Marie Lafarge
Marie Fortunée Lafarge (* 1816 as Marie Fortunée Cappelle , † 1852 ) was a French poisoner. The trial of Marie Lafarge, who was accused of poisoning her husband Charles Lafarge with arsenic , became the world's first trial with a toxicological - chemical verdictProve it. The court case divided France into two camps, Lafargists and anti-Lafargists. Marie Lafarge was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by King Louis-Philippe I. For a few years after the conviction, polemics and books were published in which supporters of both camps passionately championed their cause. Lafarge's autobiography , first published in 1841 , became a bestseller.
Life
childhood and adolescence
Marie Cappelle was born to a colonel and his wife. Both parents died early, so Cappelle grew up with foster parents in Paris. Cappelle attended good schools and made friends with many children of the nobility and the moneyed nobility . Some time after leaving school, she accompanied a school friend who was married to the Vicomte de Léautaud to her castle. During Cappelle's stay there, the girlfriend's jewelry disappeared without a trace. The Vicomte de Léautaud informed the Sûreté , whose investigators came to the conclusion that only Cappelle could have stolen the jewelry. However, the Vicomte considered this suspicion so unlikely that he prevented Cappelle from being arrested and allowed her to return to Paris.
Marriage to Charles Lafarge
In Paris, Cappelle was received by her foster parents with the news that a wealthy groom had found her. Charles Lafarge had found the family through a matchmaker and claimed not only to run an iron foundry , but to be both wealthy and a castle owner. Cappelle agreed to an immediate marriage. She followed her husband after marriage on August 10, 1839 on his estate. However, Lafarge was neither wealthy nor did he own a castle. He lived in an old, dilapidated building of the former Carthusian monastery Le Glandier in Beyssac in the department of Corrèze , which was barely prepared for living, and had accumulated crushing debts. The iron foundry was shut down and unable to produce. Marie Lafarge was horrified by these circumstances and wrote to her husband imploring her to release her immediately, otherwise she would kill herself with arsenic. You have the poison with you. However, Lafarge was not prepared to immediately dissolve the marriage. To appease Mme. Lafarge, he procured a saddle horse and servants. Marie Lafarge wrote enthusiastic letters to friends and relatives in the weeks that followed, telling of the happiness she had found at Le Glandier. She bequeathed a small part of her fortune to her husband and wrote him letters of recommendation, which he took to Paris in December 1839 to negotiate with the patent office about compensation for his inventions. Just before Lafarge left, she suddenly bequeathed her entire fortune to him, but in return demanded that Charles Lafarge bequeath her the entire estate, the iron foundry and the patents on some of his inventions. He fulfilled this wish, but wrote a second will in which he named his mother as the sole heir. While Charles Lafarge was in Paris, his wife wrote him affectionate letters, sending him her portrait and promising to send him little Christmas cakes of the kind she would eat. On December 16, the pastry was dispatched from Le Glandier. Two days later, Lafarge received the package. However, it did not contain several small cakes as announced, but only one large one. Lafarge ate a piece and a short time later had severe cramps and had to vomit. He became afflicted with severe weakness in his limbs and spent a full day in bed. Lafarge did not seek medical attention, as diarrhea with vomiting was common at the time, and threw away the apparently spoiled cake.
