Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1893-06-17 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

THE LATEST FRENCH TRAGEDY.  The Daily News Paris correspondent sends the following particulars of Le Steven, who tried to murder Mathilde Forty, a girl of low class. Le Steven, who has been a professional bookmaker on a small scale and many things besides, is found to be an old hand in crime of this sort. He speaks French, English, and spanieh, and was known at Montmartre, where he lived for some time, as "The Spaniard." But his origin is uncertain, nothing being known of it except what he tells himself. His story is that he was forsaken when a young child by his parents, taken up by strolling players, and became the best member of their company. At the age of 16 he ran away and obtained an engagement at Fernando's circus. He has since led a haphazard life,sometimes making money as a bookmaker, sometimes fastening o i women. Le Steven is a small, swarthy-looking, ill-grown,and generally ill-conditioned man. He has chronically bloodshot eyes. To judge from what has transpired of him he has in his nature as much of Mr. Quilp as of Jack the Ripper. Whether in truth or grim boastfulness he talked at Montmartre of having killed three women, one of whom was the one murdered in the Rue des Quatre Freres. Ho had been living on her earnings, but she got away from him. He watched for an opportunity to revenge himself, and one night, in a half-tipsy state, mistaking another person for her, took her to his lodging, stabbed her, and flung her out of a fifth storey window. When he was arrested he played so well the part of a drunken madman that he was let off. He declared before the magistrate that the woman too was drunk, and after they had both fought with knives she rushed to the window and jumped out. Le , Steven says he was too much employed by the police in the dens of Montmartre to be troubled by them. He insists that he is the murderer of the Rue Botzaris at Belleville, where the body of a woman cut to pieces was found last winter in the cellar of an unfinished house. Be this as it may, the Rue Hassard, where he has lodged since he quitted Montmartre runs into the Rue Botzaris. He tried to kill Mathilde Forty in his lodging in the former street. It is now remembered that when the rag-picker found the dissected corpse in the Rue Botzaris, bloodstains were traced for some distance up the Rue Hassard,that is to say, almost to the house where Le Steven had been living. The noise that Le Steven made on Saturday towards midnight, was thought by his fellow-tenants to arise from his being drunk, and perhaps having done badly in his bookmeking operations, but they grew frightened when they heard a woman cry "Murder." Still they did not dare to interfere. A long struggle took place which was put an end to by three pistol shots, the fall of somebody on the floor, and then the noise of a body being dragged to a window. This was followed by the body falling into a court four storeys below the window. The whole story of the attempted murder is too ignoble to relate. It is enough to say that Le Steven seemed animated by the lust of cruelty, which he now says was aroused by the woman having stolen 80f., and asked for 20f. besides. This explanation seems false, no gold being found in her pocket or purse. Her teeth were beaten in by blows given in the mouth by the butt-end of the pistol. He jumped on her, tore her hair, fired three balls so close that her flesh was burned. One ball entered her head, another pierced a shoulder blade, and a third passed through an arm which she held up to protect her face. In the fall, which was broken by a wire guard for flower pots, and by a projection on the second storey, she had a rib and a thigh bone fractured. Extraordinary to relate, she is still not only alive but conscious, and was twice able, when Le Steven was taken to the hospital to be confronted with her, to declare that what he saici about the 801. and the 20f. was false. She passed a fairly good night and saw her mother and sister. Mathilde Forty denies that she ran to the window and jumped out. She was disabled from moving by the head wound, and knows that she fell. She has a dim recollection of being dragged by the hair and flung out of window. It is thought that this affair will lead to the explanation of other mysterious crimes, besides that of the Rue Botzaris.  Various parts of Roumania have been visited by floods of a destructive character. Between Dorohoin arid Jassy several railway bridges have been swept away. - Europe produces on an average about 55 per cent. of the world's yearly wheat crop. North America grows yearly about one-quarter of it; the United States more than 20 per cent, of it. The death-rate is higher in Melbourne than in any of the other capitals of Australasia, except Hobart and Perth. Compared with last year, the population of Melbourne shows a falling off of 17,132.  Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria and his bride on Saturday made their public entry into Sofia. There were general manifestations of rejoicing, and the Prince and Princess were enthusiastically greeted as they passed through the decorated streets, their path being bestrewn with flowers to the Cathedral, where a Te Deum was sung. '  On Saturday afternoon a man committed suicide in St. Stephen's Cathedral, at Vienna. He entered a conf sssional unnoticed, drew the curtains, and fired a revolver into his temple. Letters found upon him shew that his position was modest, but quite comfortable. He expressed great anxiety lest he should be buried alive. The cathedral r‘s immediately reconsecratai 1w th ;$1)01.1.