Note: English language sources do not list Madame Delpech's full name. Yet French sources, several of them now online, give the name as Anne Gaillard Delpech.
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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): At Montauban, near Toulouse, a series of most abominable crimes have taken place, and under the very eyes of the authorities. Eight women were put on their trial for infanticide, and practising abortion. But the “head devils” were two named Delpech and Coyne. The former was a fat brute, aged 52, a convicted thief, and the keeper of a brothel. She confessed having murdered nine infants, entrusted to her to nurse. Her baby farming consisted in drowning the little darlings in a basin of water, then cutting them up into morsels in her lap, and burying the remains in her kitchen under the stairs, or in the water-closet. All this she confessed with a savage glee, describing the process in full court, and in the presence of the skeletons of seven of her massacred innocents. She practised abortion for a fee as low as two pounds of brown sugar, her first patient being her own daughter, aged 17, whose child she had some months before killed after coming into the world, by pouring vitriol and sugar down its throat. Some of the victims she left to the rats, gave to the pigs, and it is suspected eat portions. The ogress was equal to any inhumanity. Coyne was a midwife, extremely handsome, and aged 32. She recommended mothers to place their offspring with Delpech to nurse, dividing with that wretch the receipts. Both most openly instigated young girls to sin, assuring them of being easily freed from its evidence. Coyne accepted two chickens and 100 chestnuts for an abortion. During the trial Delpech indulged in continued laughter. She was found guilty, with “extenuating circumstances,” which takes away the penalty of death. The judge sentenced her to transportation for life, and on retiring she sent kisses of adieu to the audience. She has had the audacity to appeal against her sentence. Coyne was sent to the galleys for ten years, one woman was acquitted, and the others imprisoned for short periods.
[From “Parisian Gossip.” The Southland
Times (Invercargill, New Zealand) May 20, 1869, pp. 2-3]
***
FULL
TEXT (Article 2 of 2): A trial, the details of which are perfectly awful has
just been decided at Toulouse. Eight women were accused of procuring abortion
and murdering children. One Delpech, called the “Ogresse,” had got off once
before when she was tried for the murder of two women, who had died under her
operations. This she admitted, with a pleasing smile.
Having
operated on her own daughters and others, as she openly admitted, she then went
into another business.
“You
devoted yourself to another profession?” said the magistrate, mildly.
“Yes,
unluckily,” was the reply.
“Children
were left in your charge, and they disappeared?”
“Yes,
sir: but I was not a free agent.”
“How
did you kill these wretched infants?”
“I
was not a free agent.”
“These
children were found after they had been dead two or three days?”
“Yes,
sir; I kept one for two or three days at the foot of my bed!”
“You
killed them by putting their heads in a pail of water. Is it not so?”
“Yes
sir.”
She
chopped up one child.
The
judge then asks, “You suffocated another?”
“Comme l’autre; mon Dieu, oui.”
“Yes;
exactly the same as the others.”
“And
you buried it under the staircase?”
“Yes;
dug a hole with a shovel.” Here she roared with laughter.
“And
the third, child ?” “Oh; always the same operation.”
The
story is too dreadful. She received 100f., 200f., 500f., and undertook to send
the children to an institution. She simply killed them, and when one man asked
her for his child or his money, she and her accomplice arranged that they would
hand over “the money they got for the next” to the injured parent.
“Then
you killed these nine children. But that is not all. You also killed your
granddaughter! You gave her vitriol, did you not?”
“Si
fait; si fait!” (This is pleasingly explained as an expression equivalent to
assent.)
There
was a certain Madame Coyne who was only one degree removed a crime from
Delpech. She was the agent who received the child, and the two or three hundred
francs; and, having deducted a most liberal commission, handed over 100f. (4:1.) as the future
provision for this wretched morsel of humanity.
“And
you thought that Delpech could bring up a child on 41. sterling?” asked
the judge.
