She Stands Accused
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Victor MacClure >> She Stands Accused
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There is much concerning Helene Jegado, recorded incidents, that
I might have introduced into my account of her activities, and
that might have emphasized the outstanding feature of her dingy
make-up--that is, her hypocrisy. When Rosalie Sarrazin was
fighting for her life, bewailing the fact that she was dying at
the age of nineteen, Helene Jegado took a crucifix and made the
girl kiss it, saying to her, ``Here is the Saviour Who died for
you! Commend your soul to Him!'' This, with the canting piety
of the various answers which she gave in court (and which, let me
say, I have transcribed with some reluctance), puts Helene Jegado
almost on a level with the sanctimonious Dr Pritchard--perhaps
quite on a level with that nauseating villain.
With her twenty-three murders all done without motive, and the
five others done for spite--with her twenty-eight murders, only
five of which were calculated to bring advantage, and that of the
smallest value--it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Helene
Jegado was mad. In spite, however, of evidence called in her
defence--as, for example, that of Dr Pitois, of Rennes, who was
Helene's own doctor, and who said that ``the woman had a bizarre
character, frequently complaining of stomach pains and
formications in the head''--in spite of this doctor's hints of
monomania in the accused, the jury, with every chance allowed
them to find her irresponsible, still saw nothing in her
extenuation. And very properly, since the law held the extreme
penalty for such as she, Helene went to the scaffold. Her judges
might have taken the sentimental view that she was abnormal,
though not mad in the common acceptation of the word. Appalled
by the secret menace to human life that she had been scared to
think of the ease and the safety in which she had been allowed
over twenty odd years to carry agonizing death to so many of her
kind, and convinced from the inhuman nature of her practices that
she was a lusus naturae, her judges, following sentimental
Anglo-Saxon example, might have given her asylum and let her live
for years at public expense. But possibly they saw no social or
Civic advantage in preserving her, so anti-social as she was.
They are a frugal nation, the French.
% VI
Having made you sup on horror a la Bretonne, or Continental
fashion, I am now to give you a savoury from England. This lest
you imagine that France, or the Continent, has a monopoly in
wholesale poison. Let me introduce you, as promised earlier, to
Mary Ann Cotton aged forty-one, found guilty of and sentenced to
death for the murder of a child, Charles Edward Cotton, by giving
him arsenic.
Rainton, in Durham, was the place where, in 1832 Mary Ann found
mortal existence. At the age of fifteen or sixteen she began to
earn her own living as a nursemaid, an occupation which may
appear to have given her a distaste for infantile society. At
the age of nineteen and at Newcastle she married William Mowbray,
a collier, and went with him to live in Cornwall. Here the
couple remained for some years.
It was a fruitful marriage. Mary bore William five children in
Cornwall, but, unfortunately, four of the children
died--suddenly. With the remaining child the pair moved to
Mary's native county. They had hardly settled down in their new
home when the fifth child also died. It died, curiously enough,
of the ailment which had supposedly carried off the other four
children--gastric fever.
Not long after the death of this daughter the Mowbrays removed to
Hendon, Sunderland, and here a sixth child was born. It proved
to be of as vulnerable a constitution as its brothers and
sisters, for it lasted merely a year. Four months later, while
suffering from an injured foot, which kept him at home, William
Mowbray fell ill, and died with a suddenness comparable to that
which had characterized the deaths of his progeny. His widow
found a job at the local infirmary, and there she met George
Ward. She married Mr Ward, but not for long. In a few months
after the nuptials George Ward followed his predecessor, Mowbray,
from an illness that in symptoms and speed of fatality closely
resembled William's.
We next hear of Mary as housekeeper to a widower named Robinson,
whose wife she soon became. Robinson had five children by his
former wife. They all died in the year that followed his
marriage with Mary Ann, and all of `gastric fever.'
The second Mrs Robinson had two children by this third husband.
Both of these perished within a few weeks of their birth.
Mary Ann's mother fell ill, though not seriously. Mary Ann
volunteered to nurse the old lady. It must now be evident that
Mary Ann was a `carrier' of an obscure sort of intestinal fever,
because soon after her appearance in her mother's place the old
lady died of that complaint.
On her return to her own home, or soon after it, Mary was accused
by her husband of robbing him. She thought it wise to disappear
out of Robinson's life, a deprivation which probably served to
prolong it.
