Crime Fiction Flashcards
Press law eliminating restrictions on freedom of the press
1881
Troppmann affair
September 1869
Spoke of bakers and butchers complaining about loss of business from crowds who left the city to visit the Troppmann crime site at Pantin
Gazette des Tribunaux, Oct 1869
Dismembered body of Marie le Manach discovered at area along the Seine in Clichy
1876
3000 visitors a day passed through Paris Morgue to see Marie le Manach’s corpse in the days after its discovery
Le petit parisien Nov 1876
‘dense and boistrous crowd’ waited outside ‘For the few words which will be telegraphed’
Le petit journal, March 1864, of the Armand Affair (closed courtroom)
Often featured reports of crime at head of its second page in early 20th Century
Le Matin
Train bearing down on old man and young woman. Four observers, moved to pity and horror
1909 cover illustration from Supplément Illustré du petit journal
‘I want to see you palpitate with indignation before the assassin’s steaming knife, to see you take pity upon the fate of the victim’
Le petit journal, June 1864
Victor C, reporting directions of Alphonse Milland, newspaper’s director in early years, who chastised him for writing without emotion
‘The human soul, in the presence of such misfortunes, forgets nationalities and thinks only of equality before death’
Le petit parisien, Jan 1907, of the mining disasters at Saarbrücken and Liévin
‘From the top of society to the bottom, all cried with the survivors’
Le petit parisien, May 1897
Of the aftermath of the Bazar de la Charité fire 1897
Women’s patronage most precious of all
Trimm, le petit journal, September 1864
Crowd eyes newspaper kiosk, with the newspapers’ duelling claims
Le Matin promises 2 rapes
Le journal promises 3
No pity or horror in crowd
L’assiette au Beurre, 1907
Carlègle’s illustration of aftermath of murder by Soleilland of younger neighbour ‘Little Martha’
Kiosk contained achievements of Le Petit Journal and sibling publications. Centre of frame is Le Petit Journal’s HQ on Rue Lafayette
Urban crowd before it is not unwashed masses, but fully respectable - ladies, leisured gentlemen in top hats, coachmen, delivery boys mingled
1888 Le Petit Journal poster
Political strife of the 1890s
Rise of socialist parties, taking 43 seats in Chamber of 1893 Expansion of trade union movement May Day marches (began 1890) Rising tide of strikes Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus affair
A scandal that rocked France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Dreyfus affair involved a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1894, after a French spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a ripped-up letter in a waste basket with handwriting said to resemble that of Dreyfus, he was court-martialed, found guilty of treason and sentenced to life behind bars on Devil’s Island off of French Guiana. In a public ceremony in Paris following his conviction, Dreyfus had the insignia torn from his uniform and his sword broken and was paraded before a crowd that shouted, “Death to Judas, death to the Jew.”
In 1896, the new head of the army’s intelligence unit, Georges Picquart, uncovered evidence pointing to another French military officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real traitor. However, when Picquart told his bosses what he’d discovered he was discouraged from continuing his investigation, transferred to North Africa and later imprisoned. Nevertheless, word about Esterhazy’s possible guilt began to circulate. In 1898, he was court-martialed but quickly found not guilty; he later fled the country. After Esterhazy’s acquittal, a French newspaper published an open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” by well-known author Emile Zola in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the military of a major cover-up in the case. As a result, Zola was convicted of libel, although he escaped to England and later managed to return to France.
The Dreyfus affair deeply divided France, not just over the fate of the man at its center but also over a range of issues, including politics, religion and national identity. In 1899, Dreyfus was court-martialed for a second time and found guilty. Although he was pardoned days later by the French president, it wasn’t until 1906 that Dreyfus officially was exonerated and reinstated in the army.
Intensification of political strife 1906-9
Courrières, March 1906
Mine explosion that killed 1300 miners, sparked a series of strikes, 1st among miners of the Pas-de-Calais
Confédération Générale du Travail backed these strikes and pressed for their extension
Massive strikes continued despite Clemenceau’s brutal repression
‘Would you not grant that the considerable development of laws and institutions protecting children is also due in large measure to the press, its daily remarks, the facts it has brought together that inform us, that move us to pity, forcing us to think’
Jean Cruppi, politician and future minister of justice, 1897
Faits divers
items of great interest with no obvious relevance to the public world
Age of the fait divers (Maza)
1920s and 1930s
Apache queen
Casque d’Or
Détective, 1936
‘It is hard for us, remembering the prewar underworld, to separate our memories from the images in the popular pageantry of successful melodramas’
Détective established
1928
Cost of Détective 1930s
1 fr 50 - small luxury for unskilled worker earning 100 fr p/w
Appearance of ‘Villages of crime’ feature
Détective, April 1932
Reinforced stereotype of rural folk living close to nature, with primitive instincts
Murder of ancient farmer by young woman who may have been his mistress
Old man’s widow hisses at reporter ‘You don’t know! You can’t know! It’s infernal here!’