The illness and death of Charles Lafarge
On January 3, 1840, Charles Lafarge returned to Le Glandier, still visibly weakened. He had raised 28,000 francs, which enabled him to settle the most urgent debts. Marie Lafarge served him venison and truffles . Shortly after the meal, Lafarge contracted the "Paris disease" again. During the night the family doctor, Dr. Bardou, called to help. He was diagnosed with cholera and did not suspect anything when Marie Lafarge asked him for a prescription for four grains of arsenic on that occasion. She wanted to use it to fight the rat plague in Le Glandier, she explained to Dr. Bardou, since the rats disturbed the patient's rest at night. The next day, Lafarge's condition worsened. He had leg cramps and was very thirsty. All members of the household and many relatives gathered around his bed. Marie Lafarge gave her husband drinks and medicines, including a white powder from the malachite box she always carried with her. She explained that it was gum arabic . On January 10, Charles Lafarge was so ill that a second doctor, Dr. Massénat, summoned. He also diagnosed cholera and prescribed eggs beaten in milk. Marie Lafarge mixed this drink and added a white powder under the eyes of the painter Anna Brun, who was also part of the household. When Brun asked, she explained that it was orange blossom sugar. A little later, Brun found the glass that Charles Lafarge had barely drunk from and saw white flakes floating on the milk. Out of suspicion, she showed the glass to Dr. Bardou. He tasted the milk and felt a burning taste. The doctor explained this by saying that some lime had crumbled from the ceiling into the glass. Brun was not satisfied with this explanation and locked the glass with the egg milk in a cupboard. Anna Brun did the same with the remains of a bread soup into which Marie Lafarge had also stirred the powder from the malachite box. Brun shared her suspicions with Lafarge's mother and sisters. One of the servants reported that Mme Lafarge had sent the gardener on January 5th and himself on January 8th to buy arsenic at Lubersac 's pharmacy. Confronted with the family's allegations, Marie Lafarge summoned the gardener, who confirmed that she had given her the poison to make a paste to fight the plague of rats. He did this and put out bait. The next day, January 13, Lafarge's sister Amena found white sediment in a glass of sugar water. A third doctor was called in the following night. dr Lespinasse explained that Lafarge had been poisoned with arsenic, but that it was too late to do anything. A few hours later, in the early hours of January 14, 1840, Charles Lafarge died. On the same day, Marie Lafarge sent her husband's will to a notary, without knowing that it was invalid. A cousin of the deceased, a young girl named Emma, while talking to Mme Lafarge, stole her malachite box containing the white powder.
The family immediately notified the gendarmerie and the Brive magistrate , Monsieur Moran.
Investigations and taking of evidence
Moran came to Le Glandier accompanied by three gendarmes. He listened to the family's allegations and collected the evidence kept by Anna Brun. He put the glasses with the egg milk and the sugar water, the remains of the bread soup and a sample of Charles Lafarge's vomit in a basket and had the gardener give him the remains of the arsenic. The gardener testified that he received arsenic not only on January 5, but in mid-December. However, the paste he made was avoided by the rats, the bait was still lying around untouched. Moran then had the bait confiscated and the Lubersac pharmacist, Monsieur Esartier, questioned. He testified that Mme. Lafarge had bought large quantities of arsenic on December 12, 1839 and January 2, 1840. Moran then had the three treating doctors asked for questioning. On January 16, Moran ordered Doctors Bardou, Massénat and Lespinasse to perform an autopsy on Lafarge's body . They still drew Dr. D'Albay, a colleague with a good knowledge of chemistry. Moran explained that he had heard that Professors Devergie and Orfila in Paris had been able to detect arsenic in cadavers and asked if the four doctors could do the same. All four did not want to admit their ignorance and answered yes to this question.
The autopsy report was available on January 22nd. Doctors removed only Lafarge's stomach and left the rest of the body for burial. The doctors also examined the substances that Moran had confiscated from Le Glandier. In 1832, James Marsh invented the Marsh test , named after him, which was used to reliably detect arsenic. However, the autopsy doctors had not heard of this discovery and used the same methods that Samuel Hahnemann , among others , had tried to use to detect arsenic. The doctors concluded that the confiscated food and drink contained large amounts of arsenic, but that Lafarge's stomach contents contained too little arsenic to determine precisely. To everyone's surprise, the rat bait and powder that the gardener had handed out didn't contain arsenic at all, it was baking soda . On January 24, the contents of the malachite box were examined; arsenic was also found there.
The first process
Marie Lafarge was then arrested on January 25 and taken to Brive prison with her servant Clémentine. The following day the first reports of the Le Glandier poisoner appeared in the major French newspapers. Lafarge's foster parents then hired one of the best-known lawyers from Paris, Maître Paillet. Together with four assistants, including the later famous Maître Charles Alexandre Lachaud (1818-1882), he took over the defense of Marie Lafarge. In the course of the newspaper reports, the Vicomte de Léautaud remembered his wife's missing jewelry and had a house search carried out in Le Glandier, which brought the jewelry to light. Lafarge admitted owning this jewelry. She was supposed to sell him money on behalf of the Comtesse de Léautaud, who was being blackmailed by a lover. However, this story turned out to be untrue. While the evidence for the poisoning trial was still being sought, Marie Lafarge was tried for theft. She protested her innocence so convincingly that some newspapers sided with her and called the Countess de Léautaud the real culprit. Lafarge was sentenced to two years in prison for theft.