Under her old name of Mowbray, and by means of testimonials which
on later investigation proved spurious, Mary Ann got herself a
housekeeping job with a doctor in practice at Spennymore.
Falling into error regarding what was the doctor's and what was
her own, and her errors being too patent, she was dismissed.
Wallbottle is the scene of Mary Ann's next activities. Here she
made the acquaintance of a married man with a sick wife. His
name was Frederick Cotton. Soon after he had met Mary Ann his
wife died. She died of consumption, with no more trace of
gastric fever than is usual in her disease. But two of Cotton's
children died of intestinal inflammation not long after their
mother, and their aunt, Cotton's sister, who kept house for him,
was not long in her turn to sicken and die in a like manner.
The marriage which Mary Ann brought off with Frederick Cotton at
Newcastle anticipated the birth of a son by a mere three months.
With two of Cotton's children by his former marriage, and with
the infant son, the pair went to live at West Auckland. Here
Cotton died--and the three children--and a lodger by the curious
name of Natrass.
Altogether Mary Ann, in the twenty years during which she had
been moving in Cornwall and about the northeastern counties, had,
as it ultimately transpired, done away with twenty-four persons.
Nine of these were the fruit of her own loins. One of them was
the mother who gave her birth. Retribution fell upon her through
her twenty-fourth victim, Charles Edward Cotton, her infant
child. His death created suspicion. The child, it was shown,
was an obstacle to the marriage which she was already
contemplating--her fifth marriage, and, most likely, bigamous at
that. The doctor who had attended the child refused a death
certificate. In post-mortem examination arsenic was found in the
child's body. Cotton was arrested.
She was brought to trial in the early part of 1873 at Durham
Assizes. As said already, she was found guilty and sentenced to
death, the sentence being executed upon her in Durham Gaol in
March of that year. Before she died she made the following
remarkable statement: ``I have been a poisoner, but not
intentionally.''
It is believed that she secured the poison from a vermicide in
which arsenic was mixed with soft soap. One finds it hard to
believe that she extracted the arsenic from the preparation (as
she must have done before administering it, or otherwise it must
have been its own emetic) unintentionally.
What advantage Mary Ann Cotton derived from her poisonings can
have been but small, almost as small as that gained by Helene
Jegado. Was it for social advancement that she murdered husbands
and children? Was she a `climber' in that sphere of society in
which she moved? One hesitates to think that passion swayed her
in being rid of the infant obstacle to the fifth marriage of her
contemplation. With her ``all o'er-teeming loins,'' this woman,
Hecuba in no other particular, must have been a very sow were
this her motive.
But I have come almost by accident on the word I need to compare
Mary Ann Cotton with Jegado. The Bretonne, creeping about her
native province leaving death in her track, with her piety, her
hypocrisy, her enjoyment of her own cruelty, is sinister and
repellent. But Mary Ann, moving from mate to mate and farrowing
from each, then savaging both them and the litter, has a musty
sowishness that the Bretonne misses. Both foul, yes. But we
needn't, we islanders, do any Jingo business in setting Mary Ann
against Helene.
VII: THE MERRY WIDOWS
Twenty years separate the cases of these two women, the length of
France lies between the scenes in which they are placed: Mme
Boursier, Paris, 1823; Mme Lacoste, Riguepeu, a small town in
Gascony, 1844. I tie their cases together for reasons which
cannot be apparent until both their stories are told--and which
may not be so apparent even then. That is not to say I claim
those reasons to be profound, recondite, or settled in the deeps
of psychology. The matter is, I would not have you believe that
I join their cases because of similarities that are superficial.
My hope is that you will find, as I do, a linking which, while
neither profound nor superficial, is curious at least. As I
cannot see that the one case transcends the other in drama or
interest, I take them chronologically, and begin with the Veuve
Boursier:
At the corner of Rue de la Paix and Rue Neuve Saint-Augustine in
1823 there stood a boutique d'epiceries. It was a flourishing
establishment, typical of the Paris of that time, and its
proprietors were people of decent standing among their
neighbours. More than the prosperous condition of their
business, which was said to yield a profit of over 11,000 francs
per annum, it was the happy and cheerful relationship existing
between les epoux Boursier that made them of such good
consideration in the district. The pair had been married for
thirteen years, and their union had been blessed by five
children.
