Anna Smitshuizen, was a Dutch prostitute and the victim of a cause célèbre murder. She was murdered by her former fiancé, the doctor and former ship's surgeon Johannes van Goch, who could not accept that she had terminated their engagement. The case became a subject of public debate and was frequently mentioned in literature as a moral example.
Murder
Smitshuizen became engaged to van Goch. On 25 May 1775 they travelled to Ouderkerk to inform van Goch's mother. A week later, on 2 June, Smitshuizen broke off the engagement. She had begun to have doubts about van Goch as the city was talking about him following leaflets written by Hoefnagel discrediting van Goch. Van Goch took the news badly. He threatened to kill himself and sent Smitshuizen a love letter written in his blood. Around 9pm on 29 June 1775 van Goch visited Smitshuizen and pleaded with her in front of her housemates. She told him it was all over and asked him to leave. He refused and around 10.30 the other women tried to get him to leave, but he stabbed Smitshuizen killing her. He claimed that he had tried to commit suicide and that Smitshuizen was accidentally stabbed trying to stop him. His version of events was not believed, and he was sentenced to death on 16 January 1776. However legal challenges delayed the execution until April 1778. A scaffold was erected in front of the Town Hall and a large crowd gathered in Dam Square to see van Goch executed on the 4 April.
War of words
In late 1777 Nicolaas Hoefnagel published Merkwaardige en zonderlinge levensgevallen van Anna Smitshuizen, gewezene minnares van den thans gevangen zittende JBF van Gog, vervat in samenspraken. In it he portrayed Smitshuizen as being an innocent soul and victim of a godless killer. The book was also directed against fellow author Willem Ockers, an atheist and former employer of van Goch. Ockers responded with Waarachtig bericht, meerendeels getrokken uit echte brieven en geschriften van den thans op de Gevangen-Poort geconfineerde J.B.F. van Goch. Aan zyn famielje en goede vrienden geschreven, zynde een zaakelyk verhaal, van al't rampzalige dat... is voorgevallen; benevens een waarachtige beschrijving van... Anna Smitshuizen. In which van Goch is the virtuous doctor who was seduced by the harlot. Although neither account can be viewed as reliable, the pieces give an insight into prostitution in 1770s Amsterdam.
