French Witch Burning, 1886 June 15, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Many moons ago, Beach began the long search to find the last witch killing in history. He quickly narrowed down to Western witch killing, because of course, there are many killings in Africa and Asia to this day. Every so often he thinks he has come close, but then another inconvenient and later murder falls from the sky. Here is a French instance which had previously escaped him.
The trial for matricide at Blois has just concluded. In this case the sons, daughter, and son-in-law of the widow Lebon, were charged with burning the aged woman to death. Being steeped in petroleum she is said to have flamed like oiled paper when a burning wisp of straw was applied to her. The accused parties, it came out in evidence, summoned the parish priest, a few hours previous to the crime, to confess the widow Lebon and give her absolution. As she was very infirm and never suspected their sinister design, the priest thought this at the time a proof of laudable piety. When she was being burned the murderers cried out to the children, who had got into the bottom of a press, ‘Pray for her soul’; and they themselves recited the Litany for the dying and the De Profundis. One of the sons admitted that he not only helped to carry his mother to the fire, but trampled on her chest to hold her well in it. Alexander, a weak-minded, superstitious fellow, said that he had come on the day of the crime to his sister’s house to see his mother entirely from a sense of duty, because he heard that she was ill, and that when, as he was smoking a cigar in the garden of his brother-in-law, he was told how she was to be burned he became too sick and miserable to eat any dinner.
The following dialogue was held between him and the presiding Judge:
Judge: What took place when you sat down to table?
Answer: My sister shut the outer door, and said, ‘You just stay there. We must burn the old witch; if you don’t help, we shall burn you.’ She and her husband, who held knife in his hand, then rose and pushed towards the bed. (Here the accused wept bitterly).
The Judge: And you helped to carry your mother to the fire made ready for her?
Answer: I did not know, I was frightened, what I was doing.
Judge: Why did you not break the window and call out ‘Murder’?
Answer: My brother-in-law held the knife before me and told that he would settle me. I hung back. It was he who lighted the fire and made ready the wisp of straw which was to act as match. He also, when the old woman writhed twisted, got a rake to hold her in the fire.
Source: Western Times (26 Nov 1886), 3
The sister and husband were sentence to death and the two brothers to life in prison. Any other late witch deaths: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
Chris from Haunted Ohio Books writes, 30 Jun 2016, in with this gem ‘Extraordinary Superstition. Paris, American Register, An extraordinary case of superstition is reported from the south of France. A woman of Thueyts, in the Ardeche, had taken a child to wet-nurse, when her milk suddenly failed her. She imagined she was bewitched by an old woman of 80 in the neighbourhood and had her brought to the house by her husband. The man suspended the unfortunate creature by the pot-hook in the chimney and roasted her feet, and as this treatment did not produce a fresh flow of milk for the child the peasant and his wife put the old woman’s feet in an iron pot, which was made to boil. The victim died after fearful sufferings, and her murderers have been arrested.’ Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 2 August 1884: p. 1. 1884 is the year before Brigid Cleary. Chris goes on to make a more fundamental point: ‘But, but…. Is your French matricide, odious though it is, really a witch killing? “Old witch,” sounds like something many people would say about a disagreeable and taxing aged relative. And if they really thought she was a witch, would they have sent for a priest or recited the prayers for the dying? Such attentions would have done a genuine devotee of Satan no good at all. Was the priest called on to testify? Is there other evidence that the family/neighbors thought she was a witch? And yet, if it was merely murder, why choose such a horrible way? Did they think they could say it was an accident? Poison would have been less risky, especially since the woman was already infirm.’ I [Beach] would answer that there are all the signs of a collective religious mania here, and ‘witch’ fits into this very well.