Boursier, a middle-aged man of average height, but very stout of
build and asthmatically short of neck, was recognized as a keen
trader. He did most of his trading away from the house in the
Rue de la Paix, and paid frequent visits, sometimes entire months
in duration, to Le Havre and Bordeaux. It is nowhere suggested
that those visits were made on any occasion other than that
of business. M. Boursier spent his days away from the house, and
his evenings with friends.
It does not anywhere appear that Mme Boursier objected to her
husband's absenteeism. She was a capable woman, rather younger
than her husband, and of somewhat better birth and education.
She seems to have been content with, if she did not exclusively
enjoy, having full charge of the business in the shop. Dark,
white of tooth, not particularly pretty, this woman of thirty-six
was, for her size, almost as stout as her husband. It is said
that her manner was a trifle imperious, but that no doubt
resulted from knowledge of her own capability, proved by the
successful way in which she handled her business and family
responsibilities.
The household, apart from Mme and M. Boursier, and counting those
employed in the epicerie, consisted of the five children, Mme
Boursier's aunt (the Veuve Flamand), two porters (Delonges and
Beranger), Mlle Reine (the clerk), Halbout (the book-keeper), and
the cook (Josephine Blin).
On the morning of the 28th of June, which would be a Sunday,
Boursier was called by the cook to take his usual dejeuner,
consisting of chicken broth with rice. He did not like the taste
of it, but ate it. Within a little time he was violently sick,
and became so ill that he had to go to bed. The doctor, who was
called almost immediately, saw no cause for alarm, but prescribed
mild remedies. As the day went on, however, the sickness
increased in violence. Dr Bordot became anxious when he saw the
patient again in the evening. He applied leeches and mustard
poultices. Those ministrations failing to alleviate the
sufferings ofthe invalid, Dr Bordot brought a colleague into
consultation, but neither the new-comer, Dr Partra, nor
himself could be positive in diagnosis. Something gastric, it
was evident. They did what they could, though working, as it
were, in the dark.
The patient was no better next day. As night came on he was
worse than ever. A medical student named Toupie was enlisted as
nurse and watcher, and sat with the sufferer through the
night--but to no purpose. At four o'clock in the morning of the
Tuesday, the 30th, there came a crisis in the illness of
Boursier, and he died.
The grief exhibited by Mme Boursier, so suddenly widowed, was
just what might have been expected in the circumstances from a
woman of her station. She had lost a good-humoured companion,
the father of her five children, and the man whose genius in
trading had done so much to support her own activities for their
mutual profit. The Veuve Boursier grieved in adequate fashion
for the loss of her husband, but, being a capable woman and
responsible for the direction of affairs, did not allow her grief
to overwhelm her. The dead epicier was buried without much
delay--the weather was hot, and he had been of gross habit--and
the business at the corner of Rue de la Paix went on as near to
usual as the loss of the `outside' partner would allow.
Rumour, meantime, had got to work. There were circumstances
about the sudden death of Boursier which the busybodies of the
environs felt they might regard as suspicious. For some time
before the death of the epicier there had been hanging about the
establishment a Greek called Kostolo. He was a manservant out of
employ, and not, even on the surface, quite the sort of fellow
that a respectable couple like the Boursiers might be expected to
accept as a family friend. But such, no less, had been the
Greek's position with the household. So much so that, although
Kostolo had no money and apparently no prospects, Boursier
himself had asked him to be godfather to a niece. The epicier
found the Greek amusing, and, on falling so suddenly ill, made no
objection when Kostolo took it on himself to act as nurse, and to
help in the preparing of drinks and medicines that were prescribed.
It is perhaps to the rather loud-mouthed habits of this Kostolo
that the birth of suspicion among the neighbours may be
attributed. On the death of Boursier he had remarked that the
nails of the corpse were blue a colour, he said, which was almost
a certain indication of poisoning. Now, the two doctors who had
attended Boursier, having failed to account for his illness, were
inclined to suspect poisoning as the cause of his death. For
this reason they had suggested an autopsy, a suggestion rejected
by the widow. Her rejection of the idea aroused no immediate
suspicion of her in the minds of the doctors.
Kostolo, in addition to repeating outside the house his opinion
regarding the blueness of the dead Boursier's nails, began,
several days after the funeral, to brag to neighbours and friends
of the warm relationship existing between himself and the widow.
