based on but is entirely fictional: when Captain von Roeder searched the Ritter lodgings he found neither letters nor books from the Prince [there was a hidden library which the King ordered to be sold off, but Doris had nothing to do with it]. However, even this version has Katte dropping Doris in it.

[Continued in next post...]
I have now discovered that the 1979/80 TV adaptation "Der Thronfolger" is on Youtube after all, but with a deliberately misleading (and hence unsearchable) title, presumably to protect against copyright strikes. So, we can see the Doris Ritter scenes from this adaptation online here:


There are three scenes featuring Doris, although as expected (and unfortunately for the CF audience) all interesting material is kept off-screen. The Doris scenes are at the following timings in the Youtube video:
  1. 10:45 to 14:40: Their first meeting. The Prince has a secret (fictional) hideaway for his forbidden books and his illicit flute lessons with his teacher Quantz that just happens to be in the same house as Doris's family lodgings. Doris finds a sheet of flute music on the stairs and enters the hideaway to return it, having previously heard flute playing from that room. She's cast very much as the innocent cantor's daughter here, all demure and modest. A chat ensues where she says that she had only moved to Potsdam two weeks earlier and that she plays the spinet "although not as well as you play the flute" and also writes poetry. He doesn't identify himself but asks her for her name. She introduces herself as "Dorothea Ritter, but my girlfriends call me Doris" -- "How about your boyfriends?" -- "I don't have any boyfriends. Do you have a girlfriend" -- "No" -- "I see. You prefer male company." -- "At the moment I prefer your company." -- "What do you mean to say, Sir?" -- "I mean that we should play music together". Scene changes to the outside of the house, where music is being heard in the streets, and a shadowy character (identified in the next scene as the evil Eversmann, acting as the King's spy) writes something down in a notebook.
  2. 15:24 to 17:35: Their last meeting. We skip forward 100 days, and the Prince gives Doris a present of a bracelet to celebrate 100 days knowing her. She blushes and says she's never had any jewellery before as her father doesn't allow it. He says that he is very fond of her and will miss her -- she would soon understand what he meant. She hands him a poem that makes it clear that she knows who he is. He asks "How long have you known?" - "It does not matter. Does it change our feelings for each other?" They kiss rather haltingly and innocently.
  3. 45:55 to 48:38: Following the attempted escape, the Prince and Katte have been arrested. At the beginning of this sequence, Katte is speaking to the King and says that he foiled the Prince's plans by not leaving Berlin as agreed, and also didn't send the Prince's library abroad as he was meant to. The King latches onto the word "library" and repeats "What library?", presumably making the link to Eversmann's spy report from the earlier scene. At 46:15 jump cut to the King standing in the secret hideaway flicking through a heap of frilly clothes with his walking cane. We see a distressed Doris standing nervously next to the King who demands to know whether these are all the gifts she has received. The King exclaims: "A night gown! You maintain your assertion?" -- "Yes, Your Majesty, it is the truth." - "Surgeon! Midwife! Examine her!" A man and a woman come up and lead Doris to one side, off-screen (boo!). While we wait for them to return, the King works himself into a rage, shouting "A love nest!", interrogates the Prince's librarian, throws books, paintings and music around and smashes the Prince's flute. Then, Doris re-enters together with the midwife and surgeon. The latter says: "It is true, Your Majesty." -- "The girl is a virgin?" - "Yes, very certainly" -- The King turns dramatically to Doris and says with menace "Is nothing here as it seems?", then jumps up and pronounces: "She will be publically flogged at all squares of Potsdam, and then sent to the Spinnhaus at Spandau. For life! Take her away!" Doris stares back, showing no emotion except for swallowing visibly, then turns away and leaves the frame, presumably being led to her flogging. She doesn't appear on screen again thereafter, so the actual punishment is entirely off-screen, we don't even get to see her in prison or being led to the whipping post.
So, there are quite a few recognisable elements from the sources here, but Ingersleben and Captain Roeder have been removed from the record. Instead, Doris gets to be interrogated by the King himself, and gets to hear his devastating verdict in person. We do get to see the infamous night gown (which looks white here, not blue) and the midwife and surgeon, though.
 
