Pastor Josef Nordlund looked across his desk at Emma Wiiger, the young mother who had come to see him. Emma was visibly upset and his role was to dissuade her from taking action against her husband. Why would a young woman like her, with three young children, even think about leaving her husband? Divorce! He had to convince her to, instead, be a better wife […]
It was early fall when Christina Mathilda Georgina af Trolle suspected that she was pregnant. She was 19 years old and unmarried. What would she do? To have a child out of wedlock was in 1848 actually a crime, although few mothers were prosecuted. But worse was the shame. She had three choices. She could tell the baby’s father, bookkeeper Lars Johan Lindqvist, and if […]
It is a beautiful fall day and I am walking along Skeppsbron, a street with stately old houses that line the waterfront of the Old Town in Stockholm. For hundreds of years, these houses have belonged to rich merchants and traders. Skeppsbron should really be seen from the waters, but this day, I was wondering what the view would have been from one of these […]