Marie Lafarge

Biography

Marie Capelle descended by her grandmother from Louis XIII and Louis XIV. His/her grandmother would have been the fruit of the connection between Madam de Genlis and Philippe Égalité, duke of Orleans. This ascent was going to have a considerable impact at the time of the lawsuit of Marie Capelle in 1840 pennies the monarchy of July and the reign of Louis-Philippe of Orleans. The press, that the capacity had muzzled by the famous laws of September 1835, was going to hasten to denounce this “bastard orleanist become empoisonneuse”. And that could make well fall the throne.

Born on January 15th 1816, Marie is quickly orphan of her father, killed in an accident of hunting. It is raised by her aunts, who give him an education worthy of her social status: it reads quickly Lamartine and George Sand.

A bad marriage

Marie marries, at 23 years, Charles Lafarge , “ironmaster” in Glandier on the commune of Beyssac. Encumbered by the financial problems, it knew that by marrying Marie Capelle, it would receive a dowry of 80.000 gold francs which would enable him to avoid the bankruptcy.

Always presented like a “good man, a little bourru”, Charles Lafarge would have been a cheap and corrupted character, corroded by violence and prone to epileptic fits. Emma Pontier, cousin German of Charles Pouch-Lafarge will report that its financial position was known of all the country: “it was to test a new loan, to find a money marriage to be made or not to return more”!

Glandier

For Marie, the change is radical between its life with the castle of Busagny and Beyssac: Charles Lafarge indeed made gleam with its been engaged that he was owner of the castle of Pompadour in Corrèze; but when the couple arrives at Glandier, Marie discovers old a Monastère, infested Rat S and allegedly haunted.

Glandier is an old monastery founded in 1219, following a donation of Archambaud VI of Comborn, in atonement of a crime. This monastery was constant during the centuries by many Bienfaiteur S. Abandonné and ransacked with the Révolution, it is acquired in 1817 by the Lafarge family which establishes downstream a industrial forging mill in 1834. The Carthusian monks will repurchase Glandier in Lafarge in 1860 and will rebuild the monastery. It shelters an health care center today.

Deceased suspect?

Despaired, Marie addresses a letter to her husband, where she proposes to him to flee by leaving him her dowry; in front of the refusal of her husband, it makes against misfortune good heart and takes the house in hand while Lafarge seeks money by mounts and by are worth.

The masonry being infested by the rats, Marie decides to poison them with Arsenic. It is one of the servants, Denis Barbier small Parisian Escroc met in Paris by Charles Lafarge who gets the product, initially with the Pharmacie Eyssartier in Uzerche. Barber is a key man in this fact various: it is him which will propagate the thesis of poisoning. During this time Marie sends Gâteau X to its husband.

Charles is in Paris, it has just obtained a patent which enables him to decrease the expenses of heating in the manufacture of the Fer. He returns in Corrèze. In December 1839, Marie dispatches with her husband a cake which it itself made. The pastry making, made with Milk not pasteurized, voyage enters Corrèze and Paris. December 18th 1839, Charles Lafarge falls seriously sick; returned in Beyssac on January 3rd, it dies there on January 14th 1840. His/her mother makes then run the noise that Charles was poisoned by Marie, and prevents the Procureur of the King.

January 15th, 1840, the police force searches and discovers arsenic everywhere: on the pieces of furniture, food, of the cellar to the attic… In addition, on the fifteen toxicological analyzes carried out on the body of Charles Lafarge, the doctors of the time will show only once the presence “of a tiny arsenic trace”.

Lawsuit

Eight month after the death of her husband, Marie Lafarge, 24 years old, is accused of murder by poisoning and appears before the Court of Assizes of Tulle. It is defended by four lawyer S, Maîtres Mat, Lachaud (born in Treignac), Desmont and Bac.

September 3rd, 1840, the Procès begins and with the wire of the audiences, crowd is increasingly numerous and the idlers are hustled in the room of the steps lost to assist to with it. Tens of Témoin S will follow one another the bar.

Between a machiavelic mother-in-law , wanting at all costs to preserve the inheritance family, and a limited prosecuting attorney, the vice tightens himself gradually on Marie.

The pleading of Master Mat lasts seven hours and the verdict falls after the many battles between Expert S and second experts and without besides that the audience was convinced by the charge.

Debatable analyzes?

In spite of the negative analyzes carried out by chemists of Tulle and Limoges, showing the absence of arsenical traces, the public ministry persists and requires a news Autopsie body of Charles Lafarge. Orfila, senior of the medical college of Paris, inventor of the Toxicology and the Apparatus of Marsh which detects the traces of arsenic, official prince of science and royalist convinced near of the capacity orleanist, is dispatched of Paris: with the general surprise it detects by the handling, considered today as being doubtful, a tiny quantity of arsenic in the body of the late one. At once made, it sets out again in Paris while taking along in its luggage the reagents used for the counter-evaluation.

The presence of arsenic in the body of Lafarge is thus the red wire of the lawsuit.

Maître Theodore Bac included/understood it well and tries the whole for the whole: he asks Raspail, shining chemist in Paris, to put his stone at the building in the defense system. Raspail will spend thirty six hours to arrive at Tulle but will arrive four hours after the jury had decided… It is too late to show a presence known as “natural” of arsenic in all the human body. The arsenic confined in the bones of the individuals is a reality. There will have nevertheless this sentence remained famous: “ one found arsenic in the body of Lafarge? But one would find some everywhere, even in the armchair of the president ! ”

Judgment and dead

September 19th, 1840, Marie Lafarge-Capelle is condemned to the forced labors with perpetuity. Its judgment makes movements to Paris: Georges Sand written to the painter Delacroix and speaks “about badly carried out business (…) and dirtily continued by the public ministry”.

She is sent to the Bagne Toulon; the rapid degradation of its state of Santé will lead Louis-Philippe Ier to commute his sorrow to criminal Détention with perpetuity.

Transferred in one from the towers from the prison from Montpellier, it contracts the Tuberculose and is released by prince-president Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1852. She will die on September 6th of the same year.

During all the duration of its imprisonment, she wrote a diary of a great literary quality, published under the title " Hours of prison" (editions new Bookstore).

It is buried with the Cimetière of Ornolac.

Legal enigma

“Assembled Blow”, “miscarriage of justice”, “perfect crime”… “the Lafarge business” will remain for the public opinion one of the greatest legal enigmas, with the image of “the Dreyfus business” or “the business of the collar of the queen”.

Writers, journalists, lawyers are interested still today in this suspect death. In 1937, “the Lafarge business” was even adapted to the cinema by the realizer Pierre Chenal…

A survey, carried out in 1978, would have shown that Charles Lafarge would actually have died of the typhoid fever, whose bacillus was, at the time, badly identified.

Sources

Frédérick Butcher: “The Lafarge business”
Isabelle Bricard: “Holy or fillies”, ED. France-leisures
Marie Lafarge: " Hours of prison " , ED. New bookstore, 1854
Arnault Coulet: “Of new over the Lafarge Business”, legal Review Small Posters, July 2004.
Pierre Channel: " The business Fagarde " , film of 1937.

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