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What a beautiful Doris! I would give up my Winter Palace in Baden-Wurttemberg to watch her stripped naked and flogged through the streets of Potsdam!

The actor portraying her is Dietlinde Turban, which I believe you mentioned in a previous post, nsur. I immediately googled "Dietlinde Turban nude," and found no hits. Then, simply hoping for some better quality photos than in the video, I turned my pervy expectations down a notch and googled "Dietlinde Turban Der Thronfolger" and found even less.

Then I stepped out of perv mode entirely and looked into Dietlinde Turban's bio and discovered that she is one of those disgusting human beings who combines world class talent, intelligence, generosity and beauty in one package. Her resume is truly impressive. I won't recite her accomplishments here, but for those interested, here's the link to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietlinde_Turban

It comes as no surprise to me that she resided in my home state (commonwealth) of Virginia. It seems inevitable, really. Here in Virginia, we have a creed, which schoolchildren recite immediately after the Pledge of Allegiance:

Virginian Creed

“To be a Virginian either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one’s Mother’s side, is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign Country, and a Benediction from Above.”

She ran the Castleton Festival in Castleton, VA, with her world famous conductor husband, Lorin Maazel. Unfortunately, the festival ended its activities a few years ago. I include the link so you can take a look at Dietlinde. I believe she does a bit of the voiceover also, judging from the German accent.
https://www.castletonfestival.org/discover/

doris-dietlinde turban1.png Here's a screencap of the climatic moment: Doris (Dietlinde Turban) learning that she is to be flogged and sent to the Spinnhouse for life.
 
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What a beautiful Doris! I would give up my Winter Palace in Baden-Wurttemberg to watch her stripped naked and flogged through the streets of Potsdam!

The actor portraying her is Dietlinde Turban, which I believe you mentioned in a previous post, nsur. I immediately googled "Dietlinde Turban nude," and found no hits. Then, simply hoping for some better quality photos than in the video, I turned my pervy expectations down a notch and googled "Dietlinde Turban Der Thronfolger" and found even less.

Then I stepped out of perv mode entirely and looked into Dietlinde Turban's bio and discovered that she is one of those disgusting human beings who combines world class talent, intelligence, generosity and beauty in one package. Her resume is truly impressive. I won't recite her accomplishments here, but for those interested, here's the link to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietlinde_Turban

It comes as no surprise to me that she resided in my home state (commonwealth) of Virginia. It seems inevitable, really. Here in Virginia, we have a creed, which schoolchildren recite immediately after the Pledge of Allegiance:

Virginian Creed

“To be a Virginian either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one’s Mother’s side, is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign Country, and a Benediction from Above.”

She ran the Castleton Festival in Castleton, VA, with her world famous conductor husband, Lorin Maazel. Unfortunately, the festival ended its activities a few years ago. I include the link so you can take a look at Dietlinde. I believe she does a bit of the voiceover also, judging from the German accent.
https://www.castletonfestival.org/discover/

View attachment 944149 Here's a screencap of the climatic moment: Doris (Dietlinde Turban) learning that she is to be flogged and sent to the Spinnhouse for life.
Many thanks, Jon -- glad you found the clips and the actress stimulating.

It's actually a bit of a mystery quite why we get to see so little of Doris/Dietlinde's punishment in this adaptation: elsewhere in the same production we do get full frontal female nudity (during the 1728 state visit to Saxony which I have talked about before -- see the scene here, in the first part of the mini series), as well as a pretty explicit (for 1980 public TV) execution scene, when Katte gets his head chopped off in front of the Prince, for some reason stripped to his waist -- no reason to get blood stains on a perfectly good white shirt. So, neither the nudity nor the violence aspects should have been insurmountable. Maybe Dietlinde's agent said no.