The second process
The first trial and the subsequent conviction had made the case known throughout Europe. The second trial took place in Tulle . All accommodation options in Tulle and the surrounding area were already fully booked weeks before the start of the negotiations. Journalists traveled from all over Europe. On September 3, 1840, the trial against Marie Lafarge began with the reading of the indictment by the public prosecutor Decous. Maître Paillet, Lafarge's defense attorney, happened to be representing the toxicologist and forensic pathologist Mathieu Orfila in another trial at the time and sought his advice. At that time, the toxicologist was considered a specialist in his field and had already acted as an expert in court several times. Orfila looked at the investigation files and wrote a report for Paillet, which clearly showed the incompetence of the autopsy doctors and their ignorance about the detection of arsenic. In the afternoon of the first day of the trial, the autopsy doctors Massénat and D'Albay were called to the witness stand. They explained how Charles Lafarge's body had been autopsied and the contents of the stomach examined. When asked by Paillets, both said they had never heard of James Marsh or Marsh's sample. Paillet then read Orfila's report and demanded that Orfila be heard in court. The prosecution rejected this, new experts had already been appointed to carry out further investigations. These were the two pharmacists Dubois (father and son) and the chemist Dupuytren from Limoges . Bardou, Massénat, Lespinasse and D'Albay had retained specimens from the first autopsy but had not labeled them and were therefore unable to tell which vessel contained material already examined and which contained unexamined samples. The samples were only covered with some paper, and the victim's stomach had been lying unwrapped in a drawer in a court clerk's desk for a few days before the tests.
On September 5 Messrs. Dubois and Dupuytren reappeared in court and the first thing they did was to hand over for safekeeping a box containing half of the investigation material. The elder Dubois then reported on the examination of the corpse's stomach and stomach contents. He explained Marsh's test, not mentioning that he and his colleagues had assembled and used the necessary apparatus for the first time. Dubois finally presented the result: not the smallest trace of arsenic was detectable in the samples. The prosecutor, who had meanwhile also read Orfila's writings, involved the doctors who had been examining him in a technical dispute, which ended in the order that Lafarge's remains must be exhumed in order to search for arsenic in other organs, especially the liver. This should be done by all seven people involved so far. Defender Paillet tried to prevent this, but failed. The doctors, the chemist and the two pharmacists went to Le Glandier while the court considered how the poisoned cake had gotten into the package for Charles Lafarge and why there was arsenic in the malachite box. Marie Lafarge protested her innocence and indicated that she was being framed for the murder, but declined to name names so as not to cause the suffering she is now enduring. The seven experts had meanwhile also read all of Orfila's works and placed all the samples in clean jars, removed cemetery soil for comparison and returned to the courtroom on September 9th. Parts of the liver, spleen, intestines and brain were examined. Marsh's sample showed that there was no arsenic in any examined area of the cadaver. The prosecutor Decous replied how the arsenic found in the drinks and food and in the malachite box was to be explained if the corpse contained no arsenic. He asked for the evidence in question to be re-examined using Marsh's apparatus, and Maître Paillet, confident of his victory, agreed. The court reconvened in the afternoon. The pharmacist Dubois (the elder) took the witness stand and stated that Arensic had been found in all the food and drinks as well as the malachite can, and that the egg milk examined contained so much arsenic that "at least ten people could be poisoned with it".
