[A cranium relates].

Abstract

In 1987 the Swedish zoologist Karl Georg Wingstrand, (1919-92), who was professor of comparative anatomy at the University of Copenhagen, was going to retire. In that connection he handed over as a gift to the Historical Museum of Malmö a cranium, which he had inherited after his paternal grandfather's brother, Fr. august Wingstrand. It had been found, when the latter's home was emptied in the beginning of the 1910's after his death. On the inside of the sawed-off top of the cranium was written "Housewife Elsa Nilsdotter from Bäsinge, hanged on the Castle of Malmö in 1882". According to family tradition August Wingstrand had acquired it when serving as a prison doctor in Malmö. August Wingstrand was born in 1855 and started his medical studies at the University of Lund in 1878. After studies there and at the Medical School of Stockholm he took his degree as Licentiate of Medicine in 1897. The exceptionally long study period of 40 semesters can partly be explained through his active participation in the student life of his "Nation". After taking his degree he became a psychiatrist in mental hospitals and died in 1910. The background of the cranium was that in 1881 a farmer, Månsson, in the province of Skåne was shot and killed. The reason was that his wife, Else Nilsdotter, and the hired man, Sjöstedt, were in love with each other and had instigated the hired man's uncle, Eld, to shoot him. The crime was immediately solved and Else Nilsdotter, Sjöstedt and Eld were sentenced to death on January 7, 1882. Before the sentence had been submitted to the Court of Appeal Else Nilsdotter committed suicide on January 25, 1882, through hanging or rather strangling herself in her cell at the Prison in Malmm, the old fortress Malmöhus, where the Historical Museum now is situated. According to regulations her body was handed over to the Anatomical Institution of the University of Lund for use in dissection and afterwards she was buried there. The probable reason why the cranium did not follow the body was that some medical student had grabbed it in order to put it on his desk according to the habit of the period and that it had ended up in the possession of August Wingstrand. The latter had no post in the Anatomical or Patological institutions during the spring semester of 1882. Eld and Sjöstedt were reprieved from the death sentence and released in 1908 after serving 26 years of hard labour.