An arson letter is a letter, allegedly left by Bokkenrijders, in which a threat is issued to set fire on a building (for example a house or farm) if the owner doesn't pay ransom money.
Joannes Corfs was a victim of this; on 4 November 1773, his farm was set on fire, after he ignored an arson letter. On 27 February 1774, an arson letter was found on his farm again.
Culprits
In July and August of 1774, during the Bokkenrijders trials, six men confessed to riding flying goats to Maastricht and leaving an arson letter at a nunnery called the Wittevrouwenklooster. The men who had confessed this, were burned alive during their public execution. (This is similar to how suspects who had confessed to swearing the devil's oath sometimes had their fingers cut off as part of their punishment, and how suspects who had confessed to holding victims of robberies down with their feet in the hearth fire were sometimes tortured with fire.) The phenomenon of arson letters was typical for the Bokkenrijders trials in Loon, but the phenomenon also popped up in the trials in Overmaas once: the first and only suspect in Overmaas who spoke of this was Antoon Brassé, from the trials of Schin op Geul. He told the interrogators on 8 February 1775 that an arson letter had been left by Bokkenrijders at the Wittevrouwenklooster in Maastricht, the same story told by the six men in Loon.
A few famous examples of culprits guilty of leaving arson letters were Jan van Muijsen, who was believed to have left one in 1774, and Nolleke van Geleen (also known as Joannes Arnold van de Wal), who was believed to have done the same around 1786. Especially the area of Bree was prone to arson letters.
Connection to the Bokkenrijders
Arson letters weren't new; since the sixteenth century, because of the increase in alphabetism, there were many instances of arson letters being left around buildings. These kinds of letters usually didn't actually lead to arson. It was only during the third mass trial, after 1770, that the Bokkenrijders started playing a role in these arson letters. If a Bokkenrijders gang ever existed, and was indeed guilty of those robberies and thefts from the trials, it's possible that the culprits of these arson letters had little or nothig to do with the gang. They probably utilised the fear that people had for the Bokkenrijders gang; the mass trials were very present in people's lives at the time, tens of people were arrested from every village and there ware many stories about this mysterious gang. The writers of arson letters instrumentalized this fear and ignited the uncertainty about this gang by associating them with the Bokkenrijders gang. They would write in the letters that they were Bokkenrijders and that they were ruled by the Devil. In the few cases that the arson letters actually play a role in the mass trails, it's a story that the suspects repeat after each other, just like with the oath that members of the Bokkenrijders gang were believed to have sworn.
References
1: De woeste avonturen van de Bokkerijders
1: Pasing, T. & Ramaekers, G. (1972) De woeste avonturen van de Bokkerijders. Limburgs dagblad.
2: Van Gehuchten, F. (2014). Bokkenrijders. De schande van Limburg. De derde en grootste bokkenrijdersvervolging, 1770-1778, Heerlen: Leon van Dorp.
3: https://historiesvzw.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/TS2017_2_3_Brandbrieven.pdf
4: https://www.bokkenrijders.com/publicaties-en-artikelen/17-nolleke-van-geleen
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