On 24 February 1878, at half-past eight in the morning, an elevator in the Grand-Hôtel had descended only a few metres when it suddenly shot upward toward the upper floors. The Baroness de Schack had just entered on the first floor; the supervisor Roch and Garneret, the operator charged with driving the apparatus, were already aboard. The cab struck the iron ceiling and the glass skylights that crowned the shaft on the fifth floor. The impact severed the chains and their fastenings; the elevator plunged back down to the ground floor. All three occupants of the cab perished. The medical report presented at the hearing attributed their fractured skulls to the initial shock at the summit of the ascent.
The trial was to determine whether this catastrophe arose from a failure that no vigilance could have prevented, or from punishable negligence. The Gazette des Tribunaux published the account of the hearing of 27 May in its issue of 28 June. The man under prosecution was Louis-Désiré Alberty de Cadenet, chief mechanic of the Grand-Hôtel, entrusted for several years with the supervision and maintenance of the machinery. His employer, the director Van Hymbeck, was summoned as civilly liable; the manufacturers, Messrs. Edoux, were not prosecuted.
Two elevators had been installed in 1876 by Edoux, an engineer who had already constructed a large number of them. The establishment had formally acknowledged their satisfactory operation and paid forty thousand francs for the whole. No guarantee period had been stipulated, nor was the maintenance of the apparatus incumbent upon the builder. These terms placed the machine, once delivered, entirely in the hands of the hotel. Those hands belonged to Alberty, selected for his competence and the favourable references gathered regarding his conduct.
To understand the fall of 24 February, the judicial expert traced the history back to a fire that broke out in the attic during the night of 2 to 3 July 1877. The seat of the blaze was located at the very passage of the Scribe elevator’s chains. Heated white-hot, the chains snapped, sending the counterweights plunging from the fifth floor to the basement. The severed chains had then whipped down into the hollow columns of the shaft, striking the lower corners of the cab. The expert believed these blows had imparted to the assembly of the seat and the piston a shock severe enough to initiate its structural degradation.
The apparatus had been repaired and put back into service. The cast-iron collar connecting the hydraulic piston to the cab lay hidden beneath a coat of paint; the fissures, slight at first according to the expert’s hypothesis, would have widened as stresses were repeatedly applied. When the mechanism was dismantled after the accident, this piece was found broken into five fragments. The fractured surfaces displayed neither the same colour nor the same degree of oxidation. In the expert’s view, they had parted successively, and not all at the moment of the plunge. He maintained that the external cracks must ultimately have become visible upon an examination of the piston head.
Calculations, in his estimation, ruled out a fracture caused solely by the normal operation of the apparatus: the dimensions of the piece conferred upon it a strength vastly superior to what regular service demanded. The cause had to be sought elsewhere. Upon the bases of the columns, the technician had noted marks of hammering; the lower crossmembers of the cab bore corresponding indentations. The repetition of these impacts, he thought, had brought about the ultimate failure of a piece already compromised.
At this juncture, the mechanical explanation intersected with the daily operation of the lift. A regulation issued by the director ordered the drivers to pull two safety bolts upon arriving at the ground floor, under pain of dismissal. This manoeuvre was intended to prevent shocks against the stops. The report presumed that drivers occasionally neglected to engage them, though it could not establish who had caused each impact: Garneret was dead, and Degonda denied ever having allowed the cab to strike the floor. An automatic stop, designed to arrest the cab when the bolts were not pulled, had likewise functioned for a time; it had since worn down too short to perform its office. The expert concluded that proper oversight of this catch would have prevented repeated shocks, and that vigilant inspection of the collar would have brought the fissures to light.
The prosecution’s indictment raised two distinct charges of negligence against Alberty. First, he ought to have discovered the cracks in the piston head. The indictment noted that Alberty acknowledged the importance of examining the connecting parts. The expert insisted that the fissures would have been perceptible. Second, he ought to have noticed the defect in the lower catch and had it repaired. He had admitted to having repeatedly ordered repairs on other stops that had shifted out of alignment; for the prosecution, the maintenance of these components fell directly under his charge. The Crown concluded with an indictment for triple involuntary manslaughter through negligence.
The presiding judge revisited both points with the accused. He recalled the fire, the fall of the chains and counterweights, and then the thuds that kitchen staff reported hearing from the basements. The cooks had spoken of shocks violent enough to spill sauces upon the tables; Guiet, the pantry supervisor, had reported frequent creaking noises. Alberty disputed this description. He asserted that such shocks had never been observed, drawing a distinction between simple creaking and impacts capable of visibly damaging the mechanism.
The debate shifted to the safety catch. The presiding judge recalled that it served to arrest the elevator and prevent shocks; the accused replied that one had also to take the design into account. He pointed to the absence of locknuts on the bolts of the cast-iron collar and the structural weakness of the assembly. Edoux, he observed, now fitted them to his new machines. The judge did not regard this later modification as sufficient proof of an inherent defect: adding an extra precaution did not, of itself, demonstrate that the previous construction engaged the manufacturer’s criminal liability.
The witnesses offered varying degrees of support to the prosecution. The engineer Lévy confirmed his report. Garde, the hairdresser, who had seen the elevator shoot upward toward the top of the hotel, had observed nothing that could account for the catastrophe. The builder Félix-Léon Edoux traced the origin of the disaster to the fire of July, but vigorously defended the solidity of his apparatus: according to him, the piece could withstand four times the strain to which it had been subjected, and the mechanic should have perceived the fissures. His brother Alphonse, a partner in the firm, delivered similar testimony.
Degonda had frequently operated the elevator. He testified that Alberty supervised it with diligence and believed he inspected its parts every morning; he himself, as an operator, never examined them, as it was not his place. Schuller, a head of department, explained that he acted as an intermediary between the director and the mechanic, but gave the latter no orders concerning the machinery: Alberty was the absolute master of that domain. Faulquier, the architect, denied having altered the pulleys after the fire; the work he had directed was confined to the ceiling. Lastly, Verdier recounted that a fire had broken out during his brother’s wedding ball; he had seen the chains of the elevator fall upon the cab, admitting that the mechanism might have been shaken by the shock.
The published report breaks off before any judgment was rendered. The public prosecutor called for the application of the law; Maître Chenal pleaded for Alberty de Cadenet, and Maître Lenté for Van Hymbeck. The court adjourned the pronouncement of its verdict for one week. Nothing in this issue of the gazette reveals what was subsequently decided. The printed page thus leaves the three dead suspended between two divergent explanations: a mechanism battered first by fire and then by repeated impacts, and a standard of oversight that, in the eyes of the prosecution and the expert, ought to have detected the decay before it became fatal.