The
details of the trial are unfit for publication. Seven out of the eight
prisoners were found “Guilty,” and two of them sentenced to the alleys –
Delpech, the chief culprit, for life, and Coyne or ten years. The other
sentences were: – Barriere two years;
Verne, four; Pauline, three; Eulalie, two; and Plantade, one year’s
imprisonment.
[“Wholesale
Infanticide.” Lloyd’s Weekly Newsletter (London, England), Mar. 14, 1869, p. 1]
***
FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): WE shall not disgust our readers
with a minute analysis of the horrible details of a recent trial in Montauban, in the course of which it was proved that no
fewer than eight wretched women had been concerned through along series of
years with some of the worst crimes which disgrace humanity.
They were tried and convicted of the crimes of infanticide
and of procuring abortion; in the latter case, some as agents, some as
patients. One woman, the central figure of the group, Delpech, was proved to
have murdered no less than nine infants, one her own daughter’s illegitimate
child, and all under circumstances of the most inconceivable and fiendish
brutality. She seems to have commenced her career of infanticide
with this murder of her grandchild, to which the mother was privy, by
administering vitriol; and in the other cases she had recourse to the simpler
process of holding the victims’ heads under water —
the Times’ Correspondent says boiling water, but
this does not appear in the French report in the Constitutionnel which has reached us.
These infanticides were connected with the familiar system
of baby-farming, as we call it, or, as in their pretty way the French wits
style it, the manufacture of angels. In every case the mothers, and in one the
alleged father, entrusted illegitimate children to the tender care of the woman
Delpech, who, in consideration of money aid down, ranging in different cases
from 100 to 500 francs, undertook to lace the poor little wretches in various
nursing institutions, which duty she discharged by murdering them off-hand, and
occasionally cutting them in pieces and hiding them in various parts of her
house. Generally the mothers exhibited a significant lack of interest in their
miserable offspring; and in one instance no inquiries were made for five years.
The whole matter reads its own horrible lesson, which it would be impertinent
to enlarge upon or to exaggerate; and doubtless its lesson will not be lost
upon our eloquent contemporary of the daily press, who has been especially
minute and especially impressive in expressing his horror of this social
depravity, and who at the same time regularly inserts the advertisements of
baby-farming establishments among ourselves which, if they have not much the
same results, are sadly suspected of sometimes carrying on a trade little
better than that of the woman Delpech.
Apart from these considerations, which are on the surface of
the case, we repose to examine it as a typical instance of what seem to be the
very strange results of French criminal proceedings. And, first, the details of
the trial do not reflect much credit on the vaunted superiority of the French
police. The history of the woman Delpech – at least her criminal history – runs
as for back as the year 1857. The stages of her guilt are successive, and
increase in infamy and
crime. Commencing with what the Act of Accusation in sonorous French tongue
calls the trade of “proxénêtisme,” Delpech took naturally to baby-farming and consequent infanticide, and at last to the more
lucrative trade of abortion. It was only in consequence of some unlucky failure
in this last branch of her profession, which ended in the death of her two
victims, that Delpech was brought to justice. That is to say, for twelve years
she had been suspected by the police, who were indeed active
enough to convict her more than once during this time for some small robberies.