He dropped hints of a projected marriage. Upon this the
neighbours took to remembering how quickly Kostolo's friendship
with the Boursier family had sprung up, and how frequently he had
visited the establishment. His nursing activities were
remembered also. And it was noticed that his visits to the
Boursier house still went on; it was whispered that he visited
the Veuve Boursier in her bedroom.
The circumstances in which Boursier had fallen ill were well
known. Nobody, least of all Mme Boursier or Kostolo, had taken
any trouble to conceal them. Anybody who liked to ask either Mme
Boursier or the Greek about the soup could have a detailed story
at once. All the neighbourhood knew it. And since the Veuve
Boursier's story is substantially the same as other versions it may
as well be dealt with here and now.
M. Boursier, said his widow, tasted his soup that Sunday morning.
``What a taste!'' he said to the cook, Josephine. ``This rice is
poisoned.'' ``But, monsieur,'' Josephine protested, ``that's
amazing! The potage ought to be better than usual this morning,
because I made a liaison for it with three egg-yolks!''
M. Boursier called his wife, and told her he couldn't eat his
potage au riz. It was poisoned. Mme Boursier took a spoonful of
it herself, she said, and saw nothing the matter with it.
Whereupon her husband, saying that if it was all right he ought
to eat it, took several spoonfuls more.
``The poor man,'' said his widow, ``always had a bad taste in his
mouth, and he could not face his soup.'' Then, she explained, he
became very sick, and brought up what little of the soup he had
taken, together with flots de bile.
All this chatter of poison, particularly by Kostolo and the
widow, together with the persistent rumours of an adulterous
association between the pair, gave colour to suspicions of a
criminal complicity, and these in process of time came to the
ears of the officers of justice. The two doctors were summoned
by the Procureur-General, who questioned them closely regarding
Boursier's illness. To the mind of the official everything
pointed to suspicion of the widow. Word of the growing suspicion
against her reached Mme Boursier, and she now hastened to ask the
magistrates for an exhumation and a post-mortem examination.
This did not avert proceedings by the Procureur. It was already
known that she had refused the autopsy suggested by the two
doctors, and it was stated that she had hurried on the burial.
Kostolo and the Widow Boursier were called before the Juge
d'instruction.
% II
There is about the Greek Kostolo so much gaudy impudence and
barefaced roguery that, in spite of the fact that the main
concern of these pages is with women, I am constrained to add his
portrait to the sketches I have made in illustration. He is of
the gallery in which are Jingle and Montague Tigg, with this
difference--that he is rather more sordid than either.
Brought before the Procureur du Roi, he impudently confessed that
he had been, and still was, Mme Boursier's lover. He told the
judge that in the lifetime of her husband Mme Boursier had
visited him in his rooms several times, and that she had given
him money unknown to her husband.
Mme Boursier at first denied the adulterous intimacy with
Kostolo, but the evidence in the hands of the Procureur was too
much for her. She had partially to confess the truth of
Kostolo's statement in this regard. She emphatically denied,
however, that she had ever even thought of, let alone agreed to,
marriage with the Greek. She swore that she had been intimate
with Kostolo only once, and that, as far as giving him money was
concerned, she had advanced him but one small sum on his IOU.
These confessions, together with the information which had come
to him from other investigations, served to increase the feeling
of the Procureur that Boursier's death called for probing. He
issued an exhumation order, and on the 31st of July an autopsy on
the body of Boursier was carried out by MM. Orfila and Gardy,
doctors and professors of the Paris faculty of medicine. Their
finding was that no trace existed of any disorders to which the
death of Boursier might be attributed--such, for example, as
cerebral congestion, rupture of the heart or of a larger
vessel--but that, on the other hand, they had come upon a
sufficiency of arsenic in the intestines to have caused death.
On the 2nd of August the same two professors, aided by a third,
M. Barruel, carried out a further examination of the body. Their
testimony is highly technical. It is also rather revolting. I
am conscious that, dealing, as I have had to, with so much
arsenical poisoning (the favourite weapon of the woman murderer),
a gastric odour has been unavoidable in many of my pages--perhaps
too many. For that reason I shall refrain from quoting either in
the original French or in translation more than a small part of
the professors' report. I shall, however, make a lay shot on the
evidence it supplies. Boursier's interior generally was in foul
condition, which is not to be explained by any ingestion of
arsenic, but which suggests chronic and morbid pituitousness.
