My World Tuesday - Borgvik, a story of a murdered child

As I told you last week I'm going to try to retell a story that my grandmother told me long time ago.

My grandmother lived in Borgvik as a child and when she still lived she told me so many stories about her life as a kid and as a young woman.

One of the stories were about "Anna on the chamber".

This woman, Anna, died when my grandmother was just a baby and she heard the story from her parents.

Anna was a maid and did get three children with different farmhands. The first boy lived with her parents and his father did send money now and then. The second boy, the one she murdered when he was eight years old, lived with her in an old shed. The third boy died at an age of seven weeks in whooping cough.

Well, here is how my grandmother told the story...


Anna lived with her boy on a small island, in a little cabin that belonged to the society that helped the poor people back then. One day when Annas brother came to her and her boy with some food he found the boy strangled in the bed and his mother first said that he died from beeing ill.

This happened in the year 1899 and after her beeing examined as mentally healthy she was sent to prison in Mariestad.

She came back eleven years later and people talked behind her back and used her to scare their kids with when they couldn't behave.

I thought this story was very interesting and after searching the internet I found an article written by someone else who had heard the story and found out more about Anna. (the whole article in Swedish)

In this article I learned that Anna had asked her sister for help before everything happened and from the jail she sent a letter to her sister and asked her family to take good care of her oldest boy and to give the boy that she killed a good funeral. The letter is both full of compasion for her kids and anger towards her sister and the rest of her family for not helping.

I also found out that she first tried to poison her son with some acid used to kill rats (chrome), but when he ran out and spit out the coffee she felt she had no other choice then to strangle him with a rope. She tried to hang herself with the same rope too.


She was sent to prison, even though she appealed twice no one changed the lifetime sentence, but because of her behaving so good she was released after ten years. She stayed another year, working in the kitchen to get some money to go back home.


1911 she was back in Borgvik and was allowed to live in a small chamber in one of the workers buildings near the church. She lived there, made stuff out of tree to provide for herself, until 1934. Then she was to old to manage by herself and was moved to a place for old people. She died in 1936 and no one knows where she is burried.

I hope that someone got thru this text and maybe found it interesting. I do, but my english skills are not the best so I can't translate everything correct.

I guess there will be more stories from my grandmother and Borgvik later on. =)


For other peoples posts about their world, please visit That's my World.

And if you like to join a new photomeme make a stop at Shannara's SaturdayMix, open until friday. This weeks theme is Round.