But her greater crimes were not detected, or, if
suspected, they were not gone into. At any moment she might have been caught
almost in the act, for the skeletons and scattered bones of at least seven of
her victims were discovered when — that is, after some ten years — the
suspicions of the police were at last roused into action. But, unsatisfactory
as this specimen of the detective
powers of the French police seems to be, this preliminary
consideration is insignificant when compared with the result of the criminal
proceedings at the assizes of Montauban. The Judge, more Francorum, had it all his own way. In the course of his examination of the principal prisoner, Delpech, she confessed
everything; and the very leading
questions as to her guilt put from the Bench were
met with instantaneous alacrity or assent and explosions of laughter on the
part of the accused which had to be accounted for, and on these jovialities in
the dock, planned and pre-arranged for the purpose, her counsel framed a very
pretty defence. True that the accused confessed everything; but then she was
mad. She had on some occasions gone to the cemetery and had invoked the ghosts of her parents, who, according to her own account, dictated
to her the confession of these crimes. The
ingenious advocate assed over the fact that the prisoner’s
guilt was sufficiently proved y extraneous testimony apart from her confession. But he went on to argue — Look at the woman; observe
her demeanour in Court; watch heir convulsed by alternate fits of laughter an
tears; take note of these unquestionable signs of madness. And so he went on,
and at last moved the Court with a formal appeal. “Whereas the fact of insanity
at the moment of the commission of crime excludes all culpability, and therefore all penalties;
whereas the existence of insanity after the commission
of crime is a bar to judgment; whereas in this case the evidence of experts will probably prove such insanity in the prisoner,”
&c. &c., the Court was moved to suspend all proceedings, as against Delpech, till these subjects were
investigated. This hint will perhaps not be lost upon our legal practitioners;
but the dodge met with little countenance from the French Judge, who
immediately took the opinion of the prison doctor, who replied very distinctly
that Delpech’s madness was all simulated, and her grinning and laughter only
got up for the occasion. As far as the Court went, the Ogress — for this is the
nickname which Delpech has acquitted — overdid her
fictitious madness. But, as regards the jury, she partly succeeded. Knowing the
nature of French folks, so susceptible of theatrical impressions, she had recourse to all the advantages which art
and nature gave her. She appears to be a preternaturally hideous woman, and she
is depicted in the report with remarkable powers of personal description, which lead us to suspect that the artists of the Daily Telegraph were subsidized for the
occasion. In picturesque but not engaging language
we are told of her tremendous black eyebrows, and her head turbaned with a
yellow handkerchief; her huge prominent nose, fort at un peu plongeant; the
hideous space between her broad nostrils and frightful mouth, traversed by
cavernous wrinkles; and her charms are accentuated by long, sharp, bestial teeth, and a. huge chin, which
completes a savage an animal jaw. To the value of these personal advantages for
playing the maniac our agreeable Delpech was not insensible; throughout the
trial she grinned, she growled, she laughed demoniac laughter, and alternated
with copious floods of tears; and for the two operations she kept two separate
handkerchiefs, one to muffle her sobs of grief, and one to stifle her hilarity.
Now and then she seems to have forgot her rifle,
and interchanged the characters and handkerchiefs
of this new version of Jean qui pleure and
Jean qui rit. But even this mistake
might be a stretch of artistic power, and though it had little effect on the
unsympathetic Judge, it told — at least we suppose
it told — on the jury; for though they found her guilty, it was under those
convenient “extenuating circumstances” which have relieved the greatest
criminal of the day from the extreme punishment of death.
Anyhow Delpech, though convicted, has only been punished
with imprisonment and hard labor for life. What the extenuating circumstances
may be which weighed with the Montauban jury we are only left to conjecture. Perhaps they were impressed with the feelings of one of
the witnesses, who observed, with some plaintiveness, “ What are poor folks to
do who have many mouths to feed and no bread to give them?” an observation
which the Judge characterized as “ full of interest, but scarcely proper.”
Perhaps the jury thought, as has been suggested, that it was an extenuating
circumstance that the Ogress murdered a round dozen of her fellow-creatures,
and that she ought to have been guillotined if she had murdered only a single
baby. Or, what is much more likely, they really were influenced by the plea of insanity. The influence which this plea
exercises on stupid people like jurymen is subtle.
It is not in this case that they really believed that Delpech was mad; but it
had been alleged that she was mad. Whether this was
so or not, the plea had at least this effect, that
she might have been mad. Therefore the extenuating circumstances consisted,
not in the fact of madness, but in the possibility of madness, and the
allegation of madness. The confusion between a fact and a possibility raises
what muzzle-headed people call a doubt, and they give the accused the benefit
of this fiction which they dignify with the
importance of a doubt, but which is in truth only mere stupid incapacity to
distinguish between facts proved and possibilities suggested – a stupidity
which is not confined to French jury-boxes.