The marvel is that the man's digestion functioned at all. This
insanitary condition, however, was taken by the professors, as it
were, in their stride. They concentrated on some slight traces
of intestinal inflammation.
`` One observed,'' their report went on,
about the end of the ileum some grains of a whitish appearance
and rather stubbornly attached. These grains, being removed,
showed all the characteristics of white arsenic oxide. Put upon
glowing charcoal they volatilized, giving off white smoke and a
garlic odour. Treated with water, they dissolved, and the
solution, when brought into contact with liquid hydrosulphuric
acid, precipitated yellow sulphur of arsenic, particularly when
one heated it and added a few drops of hydrochloric acid.
These facts (including, I suppose, the conditions I have hinted
at) allowed them to conclude (a) that the stomach showed
traces of inflammation, and (b) that the intestinal canal yielded
a quantity of arsenic oxide sufficient to have produced that
inflammation and to have caused death.
The question now was forward as to where the arsenic found in the
body had come from. Inquiry established the fact that on the
15th of May, 1823--that is to say, several weeks before his
death--Boursier had bought half a pound of arsenic for the
purpose of destroying the rats in his shop cellars. In addition,
he had bought prepared rat-poison. Only a part of those
substances had been used. The remaining portions could not be
found about the shop, nor could Mme Boursier make any suggestions
for helping the search. She declared she had never seen any
arsenic about the house at all.
There was, however, sufficient gravity in the evidences on hand
to justify a definite indictment of Mme Boursier and Nicolas
Kostolo, the first of having poisoned her husband, and the second
of being accessory to the deed.
The pair were brought to trial on the 27th of November, 1823,
before the Seine Assize Court, M. Hardouin presiding. The
prosecution was conducted by the AvocatGeneral, M. de Broe.
Maitre Couture defended Mme Boursier. Maitre Theo. Perrin
appeared for Kostolo.
The case created great excitement, not only in Paris, but
throughout the country. Another poisoning case had not long
before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly--that
of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet.
Indeed, there had been a lot of poisoning going on in French
society about this period. Political and religious controversy,
moreover, was rife. The populace were in a mood either to praise
extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn. It happened
that rumour convinced them of the guilt of the Veuve Boursier
and Kostolo, and the couple were condemned in advance. Such
was the popular spite against Mme Boursier and Kostolo that, it
is said, Maitre Couture at first refused the brief for the
widow's defence. He had already made a success of his defence of
a Mme Lavaillaut, accused of poisoning, and was much in demand in
cases where women sought judicial separation from their husbands.
People were calling him ``Providence for women.'' He did not
want to be nicknamed ``Providence for poisoners.'' But Mme
Boursier's case being more clearly presented to him he took up
the brief.
The accused were brought into court.
Kostolo was about thirty years of age. He was tall, distinctly
good-looking in an exotic sort of way, with his dark hair,
complexion, and flashing eyes. He carried himself grandly, and
was elegandy clad in a frac noir. Not quite, as Army men were
supposed once to say, ``the clean potato, it was easy enough to
see that women of a kind would be his ready victims. It was
plain, in the court, that Master Nicolas thought himself the hero
of the occasion.
There was none of this flamboyance about the Widow Boursier. She
was dressed in complete mourning, and covered her face with a
handkerchief. It was manifest that, in the phrase of the crime
reporters, ``she felt her position keenly.'' The usual questions
as to her name and condition she answered almost inaudibly, her
voice choked with sobs.
Kostolo, on the contrary, replied in organ tones. He said that
he was born in Constantinople, and that he had no estate.
The acte d'accusation was read. It set forth the facts of the
adulterous association of the two accused, of the money lent by
Mme Boursier to Kostolo, of their meetings, and all the
suspicious circumstances previous to the death of the epicier.
The cook-girl, Josephine Blin, had prepared the potage au riz in
the kitchen, using the small iron pan that it was her wont to
employ. Having made the soup, she conveyed it in its terrine to
a small secretaire in the dining-room. This secretaire stood
within the stretch of an arm from the door of the comptoir in
which Mme Boursier usually worked. According to custom,
Josephine had divided the potage in two portions--one for
Boursier and the other for the youngest child. The youngster and
she had eaten the second portion between them, and neither had
experienced any ill-effects.
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