Jakob Tschudi had reported his maid, Anna…
June 1782 CE
She had at first escaped arrest, but the authorities of the Canton of Glarus advertised a reward for her capture in the Zürcher Zeitung on February 9, 1782.
Göldi was arrested and, under torture, had admitted to entering in a pact with the Devil, who had appeared to her as a black dog.
She had withdrawn her confession after the torture ended, but was sentenced to execution by decapitation.
The charges were officially of "poisoning" rather than witchcraft, even though the law at this time does not impose the death penalty for non-lethal poisoning.
During her trial, official allegations of witchcraft had ben avoided, and the court protocols had been destroyed.
The sentence does therefore not strictly qualify as that of a witch trial.
Still, because of the apparent witch hunt that led to the sentence, the execution sparks outrage throughout Switzerland and the Holy Roman Empire.
A native of Sennwald, Anna Göldi had arrived in Glarus in 1765.
When she was thirty-one, Göldi had been impregnated by a mercenary who left Switzerland before Göldi gave birth.
Göldi's baby died the first night it was born (something not uncommon due to the high infant mortality of the era).
She had been pilloried and sentenced to six years of house arrest.
Göldi had subsequently escaped and found employment with the Zwicky family, and had a son with Melchior Zwicky, though they were not married.
Göldi began working as a maid for the Tschudi family in 1780.
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