On the whole, the results of this trial tend to reconcile us
to what are undoubtedly defects in our own criminal proceedings. At Montauban
we must admit that justice has failed, although the guilt of the accused was
established with a certainty which is very seldom possible in our own Courts.
It seems that in aiming at too much, and in endeavouring to invest human
justice with the awful attributes of a Divine retribution, the main object of
the French system runs the risk of defeating itself. Human passion, prejudice,
caprice, pigheadedness, or what not, will have its say, an will interpose
between what the advocate for the prosecution in this case, the Procureur-Impérial — called the supreme and necessary expiation of
crime. To what else are we to attribute the success of a remarkable and
sensational dodge tried, and tried successfully, on behalf of one of these
miserable culprits, a woman named Boyer? She, the only one of the eight
prisoners, was acquitted absolutely, although the evidence against her, that of
being a consenting party to abortion practised on her own person, was precisely
the same as that which convicted others of the
accused. Why was Boyer acquitted? Because of a coup de théatre executed in open court, to which we should fail to
do justice unless we produced it as reported in the French papers :—
En me rappelant, ajoute le défenseur, le
chiffre des victimes de la femme Delpech, je trouve un singulier contraste. La
justice demande compte de neuf victimes, je défends une femme qui a donné neuf enfans à
la societé. Je no puis pas vous les produire tous ici: trois sont morts. Mais
les six autres sont ici.
Les voilà: levez-irons, enfans de la femme
Boyer, venez demander votre more ii messieurs les jurés (les enfans de
l’accusée tiennent un moment debout en poussant des sanglots), prouvez-leur que
voici la regardez comme une bonne mère ; dites combles vous
l’aimez. (Agitation dans la salit.)
M. LE PRESIDENT. – L’audience est susceptibles pour quelques instans.
Before the jury retired, on being in the usual form asked
whether she had anything to add to her defence, la femme Boyer neatly replied, “Je
demande, messieurs, que vous me rendez mes enfans.” The jury were too polite
and gallant not to accede to this amiable criminal’s request, and this
excellent parent of six living children, the mother of the Montauban Gracchuses
who are to be, la femme Boyer est
aquittée.
[“Infanticide In France.” The
Saturday Review (London, England), Mar. 20, 1869, p. 385]
***
For more Real Life Ogresses see: Ogresses: Female Serial Killers of the Children of Others
***
For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
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The following list of 9 women arrested appeared in French
newspapers:
1° Anne Gaillard, épouse Delpech,
ménagère;
2° Jeanne Andrieu, épouse Coyne,
sage-femme;
3" Jeanne Delpech, dite Anna,
épouse Barrière, tailleuse; ces trois domiciliées à Montauban;
4o Jeanne-Marie Gaillard, dite
Miette, épouse Vern, mémigère, domiciliée à "Vaissae;
5° Jeanne-Josèphe Saulenc, épouse
Boyer, ménagère, domiciliée à Saint-Etienne-de-Tulmont;
6° Marie-Àutpinette Larroques, dite
Eulalie, repasseuse, domiciliée à Montauban; ' 7° Pauline Duran, journalière à
Lavet;
Et 8° Jeanne-Marie Lafont, épouse Plantade, sans profession,
domiciliée à Lavet, Sont accusées d'assassinats et d'avortements.
[“Assassinats Et Avortements. - Les
Tueuses D'enfants - Huit
femmes accusées.” Le Homme Normand (Paris, France), Mar. 12-18, 1869, p. 1]
***
For more Real Life Ogresses see: Ogresses: Female Serial Killers of the Children of Others
***
For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.
***
Links to more Serial Killer Couples
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[2664-1/10/21]
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