Pollet gang

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The four later executed members of the Pollet gang

The Pollet gang , also known as The Bandits of Hazebrouck , was a group of bandits who terrorized northern France and southern West Flanders with 131 criminal acts around 1900 .

History and career

In Béthune , a small French provincial town, Abel and Auguste Pollet, heads of a gang of murder and robbery, and two of their accomplices were executed on January 11, 1909. For the first time in over three years, the guillotine had been used again in France . Anatole Deibler (1863–1939), "Monsieur de Paris", was the executioner supervising the act . On January 1, 1899, he succeeded his father Louis.

The "Pollet Gang", as their nickname was in the local and national press, was a group of bandits who terrorized northern France and southern West Flanders with 131 criminal acts around 1900. This highly organized gang of 27 people (“des bandits d'Hazebrouck”) was led by the brothers Abel and Auguste Pollet, hence the name “bande Pollet”. The large number of crimes committed by these bandits caught the interest of numerous journalists. You should end up being convicted of numerous crimes. The leader of the gang, Abel Pollet (1873-1909), was assigned 790 break-ins alone. He is said to have gone to Hazebrouck's cafes often to gather information in preparation for his break-ins.

At the beginning of the 20th century there was a climate of increasing insecurity in France, which was largely promoted by the national press, which pointed to the incompetence of the police: The "Apaches", as the predatory petty criminals in Paris were called around 1900 , were rampant in the country Paris, the "drivers of the Drôme" terrorized the inhabitants of the countryside around Valence and Romans-sur-Isère in the Drôme department . The impunity of many crimes and the longevity of criminal careers demonstrated the inability of the state to counter them with adequate and skilled security forces.

Pollet initially "specialized" in the theft of food that he plundered from the caves and salt pans of the people in the region. In 1901 he was arrested for a break-in in Vieux-Berquin . For this he received a four-year prison sentence, which he began in the same year in the Prison de Loos-lès-Lille. After he regained his freedom, he did not even wait a week to get back into "work" with the skills he had acquired during his long detention. From February to August 1905, for example, he carried out 41 burglaries, often accompanied by his brother Auguste, some of them with the use of force.

At the end of 1904 he put together his ultimate band of robbers. In the summer of 1905 Théophile Deroo, "Charlot", joined them. Marcel Deroo and Louise Matoret, 21-year-old lovers of Abel Pollet, who also lived with him, finally closed the inner circle of the band of robbers. In total, the Pollet brothers and their accomplices, whose catchment area stretched from the Franco-Belgian border area to the mining basin of the Artois province, with a preference for the Flemish plains, were assigned 114 robberies at gunpoint, seven attempted murder and the killing of four people.

The Pollet gang during their trial

The jury trial took place after two years of preparation under the chairmanship of Maxime Lefrançois (1857–1926) from June 16 to 26, 1908 in Saint-Omer in the Pas-de-Calais department. The courtroom had to be expanded to accommodate a total of 27 defendants, as well as the regional and national press and a crowd of onlookers. The Pollet gang had to answer for four murders, seven attempted murders and 114 attempted or actually committed thefts in connection with threats and violence.

The quadruple execution of the "bandits d'Hazebrouck" on Monday, January 11, 1909, in Béthune turned into a veritable folk festival to which the entire national press and numerous "tourists" came.

The heads of the executed members of the Pollet gang

Le Petit Journal ran the headline: “Quatre têtes tomberont ce matin à Béthune… Abel et Auguste Pollet, Deroo et Vromant paieront les crimes des bandits du Nord” (four heads fall this morning: Abel and Auguste Pollet, Deroo and Vromant pay for the crimes of the bandits of the north).

The Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung reported on the events in Béthune that same year, the Rosenheimer Anzeiger was up to date on January 13, 1909.

On the same day, L'Aurore reported in detail in Paris. All crimes were brought up again, but the sad act was also presented in minute detail.

In his “Carnets d'exécutions”, Anatole Deibler chronologically noted all the crimes committed by the people he executed. He also recorded the background to the most recent execution, which he could find in the daily press, such as Cherbourg-Éclair on January 11 and L'Echo du Finistère on January 16, 1909. About the execution itself he noted: “Exécutés à Béthune / Le 11 janvier 1909 lundi / Les nommés Deroo Théophile - Vromant-Canut - Pollet Auguste - Pollet Abel, condamnés par la Cour d'Assises du Pas-de-Calais le 26 juin 1908, pour avoir commis une série de crimes et vols dans la région you north. / Tous les quatres étaient les principaux membres de la bande de malfaiteurs dénommés 'Les bandits d'Hazebrouck'. "

literature

  • Matthias Blazek: Band of robbers put all of northern France in shock in the years after 1900 - after a long break, guillotine is set up in Béthune in 1909 for quadruple execution. In: Comradely from Fontainebleau - Bulletin of the Friends of the German Military Plenipotentiary in France. No. 43 and 44, September 2015 and April 2016, Münster (Westphalia) / Adelheidsdorf 2015/16, pp. 8 ff. And 5 ff.
  • Matthias Blazek: Band of robbers put all of northern France in shock in the years after 1900 - after a long break, guillotine is set up in Béthune in 1909 for quadruple execution. In: Journal of contemporary legal history. (JoJZG), No. 3/2014, de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, p. 104 ff.
  • Anatole Deibler / Gérard Jaeger (eds.): Carnets d'exécutions (1885–1939) . L'Archipel, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-84187-537-7 .

Web links

Commons : Gang Pollet  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The crimes are listed chronologically in: Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, de médecine légale et de psychologie normal et pathologique. A. Rey, Lyon 1909, p. 471 ff.
  2. ^ C. Bettina Schmidt: Juvenile delinquency and social crises. Upheavals, thought models and solution strategies in France in the Third Republic (1900–1914). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08706-0 , p. 471.
  3. ↑ Le Petit Journal. January 11, 1909.
  4. ^ Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung. XIV. Year, No. 3, 1909, p. 192.