I have previously mentioned that it appears to me that Schiller's 1784 play "Kabale und Liebe" was inspired by Doris's story:

If you have a look at these two drawings, you may be forgiven for thinking they show the arrest of Doris Ritter: there is the 16-year-old innocent musician's daughter, there are her distraught but helpless parents, there are the merciless bailiffs taking her away to jail, falsely arrested for punishment as a whore:

View attachment 883187View attachment 883188

However, this is not Doris Ritter, this is Luise Miller from Schiller's 1784 play "Kabale und Liebe" ("Love and Intrigue", free English PDF here). Looking at her story again after researching Doris, it appears to me obvious that Schiller deliberately modeled the plot setup on the Doris Ritter story. Check this:

1. Powerful aristocratic father wants to force his 20-year-old son and heir into a marriage against his choice (Schiller: the Duke's Minister President rather than the King of Prussia)
2. Son is secretly in love with innocent and virginal 16-year old daughter of a deeply religious musician, socially far below him (Schiller: Ferdinand von Walter und Luise Miller rather than Crown Prince Friedrich and Doris Ritter)
3. Father is outraged when he discovers the unsuitable match, has the girl arrested and condemned as a whore (Schiller: put Luise in a pillory as a whore, rather than whipped as Doris was), with the intention of dishonoring her in such a public way that it is socially impossible for his son to ever see her again.

Schiller's dialogue in the arrest scene (Act 2, Scenes 6 and 7) is outrageous, even allowing for the archaic language:

PRÄSIDENT: (Boshaft zu Luisen.) Aber er bezahlte Sie doch jederzeit bar?
LUISE (aufmerksam) : Diese Frage verstehe ich nicht ganz.
PRÄSIDENT (mit beißendem Lachen): Nicht? Nun! ich meine nur – Jedes Handwerk hat, wie man sagt, einen goldenen Boden – auch Sie, hoff ich, wird Ihre Gunst nicht verschenkt haben – oder war’s Ihr vielleicht mit dem bloßen Verschluss gedient? Wie?
FERDINAND (fährt wie rasend auf): Hölle! was war das?
LUISE (zum Major mit Würde und Unwillen): Herr von Walter, jetzt sind Sie frei.
FERDINAND: Vater! Ehrfurcht befiehlt die Tugend auch im Bettlerkleid.
PRÄSIDENT (lacht lauter): Eine lustige Zumutung! Der Vater soll die Hure des Sohns respektieren.
LUISE (stürzt nieder): O Himmel und Erde!
(...)
FERDINAND (eilt auf Luisen zu, die ihm halb tot in den Arm fällt): Luise! Hilfe! Rettung! Der Schrecken überwältigte sie!
MILLER (ergreift sein spanisches Rohr, setzt den Hut auf und macht sich zum Angriff gefasst).
FRAU (wirft sich auf die Knie vor dem Präsident).
PRÄSIDENT (zu den Gerichtsdienern, seinen Orden entblößend): Legt Hand an im Namen des Herzogs – Weg von der Metze, Junge – Ohnmächtig oder nicht – wenn sie nur erst das eiserne Halsband umhat, wird man sie schon mit Steinwürfen aufwecken.
FRAU: Erbarmung, Ihro Exzellenz! Erbarmung! Erbarmung!


The pillory in Germany usually had the form of being chained by an iron neck collar rather than a wooden board, hence the above line by the President when Luise faints during the arrest: "Step away from the whore, son - fainted or not - once she is wearing the iron collar, they'll wake her up with thrown stones."