Détective, 1932
Landru
1915-19. Lured 10 women to country house on outskirts of Paris with newspaper advert indicating interest in marriage and all 10 women disappeared
Landru dared prosecutors to prove him killer
Insisted innocent up to execution, Feb 1922
Papin Sisters, Feb 1933
Mm Lancelin reprimanded maids Christine and Léa Papin when ironing not done and lights out because iron’s fuse blown. Iron had recently returned from repair shop, its breakdown attributed to the maids’ carelessness
Papin sisters threw themselves on Mm Lancelin and her daughter Geneviève and tore out their eyeballs with their naked fingers
Killed them with household implements. Cuts to buttocks and thighs seemed sadistically sexual
Then Christine remarked ‘well this is a fine mess’
Failure of journalists to press case into familiary mould
Dr Victor Truelle and 2 other specialists claimed Papin sisters not mentally ill
Germaine d’Anglemont
French narrative of crime of passion
Janet Flanner, New Yorker - ‘stylish assassination’. Contrast with Nozière’s ‘mediocre murder’
Religious orphanage
Picked up men in smoky bars
Became Belle Epoque feature
Dated president of Mexico
Settled down with Causeret, prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône
March 1933
Causeret told d’Anglemont going off to work at the ministry, but phone call from spy - actually picking out luxury silken gifts, clearly not intended for Germaine
When he returned, argument. Gun Germaine kept for protection went off. She shot him
Just two year sentence in 1935 trial
Entertainment tycoon Dufrenne
murdered September 1933 by a male prostitute dressed as a sailor
Leplée, who discovered Edith Piaf, killed under similar sordid circumstances April 1936
Faits divers influencing Gide
The Counterfeiters, 1927. Influenced by two separate faits divers
- Children of good family caught circulating counterfeit gold coins
- Lycée students formed secret society and convinced one member to commit suicide after drawing lots
Gide, Judge Not, 1930
Gide published notes he took during 1912 experience serving as juror for 2 weeks at Roen Assize Court
Struck by opacity of motivations
Stavinsky Affair, fall 1933
Stavinsky = fraud. Affair brought politics to the fore again
Stavinsky had worked with local republican politicians to set up municipal credit institution in provincial town of Bayenne
Republican government dismissed police chief of Paris Chiappe, trying to cover up
Angered right
Feb 1934 right-wing activists took to streets outside National Assembly
1897 Reform
Added lawyer to inquiry, further weakening examining magistrate’s role
‘Shame and infamy surround him on all sides. Society shuns him… he’s a policeman, a mouchard - this word says it all… the police ID card in his pocket is yet another badge of shame
Durantin, of Vidocq, in moral encyclopedia of 19th C, Les Français peints par eux-mêmes, 1840-2
When it does not stray from its true goal, this institution… earns the gratitude of all decent people
Former superintendent Pierre Canler, 1862
Obedience to laws involved loss of personal liberty
human passions urge us to pursue own interests in face of artificial constraints
Beccaria, Essay on Crime and Punishment, 1764
Lombroso, Born Criminal
1876
Rival to criminology
Criminalistics - use of stats. Scepticism over whether there were identifiable criminal types
Hans Gros, criticism of criminology
One had already included the assumption that such a distinctiveness exists into the definition [of the criminal]’
Training/ reference manual in detective art
Handling of physical evidence and psychological side of detection
Underlying assumption of rational criminals
Hans Gros, Handbook for Investigative Judges, 1893
Bertillon’s anthropometrie system dates
developed 1879. Disseminated 1885 with the publication of Identification anthropométrique
Development of mug shots
By 1890s criminals often photographed in special chairs with mirrors attached
First modern detective story (Vyleta)
Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, 1841
Detective = Dupin
Explicitly explored powers of heredity over individuals, drawing both on monomania and physical characteristics of Lombrosian
Zola, Le Bête Humaine
Mysteries of Paris key characters
Rodolph, Grand Duke of Gerolstein
Chourineur
Goualeuse
The Schoolmaster (Duresnel)
Zola’s first famous work
L’Assommoir, 1877
