At the end of January 1899, a woman appeared before the Seine Assize Court under the name of Dumortier, though the proceedings also referred to her as Pesnel, her maiden name. She admitted having signed names that were not her own on a marriage contract and on its subsequent amendment. As for the securities claimed by her husband, she maintained that he had entrusted them to her. Between these two accounts, a purported widow, a London ceremony, and a general power of attorney had laid the groundwork for an affair in which the signature was to reveal far more than the name itself.
The initial report, dated Paris, January 23, opens with the trial in progress. The defendant was thirty-seven years of age. She was styled "the woman Pesnel, wife Dumortier," and the article imputed four classes of offences to her: forgery, theft, fraud, and bigamy. The Gazette dwelled upon her attire and her smile; such a chronicler’s observation belongs to the printed spectacle, not to the proofs of guilt. To render the charges intelligible, the journal traced back the unions and separations that preceded her meeting with Mr. Casse.
Pesnel had married Dumortier on May 5, 1883. This was, according to the article, her third marriage. In May 1885, the court had pronounced a legal separation of bed and board and of property. It was never converted into a divorce. The Gazette did not reproduce the civil status records or the judicial rulings concerning her prior unions; it merely stated the existence of a separation and the absence of a divorce—elements that illuminate the subsequent charge of bigamy without providing its full juridical examination.
Following her release from a term of imprisonment—the account specified that she had notably served three years for theft—a relative who managed a matrimonial agency informed her that a fifty-two-year-old widower, Mr. Casse, was seeking to remarry. The woman wrote to him, presenting herself under a far more advantageous name: Jeanne André, widow Henry de Mortaert. She claimed to possess an apartment building at No. 5, Cité d’Hauteville, alongside some two hundred thousand francs deposited with the Bank of England.
Mr. Casse kept the appointment. The building indeed existed and belonged to a Madame André; according to the complainant's testimony, the purported widow persuaded the landlady to let him inspect the premises, without ever disclosing the deception. The press account does not permit us to know every word exchanged during these visits. It records only that interview followed interview, and that the suitor, already drawn to the prospect of marriage, placed complete faith in the announced fortune.
The betrothal proved lengthy. The woman Dumortier departed for several months, explaining that she was unwell and in need of a change of air. During her absence, Casse wrote to her, unaware—as was later revealed during the judicial investigation—that she had given birth to twins. The newspaper records neither their names nor their ultimate fate; in the narrative, they remain a fact discovered after the event, rendering more singular still the identity already contrived for the impending nuptials.
Upon her return to Paris, she had Casse’s notary draw up a contract setting forth her alleged contributions. The notary observed that a debt attributed to Casse had been overvalued and advised an amending deed. The bride-to-be signed both instruments as Jeanne André, widow Henry de Mortaert. The assumed name was thus not merely a prepossession held out to the suitor: it entered into instruments prepared by a public officer, and thereafter into their formal rectification.
The woman then pleaded the potential opposition of an aunt and departed with Casse for London. There, they celebrated a civil marriage before the registrar for the Strand district. At the trial, she admitted to the false signatures upon the contract and its amendment, but maintained that "Dumortier" was pronounced in the English manner as "de Mortaert." When the presiding judge enquired whether "Jeanne André" might be the English pronunciation of "Pesnel," the journal reports that she merely smiled without answering.
The London ceremony constituted the second crux of the affair. The accused stated she had believed, from what she had once heard an advocate general say in another trial, that marriages contracted in England possessed no legal validity. She added that the ceremony had been conducted in a dining room and that she was wearing ordinary day dress. Such were her explanations to the court; the printed account reproduces neither an English certificate nor any analysis of the applicable law. The recorded fact remains that a marriage had been celebrated before the civil registrar of Strand, whilst the prior separation from Dumortier had never been converted into a divorce.
The journal attributed to the prosecution a sequence of financial transactions commencing after the marriage. The woman was said to have obtained funds, circulated commercial bills under the name of Mortaert, and had them endorsed by her husband and by bankers before appropriating the proceeds. She was further alleged to have taken securities belonging to Casse and to his son from a first marriage, obtained a general power of attorney, and caused a receipt for one hundred and seventy thousand francs to be signed without ever paying over the sum. This reflects the judicial narrative as printed by the Gazette, rather than an independent reconstruction drawn from bank ledgers or the official case files.
The defendant contested the charge of theft. She maintained that her husband had delivered the securities to her, granting her full power to dispose of his entire fortune. The very power of attorney that the prosecution framed as an instrument of despoilment became, in her defence, the authorization that rendered the transfers lawful. The newspaper provided neither the full text of the procuration nor the precise details of each security. It recorded, however, that Casse had borrowed heavily to meet her demands, and that an anonymous letter had finally prompted his complaint.
In his testimony, Casse recounted that he had met his bride-to-be after a missed appointment at the Grand-Hôtel. She had spoken of an inheritance under the name of André and had taken him to view the property in the Cité d’Hauteville. He then described a stay in London: at her request, he had written to his aunt instructing her to withdraw the securities from his strongbox and deposit them elsewhere, disclosing in his letter the secret means of access. He handed the packet to the woman to be posted; according to him, she kept it, returned to France, seized the securities and had them sold, returning to London the very next day.
At the close of this first hearing, the notary Maître Colleau and other witnesses were examined; the proceedings were adjourned to the morrow. The issue of January 25 summarized the hearing of January 24 and announced the outcome of the trial, noting that several witnesses had been heard. It did not reproduce all the depositions or the pleadings of counsel; we cannot, therefore, supplement these summaries with presumed speeches or scenes.
Among these witnesses, the property owner Madame André testified that she had been deceived by the accused. She had permitted access to her building without knowing the designs imputed to it. The reporter added that the testimony for the defence did not alter the facts established by the prosecution, though no particulars were supplied. Advocate General Fournier called upon the jury for a verdict of guilty; Maître Lévy-Alvarès presented the defence. The Gazette reproduced neither the closing speeches nor the specific questions put to the jury.
The woman Dumortier was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude and a fine of one hundred francs. The chronicle did not specify, in this concluding summary, the jurors’ answer to each of the counts of forgery, theft, fraud, and bigamy; it would thus be incautious to assign separate guilt to each charge. The penalty marks the conclusion that the journal gave to the trial. It shed no light on the ultimate fate of Casse’s securities, the twins, or the convict’s other unions.
At the outset of the affair, a purported widow had presented a property she did not own and savings supposedly held in London. The marriage deeds then fixed this assumed name upon paper, whilst Casse signed, borrowed, and parted with his securities under the spell of the trust he reposed in his betrothed. In court, Pesnel admitted the forged signatures, denied the thefts, and invoked the power of attorney; the owner of the property denounced the deceit in which her building had served as the instrument. The Gazette closed its account with a sentence, preserving none of the exhaustive details of the judgment. What remains certain in its columns is that trust had been orchestrated around multiple names and instruments—whose signatures, at last, could be confronted and compared.
Documentary Note
Narrative based on the report of the hearing of January 23 printed on p. 78 of the issue bearing the dates January 23–24, 1899, and on the summary of January 24 printed on p. 83 of the Gazette des Tribunaux of January 25. The newspaper summarized the verdict without detailing the jury's responses to each of the counts of the indictment; the conviction is reported without extrapolation.