Prosecutor Decous now insisted on hearing expert Orfila in court. Paillet, who had demanded this on the first day of the trial, could hardly refuse. The toxicologist reached Tulle on September 13 and requested that all previous reviewers witness his investigation. He had the retained material and the reagents handed over to him by the court and immediately carried out the experiments in a side room of the courthouse. The doors were locked and guarded. Orfila's experiments continued throughout the night. On the afternoon of September 14, he took the witness stand. The toxicologist said he would prove that Lafarge's body contained arsenic. He will also prove that the poison found in the corpse neither came from the earth in the cemetery nor does it correspond to the arsenic that is naturally found in the human body. He reported that the first investigations had been carried out using outdated methods and that the highly sensitive Marsh apparatus had not been used correctly in the second investigations. The toxicologist explained that the graveyard soil did not contain any arsenic and that in the human body arsenic is only found in the bones, not in the stomach, intestines, spleen or liver, nor in the brain.
Paillet made a desperate plea while loud Lafargist protests erupted outside the courthouse. On September 19, the verdict was passed: Mme Lafarge was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the sentence was commuted by King Louis-Philippe I to life imprisonment.
imprisonment and death
In October 1841, Lafarge was transferred to Montpellier prison , where she spent ten years. In 1851 she was discharged with severe lung disease (probably tuberculosis ) and died a few months later in 1852. She was buried in the cemetery at Ornolac-Ussat-les-Bains in the Ariège department , the burial place still survives. After Marie Lafarge's death, a lawyer named Monsieur Bac, who was involved in the trial as Paillet's assistant and who had long been convinced of her innocence, looked back on the Lafarge affair. Bac explained that if you think as badly about Marie Lafarge as you can, you still don't think badly enough about her.
During her first year in prison, Lafarge wrote her memoirs, which were published in 1841.
film adaptations
The Marie Lafarge trial was filmed in 1938 as L'Affaire Lafarge , directed by Pierre Chenal . Pierre Renoir played the role of Charles Lafarge, Marcelle Chantal took over the part of Marie Lafarge. In 1975, DEFA produced a television film, directed by P. Deutsch, entitled Sensationsprocess Marie Lafarge . Wolf Kaiser , Günter Schubert and Ulrike Hanke-Hänsch were among the cast.
literature
- Marie Lafarge: Memoirs of Marie Cappelle, Lafarge's widow . Written by herself. 2 volumes, Brockhaus & Avenarius, Leipzig 1841.
- Jürgen Thorwald : Handbook for Poisoners In: The Century of Detectives , Volume 3. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-426-03164-7 .
- Hans Pfeiffer : The language of the dead , unexplained deaths on the autopsy table, Heyne, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-13064-2 (license from Militzke-Verlag, Leipzig 1993, 1st revised edition 2003, ISBN 3-86189-047- X ).
- Lucienne Netter (ed.) Heinrich-Heine secular edition . In: Weimar Classics Foundation; Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (ed.): Works, correspondence, life testimonies , Volume 10/11, Part 2. Paris Reports 1840–1848 . Lutezia. Reports on politics, art and ... works, correspondence, testimonials. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-05-001023-1 , p. 100 ff.
- Laure Adler : L'amour a l'arsenic: histoire de Marie Lafarge . Paris : Denoël, 1985
itemizations
- ↑ Rolf Giebelmann: Poisons of the goddesses, wives and crooks . p. 4, (PDF 6 pages 1 MB), accessed on November 20, 2012.
- ↑ a b Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 40.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 10.
- ↑ Hans Pfeiffer: The language of the dead , Heyne Verlag, 1997, p. 172.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 12.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald writes that Anna Brun had this conversation with Bardou, in Hans Pfeiffer's book it was Lafarge's mother.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 15/16.
- ↑ Here, too, the sources used contradict each other: Thorwald writes that the bait contained sodium bicarbonate, Pfeiffer speaks of ammonia .
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 31.
- ↑ Hans Pfeiffer: The language of the dead , Heyne Verlag, 1997, p. 176.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 33.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Handbook for Poisoners , Knaur-Verlag, 1972, p. 37.
- ↑ Some sources speak of death by hanging , others of life imprisonment .
- ↑ landrucimetieres.fr , accessed 13 October 2011.
web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lafarge, Marie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Lafarge, Marie Fortunee; Cappelle, Marie Fortunée (birth name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French poisoner |
| BIRTH DATE | 1816 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1852 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Usat |