March 11, 1730 - Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova
Her case is striking not only for the violence itself but for what it exposed about the legal vulnerability of serfs in mid-eighteenth-century Russia — people who had no recourse against an owner and no standing to bring a complaint. Saltykova killed dozens of those bound to her estate over roughly a decade before two serfs managed to reach Catherine the Great directly with a petition, bypassing the local authorities she had long suppressed. Her eventual conviction and imprisonment were unusual enough to be historically significant, representing one of the rare instances in imperial Russia where a noble was held criminally accountable for the deaths of serfs.
From Wikipedia
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova (Russian: Да́рья Никола́евна Салтыко́ва; née Ivanova, Ива́нова; 11 March 1730 – 9 December 1801), commonly known as Saltychikha (Russian: Салтычи́ха, IPA: [səltɨˈt͡ɕixə]), was a Russian noblewoman from the Saltykov family, sadist, and serial killer from Moscow. She became notorious for torturing and killing many of her serfs, mostly women. Saltykova has been compared by many to the Hungarian "Blood Countess," Elizabeth Báthory (1560–1614), who allegedly committed similar crimes in her home, Čachtice Castle, against servant girls and local serfs, although historians debate the accuracy of these charges.
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