France 1171
In 1171, Blois was the site of a blood libel accusation against its Jewish community that led to 31 Jews (by some accounts 40) being burned to death .[8]
England 1255
The case of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln is mentioned by Chaucer, and thus has become well known. A child of eight years, named Hugh, son of a woman named Beatrice, disappeared at Lincoln on the 31st of July. His body was discovered on the 29th of August, covered with filth, in a pit or well belonging to a Jewish man named Copin or Koppin.
On being promised by John of Lexington, a judge, who happened to be present, that his life should be spared, Copin is said to have confessed that the boy had been crucified by the Jews, who had assembled at Lincoln for that purpose. King Henry III, on reaching Lincoln some five weeks afterward, at the beginning of October, refused to carry out the promise of John of Lexington, and had Copin executed and ninety-one of the Jews of Lincoln seized and sent up to London, where eighteen of them were executed. The rest were pardoned at the intercession of the Franciscans.[9]
Spain 1491
Christopher of Toledo, also known as Christopher of La Guardia or "the Holy Child of La Guardia," was a four-year-old Christian boy supposedly murdered by two Jews and three Conversos (converts to Christianity). In total, eight men were executed. It is now believed that this case was constructed by the Spanish Inquisition to facilitate the expulsion of Jews from Spain.[10] He was canonized by Pope Pius VII in 1805. Christopher has since been removed from the canon, though once again, a handful of individuals still claim the validity of this case.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1690
The only child-saint in the Russian Orthodox Church is the six year old boy Gavriil Belostoksky from the village Zverki. According to the legend supported by the church, the boy was kidnapped from his home during the holiday of Passover while his parents were away. Shutko, a Jew from Białystok, was accused in bringing the boy to Białystok, poking him with sharp objects and draining his blood for nine days, then bringing the body back to Zverki and dumping at a local field. A cult developed, and the boy was canonized in 1820. His relics are still the object of pilgrimage.
Tiszaeszlár, Hungary 1882
On April 1, 1882, Eszter Solymosi, a 14-year-old Christian peasant girl who was a servant in the home of András Huri in Tiszaeszlár, a Hungarian village situated on the Tisza river, was sent on an errand from which she did not return. After a fruitless search, a rumor was circulated that the girl had become a victim of Jewish religious fanaticism. Hungarian agitators, whose leaders, Géza Ónody, representative of Tiszaeszlár in the Hungarian Parliament, and Győző Istóczy, MP, who later founded the Antisemitic Party, had proposed the expulsion of the Jews in the House of Deputies, excited the public against the local Jews, resulting in a number of violent acts and pogroms. They spread the charge that the Jews had killed the girl in order to use her blood at the approaching Passover (April 4). On May 4 her mother accused the Jews before the local judge of having murdered her daughter. A corrupt investigation followed, in which Jews were coerced and threatened into admitting guilt, which set off a wave of anti-semitism in Hungary for decades.
Atlanta, Georgia, United States 1913
In a similar case, Leo Frank, a Jewish manager at a local pencil factory was accused of raping and killing 12-year-old Mary Phagan. Though he was never accused of using her blood in any kind of ritual, there was a consistent yellow journalism campaign to portray Frank as a pervert and a sadist. After he was pardoned by the governor in 1915 Frank was lynched by a group calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, which would become the kernel of a revived Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank lynching was also related to racist tensions and policies in Georgia, as many other people had been lynched there.[11]
Kielce, Poland 1946
The Kielce pogrom against Holocaust survivors in Poland was sparked by an accusation of blood libel. The fundamental motivation for the Kielce pogrom, however, was that Jewish survivors of the Holocaust had returned to reclaim their land and property, which their Polish neighbors had stolen. The Poles would not relinquish their stolen goods and instead murdered the Jews.