Women’s Day Special: Female Assasins. Were They Insane Or Part Of Some Mysterious Political Plot?
In today’s day and age of gender equality women are treated equally (most of the times). There are many female doctors, engineers, lawyers, astronauts, etc.
You name the profession, you’ll find the fairer sex giving a tough competition to men. The task of assignation is mostly associated with men but here too women are not in the back seat.
Although we do support gender equality but not here. The women mentioned below decided to take matters into their hands. Atrocities and injustice caused by men, trigger the desire for their assassination.
In some cases, the motive behind the assassination is not justified and maybe there was a cover-up by authorities. Read on and contemplate yourself.
Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday
One of the radical leaders of Jacobin of the French Revolution who was responsible for Reign of Terror was the journalist Jean-Paul Marat.
He was assassinated by a twenty-five-year-old aristocrat lady Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday. She had had enough of the radical views of Jacobins and thought that if he continued to live there would be an outbreak of civil war.
She had planned to kill Marat in front of the National Convention to make an example of him. Soon she learned that he no more attended meetings due his declining health.
Marat would meet people and carry out his affairs from his bathtub full of medicinal fluids.
Corday got access to his bathroom on 10 July 1793 by telling the housekeeper she had some information regarding a plot against the state.
When admitted to his bathroom, Corday gave him some names of the plotters. She then drove through a knife into his chest.
This act of assignation is immortalised in paintings by many famous painters. Ironically she was guillotined just a week later.
Khioniya Guseva
Not much is known about Khioniya Guseva’s past life. She was a peasant living in Syzran district of Simbirsk Guberniya.
According to an investigation committee, she was 33 years old and was convicted of assassinating Grigori Rasputin.
He was a peasant, healer and an influential figure, who was friends with the tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
According to some historians date of the attempt of the assassination was made on June 29, 1914, but some say it was July 13.
Rasputin was visiting the tsar of Russia in his village along the river Tura. He received a telegram and when left to reply to it he was attacked by the noseless Guseva.
She drove a knife through his stomach and cried, “I killed the antichrist!”. She chased Rasputin, seeing he wasn’t dead. He struck her with a shaft and a crowd was about to kill her when she surrendered herself to a constable.
Gusset was found insane and sent to an asylum. She was released in 1917. This woman had attempted to kill Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, in 1919.
There is not much information available as to what happened to her after that and why was she released in the first place will always be a mystery.
Violet Gibson
Daughter of Lord Ashbourne would be living a comfortable life and not a worry in the world.
She proved to the world you need not be poor or oppressed to stand up to any kind of extremism.
Born in Dublin with a silver spoon in her mouth, was a Roman Catholic.
On April 7, 1926, Violet Gibson shot Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist leader, who was sitting in his car after leaving an assembly where he had delivered a speech on the wonders of the modern medicine, which ironically would save his life some time later.
She shot him thrice, only managing to hit his nose. Gibson was 50 years old at the time of attempted assassination. She was not able to give any reason for the attempted assassination, so was declared insane.
She was later released on special request from her father Lord Ashbourne. Did she know anything which authorities did not want the people to know? Were they trying to discredit her by declaring insane? One more mystery for you to solve.
