Papin sisters

Lea and Christine Papin , more known under the name of the sisters Papin , is two employees of house, authors of a double murder on their owners the February 2nd 1933 with the Mans. This tragic news item which will become the business Papin and the lawsuit of the “model” servants woke up the interest of whole France, of the popular layers in the circles literary and intellectual. However, this passion was connected more with a generalized excitation, the ones requiring the setting with death, the others denying the singularity of this crime and raising the question of the exploitation of the working classes. The business inspired thereafter by many authors. Jean Genet went up in 1947 a play entitled Good the , which will be adapted to the cinema a few years later by Nikos Papatakis under the title the the Abyssals zone (1962). Claude Chabrol took again the dramatic screen of the destiny of the Papin sisters and for its film the Ceremony in 1995 adapts it, with Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire, the same year that Nancy Meckler realized with the the United Kingdom Sister My Sister , with Joely Richardson and Jodhi May, on the same topic. Jean-Pierre Denis will take again this fact various in its film the Wounds assassinate (2000), highlighting that 67 years after, the business of the Papin sisters always causes interrogations, concerns, even passions.

The foolish crime of the Papin sisters

Two corpses of women énucléées, struck with blows of hammers and knives, and engraved like rabbits ready to cook. Here what the municipal police of the Mans discovered, little time before the two sisters, stuck one to the other at the bottom of the same bed a higher stage, acknowledged without the least hesitation to have made the double crime of their owners, without reason nor premeditation.

Madam and Misses Lancelin, the owners, had left the house part of the afternoon, while the elder one of the two Christine sisters passed by again while Lea, the junior, cleaned. During their absence, the domestic iron, broken down, had caused a power cut. According to the reconstitution, the act would have been held in two times (Dupre, 1984): Christine first of all informed “Madam” of the dysfunction of iron, which involved an argument between Madam and the elder one, who quickly transformed herself into a brawl between Christine, Madam and “Miss”, before Christine orders with her sister to tear off an eye of Madam. Then, the scene turned to the massacre: Christine tore off an eye of Miss and threw it in the staircase; Lea imitated it, tearing off the two eyes of Madam with her fingers. The victims then shouted, receiving blows of their agresseusses, the elder one addressing themselves to its junior to announce to him that it was going to massacre them with a knife and a hammer. Thus armed, Christine raised the skirt of Miss, folding back her pants to notch the buttocks to him, saying to Lea that its knife did not cross. Lea is then descended to seek another of them. The victims then died after having undergone blows of hammers and knives, as of “chisellings” (wounds perpendicular to the length of the leg) made by Lea on the legs of Miss. They were then washed, being worn at the bed a dressing gown, projecting to say that they had been denied an attack of their owners.

The Papin sisters treated their victims as it was recommended to do it in the handbooks of kitchen of 1900 to prepare rabbits, while striking them, bleeding them, stripping them, removing to them the eyes, and practitioner of “chisellings” on the large parts, before all to clean when all is finished. Christine and Lea, in their passage to the act, produced the two corpses like dishes “ready to cook”, letting show through their know-how of cookers.

The evening of the crime, Lea had dropped for the second time from the objects (of the bread rolls) to a place different from the place which was usually reserved to them. The first time, five years earlier according to Lea, the latter had left by carelessness on the carpet a piece of paper fallen from the basket. Madam had then invited it to punish it by taking it by the shoulder and by strongly gripping it, putting it at knees while ordering to him to collect. Astonished by this unusual gesture of bad mood at her owner, Lea had reported it the evening even with her sister while adding: “That it does not start again or I will defend myself”.

By this gesture, Madam had marked her seizure on Lea, meaning to him that it could have its body and leave a mark there, a trace moreover among those left by the instrumental function of this one. The experts considered this episode without incidence owing to the fact that Christine and Lea said more to have thought there, whereas this punishment could not be forgotten, because of her exceptional character and significant.

As of the shortly after the act, the information of the double crime does the one of the local newspaper the Sarthe , thus opening the way at one half-century of the most various interpretations, that it is in the form of polemics of experts, but also of artistic creations.

In this year 1933, whole France was impassioned for this “doublet-redoubled” (two criminal - two victims) and was divided into two (Allouch, 1981): the people claimed revenge, while the Intelligentsia seized the fact various to turn into to Papin girls the exemplary victims of the class struggle. Although at first sight moved away, these two reactions proceeded finally of the same logic: namely the refusal of subjectivity of the Papin sisters and singularity of their crime. Not to have to tackle the question of “the humanity” of these criminal, the two camps compared these sisters with animals, “bestial” for the first, victims - étymologiquement of the animals offered to the gods - for the seconds.

On this subject, it is interesting to note that among the journalists who covered the Papin business, two brothers also reached of a fraternal “complex”. Indeed, the journalists J. and J. Tharaud were made call as such whereas their initial was not J. and J. Besides the newspaper Paris-Evening presented them like their “special correspondent Jerome and Jean Tharaud”, as if they formed only one of them. These two brothers employed it “I” while Co-signing their articles.

The Papin sisters or history of a madness with two

The Papin sisters had been born from the union of Clemence, marries inaccurate and little nursery school, and of her Gustave husband, weak man and drinker (Houdyer, 1988). Clemence is separate after the discovery of the rape of Émilia, oldest daughter of the couple, by her husband. Gustave had violated Émilia when this one was 10 years old, apparently encouraged by Clémence, failing and incompetent to fill the request for affection of her husband. The divorce was quickly marked thereafter without the inceste not being denounced and Émilia left in reformatory, placed by his/her mother. Émilia was then treated like the faulty one, probably also because there was a doubt about the biological paternity of Gustave.

