The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-06-20 00:00:00

INFLATED CONSTABLES.

The New York Times informs its readers that a
prominent chemist has made a suggestion which
promises to add greatly to the efficiency of the police
force. He proposes to supply the men with india-
rubber waistcoats filled with hydrogen gas. A police-
man thus equipped would, to a certain extent,
triumph over the law of gravity. Lighted of a por-
tion of his weight he would be able to run with
amazing swiftness, his mode of progressing being a
series of bounds many yards in length. No runaway
criminal could possibly escape an officer thus
equipped, while the work of a policeman on his beat
would be so easy that he would not be obliged to take
frequent rests against lamp-posts or in the corners of
doorways. In case of fire a vigorous leap would take
him to a balcony on the first floor, and he could thus
enter and alarm the inmates without difficulty;
while the aspect of a body of police advancing to the
charge of a mob with mighty bounds would be so ter-
rible that even the most desperate would not venture
to face it. It is true that the appearance of a police-
man so equipped might at first detract somewhat
from the respect with which the officers of the law
should impress the population at large, for he would
strongly resemble a pouter pigeon on a large scale;
but this would be got over when the public became
accustomed to the novelty, and the advantages of the
invention are so great that this slight drawback will
hardly weigh with the authorities.

A HORRIBLE FRENCH TRAGEDY.
The correspondent of the Daily News writing on
Sunday gave the following account of a trial which has
caused much excitement in Paris: The Pel trial
almost brings us back to the time when Morok, Rodin,
la Chouette, and other villains of Eugene Sue's novels
were believed in. If the jack of all trades and
sciences, the watchmaker, the dabbler in chemistry
and electricity, the ex-manager of the Delassements
Comiques, &c., who has been several days before the
Assize Court of the Seine, is guilty of the murders
laid to him, there is no doubt that he not only lacked
seas moral, but the perception of what show of it the
world required of him. It is also shown that he never
told the truth. He did not swindle, but he often
attempted to get on through false pretences, wore
decorations to which he had no right, gave out that he
had been rewarded by humane and scientific societies
with medals and diplomas which they neier
granted. Was his absence of moral sentiment a
part of lunacy ? He was once under treatment
for that species of insanity whioh French doctors term
La folic des grandezirs, and which often is the fore-
runner of paralysis. Certainly he looked out for a
wife, to use the words of a witness, as he might have
looked out for a domesticated animal that he wanted
to buy. Money was his sole aim in both his mar-
riages, which were negotiated through matrimonial
agencies. Yet he was satisfied with dowries that were
hardly more than pittances. His want of sociability
was oddly combined with levity of speech. His
tongue was as lightly glib when he notified his mother's
death to an acquaintance as when he spoke of the dis-
appearance of a bonne. He worked for nothing but
wealth, was intelligent, had .business habits, and
scientific tastes and acquirements. He was also stingy.
Still he failed in all he put his hand to, and £lOOO
which his father left him was swallowed up in a
theatrical venture, A theory of the police which has
been only hinted at in the prosecution was that he
weakened his victims by arsenic and then finished
them by a strongly charged electrical battery.
His mother had been ill before she died, as if from
arsenical irritation; but he said she killed herself in
meddling with his electrical apparatus. The amount
of arsenic found in the body of his first wife was not
really very great, and he accounts for it by the fre-
quent use she made of Fowler's liquid. On the day
of her death Pel announced the event jocularly to an
old Savoyard friend, also a watchmaker, and on being
asked who watched the corpse said, Nobody—there
not being any danger of its escaping through door or
window. Pel has the head which Tony Johannot
gave to Morok in his illustrations of Eugene Sue's
novels. He has high cheek bones, phenomenally
sunken and sharp oyes, which look out above gold-
rimmed spectacles at distant objects, a long aquiline
and dipping nose, thin moustachios, neatly trimmed
and dipping at the ends, and a goatee beard. The
lines about the mouth have a sardonic expression, and
the chin shows weakness. " Catherine de Medici's
chin almost ran back into her neck," it was remarked
to me when I noticed this last peculiarity of NI.
Monster or no monster, his answers were cool and to
the point. He did not shuffle or seem nervous when
a fresh witness came up. The pieces de conviction
were not of a nature to strike the imagination, they
being all in phials. Phial 1 contained soot from Pa's
stove, phial 2 soot from another stove in which a
carcase was burned, and phial 3 arsenic extracted
from the body of the first wife. The absence of
cocottes and cocodettes from this sensational trial
was due to the refusals with which their applica-
tions for admission were met by the presiding judge.
Even when the Savoyard watchmaker who had been
his fellow-apprentice and life-long friend advanced to
depose against him, there was no wincing. This
witness only gave evidence as to disposition, mendacity,
absence of moral sentiment, as shown in levity in the
presence of death and, on the day of the first wife's
decease, in a chat about a collection which Pel had
made of the hair of past mistresses. Pel's mother;
Eugenie Meyer, an old maid who, with a little money
which she had made as a theatrical dressmaker,
who went to stay with him as houskeeper, servant,
and possible wife; and the first Madame Pel died of
colic—for there is nothing proven about the electrical
battery. A burly woman of 50, Marie Mahoin, who
was also servant-of-all-work and companion, had
when taken with a similar illness the happy thought
to insist on being sent to the hospital. She was there
asked if she had not been trying to commit suicide by
poison, which she stoutly denied. While she was
under treatment her box, which she left at Pei's, was
opened, and the lock of a coffret in it forced. A
certain Euenie Humbert, who had amassed a snug
sum, and had, when young, obtained a rosiere's
crown, was invited by Pel to replace his second wife.
Madame Pel No. 2, who is still alive, but has not
come forward at the trial, is a woman of good family,
and is supposed to be in England with her mother,
Madame do Murat. She quitted the conjugal
domicile because her husband made her wretched
with his cross-grained temper and eccentri-
city. He had married her to get hold of a few hun-
dred pounds, which he represented would enable him
to do a good business as a watchmaker. Eugenie Hum-
bert declining his invitation, he asked Elise Boehmer, a
Belgian servant, to come and place herself at the head
of his forsakeo home as his" friend,' housekeeper, and
shop-assistant. She had saved a little money also,
and it was proved that Pel negotiated for her a rente
debenture for 500 f. She lent him various smanums
to enable him to move from Nanterre to Montreuil,
near Vincennes. At least she said she did. Ap-
parently she was a girl of some education. A letter
read by the prosecution, which she wrote a few days
before the illness that preceded her mysterious dis-
appearance, is remarkable for the elegance of its
French diction, and has no faults of spelling. It was
addressed to a Madame Mariette, who knew about
her savings, and thus ran:
"Dear Madam,- I hope to call on you on Monday,
July 7. I have, alas! much to tell.you about myself,
but I cannot tell you all my troubles because they are
too many. My position is precarious, and not a good
one. I shall let you know what it is when I call,
because you are the only person whom I know to
whom I can confide my sorrows, and who will try to
speak to me consolingly. I sought for friendship
here, but have only received bitter words. Still I try
to be resigned to my lot, though it is a sad one.
Don't tell anyone my address, and I beg you not to
write before I have seen you. I am very much cast
down.—Emsn BOEHMER."

On the 7th July she did not pay the visit because
too ill to go out. No doctor was called, but a woman
living in the house came to look after her, and on the
following Saturday told the neighbours that Elise was
on her last legs, and had hardly a spark of life in her
body. When this voluntary nurse went again to at-
tend to the sick domestic she was told that she had
gone away bag and baggage. As Elise was a good-
natured soul, it was thought odd that she did not
leave a message of thanks at least with the concierge
for the kind neighbour. It was deemed still more
strange when the porter and his wife said they had
not seen her go. Her personal effects were dis-
covered at Pel's after his arrest, and his behaviour
subsequent to her disappearance, coupled with other
circumstances, gave rise to the suspicion that she
was murdered and her body consumed by
fire. On the Wednesday after the day on
which she was last seen, a stench emanated
from the watchmaker's lodgings. Pel no longer
opened the door when anyone rang at his bell, but
looked out from behind a small sliding panel. The
stench was succeeded by the sharper one of chloride
of lime, in combination with an odour of burning flesh,
which went on for a few days and nights. Thick
smoke issued from the chimney of the stove. A watch
of Elise Boehmer was lastly given by Pel to his
apprentice. The donor said to whom it belonged,
and added, "It's ever so much prettier than its former
owner." Eugenie Meyer disappeared from Nanterre
under circumstances analogous to those which marked
the disappearance of Elise Boehmer from Montreuil.
Nobody has seen her since, and she has given no sign.
Effects of hers remained with Pel. Elise has been
sought for all over France, Germany, Belgium, and
Luxemburg. No cabman remembers having taken
her from Montreuil. No stockbroker has since
negotiated for her any of the debentures which she
was known to have possessed. Her name is not
registered in any hospital or the deadhuuse of any
mayoralty. Nobody has come forward to establish
that she was alive after the Sunday of her disappear-
ance. The soot of the stove was produced by animal
fat. There were blood stains on the floor, but no
conclusion can be drawn from that fact, Pel having
been subject to bleeding at the nose. The second
Madame Pel (nee Boislisle de Murat) only returned to
the conjugal domicile after her husband's arrest to
sell the furniture that he left there. He had a passion
for art-furniture, and paid 2000 francs for an organ,
the woodwork of which was admirably c :rved. The
strange being used to play on this ms rument for
hours at a time. His musical genius was derived
probably from the same hereditary sour e 3 as that of
Berlioz, who was his cousin. A scientific library and
electrical apparatus were also sold by the wife, who
has gone to join her family in England. They have
been victims of terrible fatalities. Madame Boislisle
de Murat, the mother, is fifty, but looks seventy-five.
She is intelligent, highly accomplished, and was rich,
beautiful, and the belle of Perigeux when young. M.
Boislisle de Murat was a country gentleman near
Brlves, and lived there in fine style. He was so unfor-
tunate as to let himself be drawn into a business
which he did not understand and got ruined. He
quitted France. The wife, who had four children,
made over the greater part of her own fortune to the
-creditors, and with her daughter came to Paris to try
and supplement a small annuity with an income
derived from work. Madame Pel learned watch-
making. Her eldest sister was married before the
family disaster, and her husband, M. de Toulzac,
went out of his mind on learning of it. The eldest
son enlisted. An old friend one day met him, and
treated him to champagne. On returning to barracks
his captain accused him of drunkenness, and he
slapped him in the face. For this he was shot under
a military sentence. Another son got drenched in
seeking on a wet day for employment, and died of
consumption. The crowning misfortune was the
marriage of Angelo, the youngest daughter, with Pel.
She thought she could with him profitably exercise
her handicraft, and is now the mother of a little girl
six months old.
After midnight on Saturday Pel was found guilty
and sentenced to death. He was not indicted for
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medical ‘Aperts, although arsenic was found in the
body, declined to swear positively after the great lapse