ABSTRACT
In practice the violence in court records appeared in four categories, which were talked about differently. The first category was that of active, excessive violence perpetrated by a parent against a child, usually culminating in the death of the child. Most often these were the murders of newborn children. A second category of violence was what would today be called passive violence; criminal neglect leading to accidents or behaviour with consequences sufficiently dire to attract attention and lead to legal action. Consisting of many different sorts of action or want of action, this did not always fit into contemporary legal terminology, but it was an offence and met with disapproval. A third form of deeply condemned violence was that of children against their parents. In addition to prohibited violence, the lower court records also mention non-prohibited violence, or ‘disciplinary violence’, by parents against their children. This was not a crime in seventeenth-century Sweden, and consequently it was discussed very differently in courts.