Whores in the pillory were likely to have had their hair shorn, fully or partially stripped, forced to put on a straw crown and/or forced to straddle a wooden pony as shown in these two 18th century sketches (the sign above the pillory says "Punishment for whoring"):

View attachment 883194View attachment 883195

Getting back to corporal punishment, here is some more art on public punishments in Prussia in the 18th century:
View attachment 883192View attachment 883193

The first picture, showing a public flogging, is an enlargement of the background of the second picture, which has running the gauntlet in the foreground. As fas as I know, the gauntlet was strictly a military punishment and never used for women. The flogging in the picture is probably also a soldier, although looking at the torso it looks an awful lot like there may be breasts...

The interesting thing was that running the gauntlet ("Spiessrutenlaufen") was considered an honourable punishment, even though it was often fatal, whereas being flogged (or put in a pillory) by the public hangman was considered dishonourable, and resulted in the loss of civic privileges and public disgrace. Poor Doris!

It looks like I'm not the only one who thought so. When a few months after "Der Thronfolger", German TV was shooting a new adaptation of "Kabale und Liebe", the casting director didn't look any further than Dietlinde Turban as Luise Miller -- being typecast in the "demure virginal musician's daughter falls in love with young nobleman and is arrested for prostitution by his tyrannical father and condemned to shaming public corporal punishment" role. As it turns out, Getty Images has hi-res screenshots of Dietlinde as Luise Miller, which could just as well come from "Der Thronfolger" earlier the same year (except her lover here looks a bit more manly than the weedy Prince):

Dietlinde Turban Kabale und Liebe 4.jpgDietlinde Turban Kabale und Liebe 3.jpgDietlinde Turban Kabale und Liebe 1.jpgDietlinde Turban Kabale und Liebe 2.jpg

She does play the role of the virginal geeky maiden from a sheltered musical household very well -- not surprising when looking at the Wikipedia page you have posted as she was basically playing herself.

No nude shots of her that I could find either, but I found two bikini publicity shots, plus some stills from a guest appearance (also in 1980, busy year for her) in the then-wildly-popular TV series "Das Traumschiff", which was a glossy escapist fantasy around a German cruise ship in the Carribbean and all the romantic entanglements between glamorous passengers and oversexed handsome ship's officers. Dietlinde Turban is shown in a rather nifty strapless one-piece bathing costume:

Dietlinde Turban Carribbean 3.jpgDietlinde Turban Carribbean 2.jpgDietlinde Turban Carribbean 1.jpgDietlinde Turban bikini.jpgDietlinde-Turban-deutsche-Schauspielerin-Film-Pressefoto.jpg

She was still very glamourous 25 years later -- here she is with the New York Philharmonic, as narrator in a special gala for her famous husband's 75th birthday in 2005:

Dietlinde Turban 2005 NY Philharmonic.jpg
 
When a few months after "Der Thronfolger", German TV was shooting a new adaptation of "Kabale und Liebe", the casting director didn't look any further than Dietlinde Turban as Luise Miller -- being typecast in the "demure virginal musician's daughter falls in love with young nobleman and is arrested for prostitution by his tyrannical father and condemned to shaming public corporal punishment" role.
Typecasting indeed -- browsing Dietlinde's personal website, I found a few artsy press photos from her very first stage appearance at age 19 in 1977, cast as Gretchen in Goethe's Faust. Gretchen of course is yet another tragic heroine of the Doris/Luise Miller type, a virtuous maiden seduced by Faust under the devil's (Mephistopholos's) influence and denounced as a whore in public, then condemned to death when she kills her unborn child. And so here, we do get the images that the TV producers cheated us out of, showing Gretchen/Doris/Dietlinde in chains wearing only a coarse prison shift:

Dietlinde Turban as Gretchen 2.jpgDietlinde Turban as Gretchen 1.jpgDietlinde Turban as Gretchen 3.jpgDietlinde Turban in chains.jpgDietlinde Turban in chains 2.jpg

I presume she got her roles as Doris and Luise on the basis of the earlier appearance as Gretchen -- they are really the same character three times over.

