Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1889-12-21 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

CLERICAL CRIMINAL'S RECORDS. A notorious clerical criminal, whose strange career of wickedness certainly deserves investigation by Dr. Lombroso, or some other physiologist of corrupt human nature, is shortly about to be tried at the Aveyron Assizes. He is, says the Daily Telegraph Paris correspondent, a priest with the altogether inappropriate name of Toussaint Boudes, and his crimes have been so numerous and peculiar that doubts have arisen as to his sanity. He is now 57 years old, and was born of humble parents, at Thonels, in the Aveyron. Sent to the ecclesiastical seminary of Perigueux, he distinguished himself there at an early age—not by his talents for study, but for thieving. His petty larcenies having been discovered Boudes was expelled, and sought refuge in a monastery of Italian priests, whose language he learned. He had, however, to leave this place owing to his immoral conduct, and he next wandered along the shores of the Central Sea until he fell in with the unsuspecting Bishop of Castellamare, who, enchanted by the fellow's apparent evangelical meekness and piety, ordained him. Boudes, now a priest, turned up at Marseilles, where he acted as a kind of secretary to a famous preacher, whose manuscript sermons he stole and returned t his native department with them. His stolen la,. 'pit thunder gained him fame in the region,and he was appointed vicar of Lagarde. The evangelical Bond ,s at once began to covet the post of cure for himse • and he set to work to obtain promotion by endea.ouring to poison the parish priest. To this intent he put sedative water and some chloro-hydrate of morphine in the Abbe de Moncam's white, wine, but the tragical trick was seen through by the Abbe, who liked his vinous refreshment clear, and seeing it slightly muddy had it examined by a chemist. M. de Moncam, however, in order to avoid a scandal said nothing about the matter, and asked the chemist to help him to keep the terrible secret. Shortly afterwards Boudes was removed to the town of Viviez, where he perpetrated acts of bestialityand pilfered rightand left. The desperate rascal,despite all these crimes, was appointed Cure of Taurines, where he violated a girl. He would, perhaps, have gone on longer unpunished but for the fact that he wrote to a Paris house for a supply of cloth in the name of the cure of a parish in the Tarn. The Paris people were suspicious, and made inquiries. The cloth was sent to him, and after he took it proceedings were instituted against him. Boudes was at last suspended by his bishop, and he was about to be arrested when he disappeared, eventually turning up in a monastery, where he pretended to be repentant. From this place lie was taken by the police, and, in addition to numerous charges against him, he was also accused of having murdered the Abbe Abbar, Cure of SaintCirq, who was frightfully beAten and strangled by some person or persons, who plundered his house after having committed the deed. Boudes was ' tried at Montpellier, but the doctors having declared that he was not responsible for his actions, he was put into an asylum, whence lie escaped. Under a false name,he worked for a while as a farmlabourer, then obtaining a place as teacher in the college at Albi where he was lately arrested at the suit of the friends of a very elderly lady, whom he had eased of a large sum of money, after having captured her confidence. When in arrest the wicked Boudes was recognised and identified,