The trial at Rouen turned upon a single man, two birth certificates, and three wives whom the press reported as still living. The third did not appear: having already been heard in Algiers, her attendance was deemed unnecessary. At the bar, two others awaited their turn, one having travelled from Bône, the other from Le Havre. Their presence compelled the court to confront a singularly concrete question: what name had the accused given, that each might believe herself wed to a free man?
The proceedings commenced on the 9th of February 1874 before the assize court of the Seine-Inférieure. The indictment read by the clerk set forth Jean-Baptiste-Noël Dufour, born on the 25th of December 1824, son of Marguerite Dufour. He had a brother, Denis, born on the 30th of November 1832. The chronicle describes him as a former barber’s assistant, who likewise claimed to be the inventor of an ointment styled the “Pomade of a Thousand Seasons.” In 1847, according to the indictment, he had suffered three months’ imprisonment for theft.
Dufour did not at first acknowledge this name. He admitted it only in open court, after having long maintained that he was Denis, the brother whose identity he had usurped. The preliminary investigation, according to the gazette, had confronted the two men and their portraits; it had likewise traced the true Denis. Before the jury, Dufour at last confessed his identity. The court examined him upon the acts of civil status: in 1868, at Le Havre, he had wed Louise-Adélaïde Hébert under his brother’s name, declaring himself born at Uchizy on the 30th of November 1832. He was already married at the time. The indictment maintained a distinction between the two charges: first, having falsely stated Denis’s name and birth date to the registrar; second, having contracted a fresh marriage without the dissolution of the first. The charge of false declaration thus concerned specific entries in a formal register; the Rouen court did not confound this Havre marriage with the union in Algiers, which had already received judicial sentence.
This first marriage dated back to 1853, though the account offers conflicting locations: its preamble places it at Bône, whereas the bill of indictment sets the ceremony at Clussey. Marie Gautheron confirmed in her deposition the date of the 3rd of January 1853, without naming the locality. She stated that she had lived with Dufour at Bissy-la-Mâconnaise, and subsequently at La Ciotat. Three children were born of this union, two of whom died in infancy. On the 5th of February 1865, she went out to fetch their child from school; upon her return, her husband had vanished. She saw him again only in Algiers, she testified, at the very moment he was on the point of wedding another woman, Mademoiselle Tanse. Her arrival prevented the marriage. At the Rouen assizes, the presiding judge identified her as the sole legitimate wife still living.
The indictment relates that after deserting Marie, Dufour made his way to Bône in 1865 and represented himself as an unmarried man to one Monsieur Faure, whose daughter he sought to wed. Marie arrived and brought an end to the design. The narrative adds that he returned to La Ciotat, committed an aggravated theft there, and subsequently fled to Africa. From February 1867 onward, his family heard nothing more of him. These allegations represent the case for the prosecution; the press account offers no particulars regarding the proceedings for this theft nor his sojourn on African soil.
At Le Havre, Dufour passed himself off as Denis. He married Louise-Adélaïde Hébert on the 7th of February 1868. Two months later, he disappeared. Hébert had been in service as a cook for a certain Monsieur Roux; she recounted that they had wed after a courtship of two months and a half. One Wednesday morning, her husband informed her that he was going to work for Madame Enault, a wigmaker in the Rue de la Vierge. When he failed to return, she went to the premises, only to find him absent. She was informed that he had taken ship for New York. To procure the documents requisite for the marriage, she stated, he had had recourse to the charitable Society of Saint Francis Regis.
The complaint that brought the matter back before the law came from Louise’s brother-in-law. The chronology in the gazette varies: its opening affirms that in 1871 the second wife’s family, upon reading an account of the Algiers trial, lodged a fresh complaint; further along, it specifies that an issue of the Petit Journal dated the 23rd of April 1873 had enabled the man Coffin to recognize his sister-in-law’s missing husband. The text does not reconcile these two dates, and they are recorded here separately. The trial in Algiers had culminated in a conviction for bigamy following his marriage to Antoinette Gougualous, celebrated on the 20th of April 1871. The bill of indictment at Rouen concerned the marriage at Le Havre and the fraudulent statements that had made it possible. The witnesses and various documents bearing Dufour’s signature established his identity, according to the report, though he continued to protest his innocence.
Addressing the court, the presiding judge announced three women successively wed; one of them, Gougualous, was absent from the hearing, having already testified at the Algiers assizes. Gautheron and Hébert both appeared. The former replied with weary irony when asked whether she was Dufour’s wife, remarking that she wished with all her heart it had been another. The newspaper dwells upon the details of their attire and their countenances. This observation belongs to the chronicler, not to the judicial instruments. What mattered to the court was simpler: each woman recognized the accused and fixed the date of her own wedding.
Hébert related his disappearance; the president inquired how Dufour had procured the necessary papers, then reminded her that he had employed the details belonging to his brother. Dufour offered no reply. When the president demanded why he married these women only to abandon them, he answered: “I did not know what I was doing.” The report records the laughter of the courtroom. It likewise notes certain identifying marks cited by Hébert: a tattoo representing a woman’s bust, an old wound sustained as a soldier, and pierced ears. Additional witnesses were called to establish identity, but the gazette regarded their testimony as devoid of interest following the confessions.
Another woman came forward to cast light upon a matrimonial scheme that came to nothing. Louise-Adélaïde Lullier, widow Nuet, kept a hairdresser’s shop where Dufour had found employment. Following her husband’s death, he spoke to her of marriage; she would have consented, she said, “after the nine months of mourning.” He solicited money from her for an ointment he represented as his own invention: she gave him three hundred francs to purchase bottles, followed by a loan of five hundred francs, and five francs for a barber’s boy. When he departed, he left her his photographic portrait. A small case purported to contain a dressing-case held nothing, she declared, but old buttons and thread. She was not one of the wives: the chronicle makes plain that he had merely sought to marry her.
At Rouen, the public prosecutor demanded a rigorous application of the law. Maître Samuel Frère conducted the defence, though the newspaper does not record his arguments. Following the president’s summing-up, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against Dufour. The court sentenced him to eight years of hard labour, to be followed by ten years of high police surveillance upon the expiration of his term. He had already been sentenced to eight years of solitary confinement in Algiers for his marriage to Gougualous; this second hearing passed judgment upon the union contracted at Le Havre under the name of Denis.
The chronicle juxtaposes the marriage with Gougualous, already adjudicated in Algiers, with the prosecution brought at Rouen regarding the Havre union. It offers no description of the debates in Algiers, merely recalling the conviction and noting that Gougualous had already given evidence. At Rouen, Gautheron and Hébert appeared in succession before the jury; Lullier separately recounted an aborted proposal of marriage. The civil registry at Le Havre, the brother found living, and the personal identifications were the pillars advanced by the journal to establish both identity and bigamy. The report records nothing of what subsequently became of the women, nor of the pomade that was to have made their fortunes. It closes upon the sentence, leaving behind only borrowed names and departures that left no forwarding address.