Dietlinde's website also has another shot of her as Luise Miller in Kabale und Liebe, as always in 18th century garb:

Dietlinde Turban Kabale und Liebe 5.jpg

Finally, she has on her website this extended scene of her in Mussolini and I, alongside A-listers Anthony Hopkins and Susan Sarandon (and not in a corset, for a change):

 
Typecasting indeed -- browsing Dietlinde's personal website, I found a few artsy press photos from her very first stage appearance at age 19 in 1977, cast as Gretchen in Goethe's Faust. Gretchen of course is yet another tragic heroine of the Doris/Luise Miller type, a virtuous maiden seduced by Faust under the devil's (Mephistopholos's) influence and denounced as a whore in public, then condemned to death when she kills her unborn child. And so here, we do get the images that the TV producers cheated us out of, showing Gretchen/Doris/Dietlinde in chains wearing only a coarse prison shift:

View attachment 944533View attachment 944534View attachment 944532View attachment 944535View attachment 944531

I presume she got her roles as Doris and Luise on the basis of the earlier appearance as Gretchen -- they are really the same character three times over.

Dietlinde's website also has another shot of her as Luise Miller in Kabale und Liebe, as always in 18th century garb:

View attachment 944530

Finally, she has on her website this extended scene of her in Mussolini and I, alongside A-listers Anthony Hopkins and Susan Sarandon (and not in a corset, for a change):

A bit off topic, but here goes:

I tried to find "Kabale und Liebe" on the usual platforms but without success. My Dietlinde obsession took me so far as to search for her appearance on the German TV series "Das Traumschiff," which was, and I think still is, a popular German romantic comedy/drama. It has the same premise and format as the American TV series "The Love Boat." Amazingly, that episode is available on Youtube. If anyone is interested it is Season 1, Episode 5, and the segment that Dietlinde is in is called "Ein Mann Fur Mama." I'm not going to bother to link to it because it's basically just inoffensive fluff with nothing of interest for this audience, and besides the video quality is poor.

The video clip of Dietlinde and Anthony Hopkins above in "Mussolini And I" motivated me to google Count Galeazzo Ciano, played by Hopkins, and I learned some interesting tidbits about Italy's politics during WWII. Because if I can't find pictures of Dietlinde in the nude, then I should at least learn something from history.

I must say the clip had me a bit confused at first. I thought Hopkins was going for a German accent, it has that clipped and abrupt quality with an occasional rolling "r" that English speakers put on when they're trying to sound German. But that didn't make any sense; I mean, the guy's supposed to be Italian, so I'm not sure what he was trying to do with his accent. Dietlinde's actual German accent is quite lovely to my ears.
 
The video clip of Dietlinde and Anthony Hopkins above in "Mussolini And I" motivated me to google Count Galeazzo Ciano, played by Hopkins, and I learned some interesting tidbits about Italy's politics during WWII. Because if I can't find pictures of Dietlinde in the nude, then I should at least learn something from history.

I must say the clip had me a bit confused at first. I thought Hopkins was going for a German accent, it has that clipped and abrupt quality with an occasional rolling "r" that English speakers put on when they're trying to sound German. But that didn't make any sense; I mean, the guy's supposed to be Italian, so I'm not sure what he was trying to do with his accent. Dietlinde's actual German accent is quite lovely to my ears.

I thought that Hopkins was going for the clipped upper-class British accent one hears in 1940s/50s war movies, mixed with a bit of his native Welsh accent (which can sound quite Germanic). This excerpt from Mussolini & I does actually have a torture scene which is sort-of on-topic for CF, but the torturee is Anthony Hopkins and the torturer (or at least the boss of the SS torturers) is Dietlinde Turban -- the opposite of the scene in your avatar, Jon. Incidentally, not only is the Hopkins character historical (Count Galeazzo Ciano), but also the Dietlinde Turban character. She plays Hilde Purwin, who was at that time going by the name Felizitas Beetz, and who has one of the raciest CVs you're likely to see, being a German agent during the war and then seemlessly becoming an American agent immediately therafter (possibly delivering the Ciano diaries to Washington as she switched sides) before becoming a prominent West German journalist of the 1950s to 1980s. Her Wikipedia entry is unclear as to whether she had an affair with Ciano, but it appears likely (they spent the night before his execution together in his cell, and she thereafter saved his wife and children -- Mussolini's daughter and grandchildren). She was also still very much alive when this movie was made.
 
