April 8 | Per Yngve Ohlin (Dead)

January 16, 1969 - April 8, 1991: Age 22

Per Yngve Ohlin was a Swedish vocalist for the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. He was known as "Dead", and liked to dress up as a corpse, sometimes burying his clothes weeks before a concert so that they could be rotting and worm-infested when he performed. While on one tour, he kept the corpse of a raven in a plastic bag, inhaling from it before performing in order to smell death. He would also cut himself with knives or broken bottles while performing, on one occasion even having to go to hospital to recover from the blood loss.

On April 8, 1991, a fellow band member found him dead -- actually dead. He had tried to slit his wrists, but the knife was too dull, so he had shot himself in the head using a shotgun, leaving a note that read "Excuse all the blood" and further apologizing for using a shotgun in the house. His friend jumped in the car and drove to buy a disposable camera so that he could record the tableau, which he later used as an album cover. For real. He also took fragments of the skull to make necklaces, or perhaps to mail out to worthy metal bands....all rumours which he later denied.

It's easy to Google the image of his actual corpse on the album cover, if you're interested; I won't put it here because it's pretty grisly and you may not want to look at it today.

Sources: Wikipedia, Fan Site

February 12 | King Adolf Frederick

May 14, 1710 - February 12, 1771: Age 60

The King (or Queen) of Sweden has never had much power. In ancient times, monarchs were elected, but their position largely ceremonial. With the advent of Christianity in the 11th century the monarch gained more power, and since the 1500s the monarchy became inherited, but King Adolf Frederick, who reigned from 1751 until his death, was still largely a figurehead. In fact he was elected from among a number of candidates, since the previous king had no direct legitimate heir.

By all accounts he was a nice man who loved family life, was kind to his servants, and made snuff boxes for a hobby. His other hoby was eating. In those days of unheated palaces people ate prodigiously, but even by the standards of the day Adolf Frederick's last meal was impressive: lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers, and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: buns served in a bowl of hot milk. He died that day of digestive troubles, and he is now known to posterity as the king who ate himself to death.

He's not the only one in this blog who ate himself to death: for the other, see November 11.
Source: Wikipedia

September 30 | Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes

November 27, 1843 - September 30, 1888: Age 44
? - September 30, 1888: Age unknown

Elizabeth Stride was born in Sweden, and worked there as a domestic servant and a prostitute before coming to London in the late 1860s. There she met and married carpenter John Thomas Stride. The marriage seems to have lasted 10 or 15 years, but the couple were definitely separated when Stride died in 1884. During the 1880s she took in sewing and did domestic work, with some prostitution on the side to supplement what must have been a tiny income. She had been arrested a couple of times for drunk and disorderly behaviour, but overall was described as having a calm temperament and was liked by her friends.

Catherine Eddowes (right) had a more difficult life. She had had a couple of children by a common-law husband, but had left the family due to severe drinking problems. She had a boyfriend, with whom she went out into the country to do harvest work; they had just returned to London and were broke. At 8:30 on the evening of her death she was arrested by police for public drunkenness; once the pubs had closed they released her, thinking she would go home.

Around 1:00 in the morning on Sunday September 30, a steward of a club in Whitechapel (a district of London) drove his cart into a square and discovered a woman's body. It appeared that she had just been murdered, as blood was still gushing from her slashed throat. This was Elizabeth Stride.

Meanwhile, about a 20 minute walk away, police were releasing Catherine Eddowes from custody. She walked to the poorly lit Mitre Square, about a ten-minute walk from the Bishopsgate Police Station. At 1:44 a police constable discovered her second body lying in Mitre Square. This time, the murder had not been interrupted. Although, like Stride, she had been killed quickly with a slashed throat, her body had been horribly disfigured and mutilated after death. It was determined she had died about 15 minutes before her body was found; thus about 30 minutes after Elizabeth Stride. They were the 3rd and 4th victims of Jack the Ripper, the only two to be killed on the same day. It is thought that because the murder of Elizabeth Stride had been interrupted, the killer had sought a second victim to meet his needs.

People who feel compelled to kill multiple victims, secretly, in a cruel manner seem to have always been part of humankind, but industrialized society, with the technology to communicate forensic information and public alarm, has given the phenomenon a public face. Jack the Ripper was not the first serial killer by any means, but he was the first one whose name became known worldwide. He was never caught.

Sources: Find-a-Grave (1) and (2), Wikipedia. I am not providing the links to the Wikipedia article as they show autopsy photographs, which you may not like to see.