ABSTRACT
Much had changed in the 12 years that Anna Margrethe and Birthe had spent spinning wool for the manufacture of royal fabrics in the Spinning House. The criminal nightmen’s world that the two women had grown up in came under severe attack in the 1730s. The strong sense of obligation that had bound society to the magico-religious worldview was also retreating. The king and leading statesmen became increasingly uncomfortable at having to follow strict Mosaic laws in regard to the death penalty. In Kalundborg, we can see that nightmen were being treated more like normal people. The last nightman was active in the Kalundborg area until the 1830s. The court case conducted against the Kalundborg nightman’s conspiracy tells us the story of the unhappy fate of this small and marginalised group in eighteenth-century Denmark.