Neither Christine, nor Lea were raised by their mother, who placed them and moved with her liking throughout their childhood and of their adolescence, to their entry at Lancelin. When they were not placed out of hearth, each one of these two sisters had lived child with a woman alone, before being found together. Christine and Lea rather often changed houses on order of their mother, who always considered their insufficient pledges. Clemence had placed Christine at Lancelin at 22 years, this one having obtained two months later that his/her sister is committed to assist it. The rules in force in the house had been posed as of the recruiting: the servants had relationship only with Madam who gave order only to Christine who transmitted to Lea. The two sisters were depicted like model maidservants by their former employers like by Mr Lancelin and the neighbors and friends, who noted however almost a whole a tinted intolerance of bizarrery of Christine with respect to the observations that its Masters could make him.

The absence of reason as well is not very rational with this crime also appears owing to the fact that on several occasions at the time of the lawsuit, the two sisters repeated as they did not have absolutely anything to reproach their owners, having sufficient economies to seek another work, if they had wanted to leave them. They were well nourished, placed well and treated well at Lancelin. In 6 years, they had not asked for any authorization of exit besides. At the time of the spare time of which they laid out, the two sisters withdrew themselves in their room, and only left to go to the mass, vain and elegant Sunday morning. They never bound knowledge with a boy or the servants of the close houses, nor with the tradesmen of the district who found them odd. An exclusive affection bound Christine and Lea who had sworn themselves that no man would never separate them.

Three events, crossing these 6 years of Lancelin-Papin cohabitation, can also clarify one day new the passage to the act:

In 1929, Madam, touched by the application of its good to their work, had derogated from the rule of neutrality which it had posed at the beginning while intervening directly with Clémence, so that Christine and Lea keep from now on their pledges in their entirety. Consequently, Madam appeared under one day new: she was not simply any more an owner, but a woman who worried about the good and the happiness of her employees. Lea and Christine received this gesture like a mark of affection, which founded between them a bond of another kind that of employer with employee. From now on, the two sisters called Madam “mom”, in the secrecy of their confidences.
the second event was the later rupture of Lea and Christine with their Clémence mother in 1929, rupture sudden, final, without apparent reason, argument and word. Clemence, questioned on the event, stated not to have known for which reason his/her daughters did not want any more to see it. Lea and Christine, questioned in their turn, evoked the “observations” of Clemence, which cannot that to underline their intolerance with the remark. From now on, Christine employed only the impersonal expression “this woman” to speak about her mother. Mister and his brother-in-law strongly worried about this rupture because it had made the two sisters dark and silent.
the third act was played town hall of Mans, in 1931. Whereas Lancelin was on vacation, the two sisters, in a state of tension and excitement extremes, contacted the mayor. Christine, approved in silence by Lea, had held an incomprehensible speech, in which she said that their owners persecuted them and sequestered them, showing the mayor to rather harm to them than to defend them. He had then requested them to contact his share the police chief. This event had made evoke the madness with the mayor and the general secretary of the town hall of Mans, which had declared “pricked” them.

A parody of lawsuit

At the time of the Papin lawsuit, we are struck on have to note, as well side of the instruction as on the side of the psychiatric study, the little of eagerness as for the collection of accurate informations. Precipitation to be concluded from the judge, the charge and of sworn, was in addition denounced by many observers, of which the chronicler of the Work which wrote as of the shortly after the verdict: " one should not thus return justice in the fever of the evenings and digestions difficiles".

In spite of the request of the defense of one second psychiatric evaluation, supported by the declaration of Dr. Logre disputing his colleagues, sworn subscribed immediately to the point of view of the experts Schützenberger, Truelle, and Baurk, regarding the crime as a fit of anger degenerated into fury by two perfectly healthy sisters of spirit.

The criminal law leaves the principle that a “lunatic” person at the time them acts cannot fall under the blow from the law; this for two reasons, first of all because at the time of the facts the person could not have the understanding necessary and be carrying a will, and in addition because its psychosis does not enable him to include/understand the direction of the sanction. It should that known as be recalled that the question of penal irresponsibility because of existence of delirious disorders at the time of the act does not function like an excuse, especially if the criminal trial takes place and so nuances are brought, which could have been the case in this crime. Indeed when it is looked at there more closely, it is extremely probable that Christine was more “insane” of both, and that on its Lea side could be regarded as person in charge of his acts, in spite of the influence of his/her sister on her.

The experts did not hold by account of the family antecedents of the two sisters (alcoholic father, marital violences, inceste on the older sister, an alienated cousin, a hung uncle) nor of the singular life whom they carried out. The declaration of the police chief in connection with the incident of the town hall was reduced to nothing in the history of the delirious feeling of persecution of the sisters with regard to their owners. Sadistic eagerness on the bodies of the victims did not hold like argument of madness for the experts, owing to the fact that the criminal ones had shown coolness by cleaning their ustensils and while lying down after the act. The resemblance to the preparation of a dish was not raised, which however goes well with a foolish act. The multiple crises of Christine to the prison (hallucinations, incomprehensible losses of memory, remarks, self-mutilations, is delirious mystical), and the declarations of the codétenues and the guardians on this subject were held for negligible because Christine acknowledged “to have played the comedy”, this term having in the area of Mans a direction different from the common direction, since it means “to make a scene”.

The verdict, that Christine received knelt, condemned the latter to died and Lea at 10 years of forced labors. The elder one was then pardoned, and its sorrow commuted with the forced labors with perpetuity. Christine was transferred to the central prison from Rennes where it sank in a depressive state with systematic refusal of any food. She was then hospitalized with the public asylum of lunatics of Rennes where she died in 1937, of vesanic Cachexie at the 32 years age. Lea as for it, will die with Nantes in 2001 at the 89 years age.

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