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I thought that Hopkins was going for the clipped upper-class British accent one hears in 1940s/50s war movies, mixed with a bit of his native Welsh accent (which can sound quite Germanic). This excerpt from Mussolini & I does actually have a torture scene which is sort-of on-topic for CF, but the torturee is Anthony Hopkins and the torturer (or at least the boss of the SS torturers) is Dietlinde Turban -- the opposite of the scene in your avatar, Jon. Incidentally, not only is the Hopkins character historical (Count Galeazzo Ciano), but also the Dietlinde Turban character. She plays Hilde Purwin, who was at that time going by the name Felizitas Beetz, and who has one of the raciest CVs you're likely to see, being a German agent during the war and then seemlessly becoming an American agent immediately therafter (possibly delivering the Ciano diaries to Washington as she switched sides) before becoming a prominent West German journalist of the 1950s to 1980s. Her Wikipedia entry is unclear as to whether she had an affair with Ciano, but it appears likely (they spent the night before his execution together in his cell, and she thereafter saved his wife and children -- Mussolini's daughter and grandchildren). She was also still very much alive when this movie was made.
I have read all your posts on this subject. Great work! By the way, you would possibly be interested with Luisa Calderon case which has been similar to poor Doris. Good Luck!
 
Because if I can't find pictures of Dietlinde in the nude, then I should at least learn something from history.
I still can't offer any nudes of Dietlinde, but to feed your obsession here is a video of her stuff-gagged and chairtied in the (rather tame) 1981 German TV movie "Überfall in Glasgow" , an adaptation of the Scottish crime novel "Die for Big Betsy" by Bill Knox. Her co-star here is Götz George, just about to become one of the biggest names in German TV. Coincidentally he later played the role of the evil President in a 2005 TV adaptation of Kabale und Liebe, chewing up the scenery in Luise Miller's arrest scene.
 

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I have read all your posts on this subject. Great work! By the way, you would possibly be interested with Luisa Calderon case which has been similar to poor Doris. Good Luck!
Thanks, Asbarka -- always good to hear I haven't completely lost all readers with my interminable ramblings about Doris. Thanks for the pointer to Luisa Calderon, which is an interesting case although a bit different in nature.
 
I have read all your posts on this subject. Great work! By the way, you would possibly be interested with Luisa Calderon case which has been similar to poor Doris. Good Luck!
It suddenly struck me that I had posted on Louisa Calderon in another thread; Stress Positions. For those interested it was msg #131, but I'll copy it here:

In 1801 Thomas Picton, then governor of the island of Trinidad, ordered a free young woman of mixed race, named Louisa Calderon, to be hoisted on the picket to force her to confess to a crime. She endured the torture for fifty five minutes one day, and another twenty two minutes the next, when it was discontinued due to the fact that she fainted twice, and there was some concern that continuing it would kill her. She was held in jail for eight months, after which the charges against her were dismissed.

Word of this made it to England, and there was a good bit of outrage. Thomas Picton was tried in London in 1806 for unlawful torturing (a misdemeanor) and various other, more serious charges of malfeasance. Louisa Calderon testified against him. He was found guilty of the unlawful torture. The other charges were dropped. He appealed the verdict, and in 1808, it was reversed.


pixuet-louisa calderon1.jpg

I thought it was interesting that unlawful torture was a misdemeanor in English law. That seems awfully harsh. I mean, how can any torture be considered unlawful?
 
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