Article Bosnian Beheading Rumor
Summary: During the nineteenth-century, a rumor circulated in Bosnia suggesting that a person could earn a million florins by volunteering to be beheaded in place of Baron de Rothschild.
Text extracted from:
Walsh, William. (1893). Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities. J.B. Lippincott Company. Philadelphia. 1893: 473-474.
The Levant Herald of September 22, 1890, quoted a curious letter from Bjelina, Bosnia, which disclosed a state of things among the Bosniaks that recalls some of the old stories we used to hear about China. It appears that numbers of Bosniaks had recently applied to the authorities for permission to be beheaed in the place of Baron de Rothschild. The authorities at once set themselves to investigate the matter, and found that a rumor had been spread abroad among the rural population that Baron Rothschild had been sentenced to death for some crime or other, and that he would pay a million florins to any one who would become his substitute and undergo the penalty for him. Clubs were speedily formed among the peasants who desired to share the million, and each member bound himself to sacrifice his life for the benefit of his fellow-members if he should draw the fatal lot that designated one of the club as the victim. The money, of course, was to be divided among the rest as a prize. In this manner several substitutes for the baron were provided, and they offered themselves to the authorities ready to fulfil their bargain to the last. No explanations were sufficient to convince them that the story was a hoax, and for a long time new postulants for decapitation were still coming in, and still going away grieved and unhappy in their disappointment.
Additional Accounts
Clipping from the Lowell Sun, Saturday October 25, 1890: