The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-07-16 00:00:00

SOME TERRIBLE TRAGEDIES:

A French journalist, apropos of the " Rainham
Myetery,” gives the following particulars of some
appalling tragedies perpetrated across the Channel
within the last fifty years. Of murders, after which
the victims' bodies were cut up or hacked to pieces,
says the correspondent, there has been at at ac
score, including the "Mystery of Montrouge,"ZOut
nine months ago, which mystery is still as far from
solution as ever. As in the •• Rainham Affair," the,
remains _were scattered over a wide area, and the head •
of the victim was never found at all. It needticarcely -
be pointed out that where such head bk•thisaint
detection of the criminal becomes almost impos-
sible. So well did the modern reviver of • that
kind of misdeed know this, that it was the'only
precaution against discovery he took. -; harks
Dautun was a lieutenant in the French Army. He
killed both his aunt_and his brother at their iispective
domiciles, and scattered their limbs broadcast, taking
care, however, to keep their heads hidden. A change I
of garrison obliged him to part with them, and detec-
tion followed almost immediately. The Paris of the '
Restauration stood aghast at the daring of the con-
ception and its execution, and when the presiding
magistrate expreseed himself to that effect, the culprit
modestly disclaimed all originality, and nonchalantly
reminded his judge that he, who was probably a
classical scholar, ought not to be surprised. "You
assuredly remember your • Ovidius,' mon president;
that's where I got my idea from." Dautun was guil-
lotined on the 28th March, 1825.
Seven years elapsed, and it appeared as if Dautun
had left no disciples, when one August morning,
quite early, some lightermen at work on the banks of
the Seine perceived an individual fling a box into the
river, and take to his heels immediately afterwards.
The box was recovered, and found to contain a man's
head, evidently cloven in twain but a few hours pre-
viously. Two days later a headless and legless trunk
was picked up in the sewer of the Rue de la Huchette,
and the lower limbs pertaining to it the river near
the Point Neuf. The police had scarcely waited for
the latter discoveries to raise the hue and cry after
one of their fraternity, Fabrice Regey. The head
had been recognised as that of a porter in the employ
of a collector of taxes. Remus was known to be a_
friend of Regey, and had been seen, on his way to
the Treasury, in his company. Regey had offered
him some brandy in his own room, only he had given
him prussic acid instead. Regey managed to baffle
all pursuit for about a month, then gave himself up.
Again the head lead to the prompt elucidation of the
affair.
Then came the murder of Catherine Ferrand by
Lhuissier in the same year. The latter had in-
veigled the woman, under the pretext of marriage,
into transferring her furniture to a lodging chosen
by him. The morning following the removal the
woman disappeared. Three days later fragments of
a body most artistically packed, but cruelly mutilated
by hatchet blows, were taken from the Seine by the
Pont de la Concorde; the rest, including the head,
was found near the spot where now stands the Tree
ceder°. The whole was taken to the Morgue, where
the head was identified by a Madame Byon, who kept
an eating house near the Corn Exchange.
Lhuissier's crime was brought home to him in a
few days, mainly through the initial evidence of the
said Madame Byon, and he was executed in the
beginning of 18.36.
Huguet, who cut up his wife 13 years afterwards,
would most likely have remained unpunished, but
for the instrumentality of the Morgue, for up till now
all these miscreants seem to hit upon no better ex-
pedient to screen their horrors than the Seine,
which—they could scarcely have thought of it—gives
up its dead with alarming consistency. It was Vion
who, in 1851, inaugurated a new system of conceal-
ment. He murdered his employer, M. Poirier Des-
fontaines, a dealer in artistic bronzes, and carefully
packed the remains in a trunk, which he despatched,
"to be left till called for," to Chateauroux, where it
was opened, a few weeks afterwards, owing to the in-
sufferable stench it spread. An institution scarcely
less valuable than that of the Morgue aided
the police in its researches. Then, as now,
no porter or messenger in the public streets
is allowed to ply his trade without a duly
auchorised permit of the authorities, which permit is
accompanied by a brass badge he is bound to wear at
all times. Cauler, the then head of the detective
force, summoned every porter to the Prefecture, for
the victim being an old oachelor, though missed by his
neighbours, had scarcely been inquired for. Vion had
simply said that his master was gone on a journey.
The murderer himself had gone off, no one knew ,
whither, It was on this occasion that Cattier for the '
fint time, and much to the disgust of his hierarchic)
superiors, availed himself of the public press to cir-
cumvent the murderer. Though he suspected him to
be in Pars, he feared that he would cross the Alps or
Pyrenees, so he had it announced that all further
search had become fruitless' seeing that Vion had ,
succeeded in reaching Spain. There was a tremendous ,
hullabaloo at the Palais de Justice, but Vion fell into
the trap. He henceforth disregarded all precautions, I
and was arrested within the week.
After Vioa came Dombey, who literally imitated
the former's process in getting rid of his victim.
Moses Wahl, a manufacturer of watchmakers'
materials in Switzerland, who was on business in
Paris. Dombey fancied, however, that Cauler had
given him a valuable hint with regard to the employ- ,
ment of a licensed porter, so he secured the aid of
his friend Cailloux, is transporting the body to the
Lyons station. Cailloux was utterly unaware of the
contents of the trunk which had been carefully pre-
pared beforehand. Dombey, who was but twenty
when he committed the deed, was executed on
December 7, 1854. He went to the scaffold laugh-
ing and singing, and treated the whole thing as a
childish joke.
The number of Avinain's victims will never be
accurately known, but it is computed at at least a
spore. In all but the last case the heads were never
found. He was executed in 1866. Four years pass
by, and we now come to the real Atrean process,
short of the dishing up of the remains. In 1870,
Casimir Vignat, a farmer at Pont-Roge, kills his wife
and cuts her into forty pieces which he scatters
over his land. Lest, however, the smell should
betray him, he kills a sheep suffering from the
footrot, and mixes its fragments with that of
his spouse. "In that way," he says to himself,
"if anything leaks out I shall be ready with a
plausible explanation." Something does leak out,
and Vignat is ready. So ready, in fact., that he almost
throws the authorities off the scent, and but for the
determination of a local Owen goes scot-free. The
latter, however, refuses to be imposed upon, sets to
work, and after six weeks reconstructs both the
skeletons of the woman and that of the sheep. Vignat
was sentenced to death. A shoemaker in Antwerp,
named Maestday, fired with emulation at the account
of this gruesome ragout de mouton, endeavoured to
improve upon it. He cut his wife into 133 pieces,
and literally boiled them in a big saucepan. The de-
coction was found afterwards, forming a thick mass
of gristle and jelly, in a disused cemetery of the town
on the Scheldt.

In 1872, Teledano and Sitbon, of Marseilles, and
Vinchet, of Geneva, were sentenced to death for
similar crimes. Then came the trials of Belloir, who '
cut his mistress in twain; of Barre and Lebiez, who
hid part of the body of the widow Gillet in a lodging
house in the Rue Polerean, while the rest was de-
spatched by rail. They were followed by that of Vitalis
and Maria Boyer, the two culprits not numbering
thirty-six summers between them, which tender age
did not prevent them from sitting down on the
trunk containing the body of the girl's mother for
a whole day, and enjoying a repast of bread and
cheese, the latter being divided with the knife that
had done duty for the more serious business." Homi-
cide a la Russo" about that time becomes epidemic;
Police-constable Prevost scatters the remains of the
jeweller Lenoble all over La Villetta, taking care,
however, to keep back the head in order to boil it.
The police proved too quick, else his second crime
would have remained unpunished, as did his first.
Because a twelvemonth previously he had murdered
his mistress and disposed of her in tin same way.
I dare not say much of Menesclow, who is caught
while grizzling the remains of the little girl whom he
had strangled. The crime resembled in some respects
that perpetrated at Preston a few years ago. The
crime of Villemomble closes the series, from which I
have omitted, however, some of the least important
cases. The mystery Of Montrouse and the mystery
of Rainham are, I hope, not concluded as yet, for it
is gratifying to note that scarcely one of the fiends in
human shape connected with that kind of misdeed has
escaped.

No girl gets along well without a mother, says a
moral contemporary. This may be true, but here-
abouts girls work harder to get mothers-in-law than
they do to get mothers.
IN a certain court a few days ago, the proceedings
were delayed by the failure of a witness named Sarah
Mony to arrive. After waiting a long time for Sarah,
the mutt contained to wait no longer, and, wishing to
crack his little joke, remarked, This court will ad-
journ without Sarah-mony." Everybody laughed
except one man, who sat in solemn meditation for
five minutes, and then burst into a hearty guffaw,
exclaiming, "I see it, I see it.' When he went
home, he tried to tell the joke to his wife. "There
was a witness named Mary Mony who didn't come,"
said he; "and so the court said, We'll adjourn
without Mary-money." "I don't see any point to
that," said his wife. "I know it," said he; "
didn t at firsts but you will in about nye minutes.",