Ten days after her marriage, Jeanne Desroches took leave of her husband carrying a knife. She professed a desire to visit her family, a league distant from Pommiers. Upon the road, she entered the house of her sister: the adults were absent, two children lay asleep in a bedchamber, and their grandmother rested in the adjoining room. Jeanne struck her two-year-old niece, Claudine, in the neck. A single cry alerted the aged woman. When she hastened in, the infant was already in the throes of death; Jeanne had fled.
It was the 19th of June 1832. On the 9th, Jeanne had wed Corget, an inhabitant of Pommiers, and on the morning of that fateful day, her husband had risen early to go to work. She informed him of her intention to travel to Poully-le-Monéal, where her family resided. He raised no objection. She departed, bearing a knife. Champagnac notes that she later declared an intention to kill her mother, though not to claim so many victims. The journey began as an ordinary visit and ended within a matter of hours inside the dwellings of relatives and neighbours.
Jeanne was twenty-seven years of age. Prior to her marriage, she lived with her mother, the widow Desroches, and was regarded with favour for her gentleness, her piety, and the care she bestowed upon others. One of her sisters had married Champart and had two children; Jeanne was the sister newly wed to Corget. In the immediate neighbourhood also lived a poor and elderly woman whom Jeanne readily assisted, as well as a neighbour she had nursed through illness. These relations explain why, after the killings, astonishment arose that the victims had been chosen from among those she had hitherto succoured.
While Claudine’s grandmother rushed to the child’s side, Jeanne went directly to her mother’s house. The widow Desroches was in the stable, preparing two small pickaxes. They exchanged a morning greeting; then the daughter threw her mother to the ground and struck her with the knife. She then seized one of the pickaxes and struck her upon the head. The injuries were of such gravity that physicians later recorded multiple fractures. The mother, whom Jeanne had nursed with devoted tenderness following the father’s death, became her second victim.
Jeanne ascended to the first floor. She broke bottles, a wooden mortar, and a lamp; she tore to pieces books of prayers and religious instruction, and shredded the gowns and clothing of her sister. She heaped the fragments in the centre of the room. The books she destroyed were of the same nature as those she had read almost incessantly over the preceding months, during which she claimed to be tormented by the conviction of her own damnation.
The neighbouring house belonged to Claudine Brondel, the widow Georges. Jeanne mounted her steep wooden staircase and announced that she wished to speak with her. Beholding her drenched in blood, the old woman asked: “Whom dost thou resemble?” Jeanne threw herself upon her, wounding her in the head, the neck, and the fingers. To bring their struggle to an end, she thrust her down the stairs and fled. Champagnac numbers the widow Georges among the four mortal victims of that day.
Thence, Jeanne proceeded to the house of the widow Dorneron, who was in a chamber with her seven-year-old son. From the threshold, Jeanne called out that there was shouting in the street and that she must come and see. The mother stepped into an adjacent room whose window overlooked the roadway. Jeanne then slipped into the chamber and struck the child with her knife. A deep wound proved fatal. Drawn by the boy’s cries, the mother returned, too late to save him.
Jeanne attempted to strike the widow Dorneron as well. She inflicted a slight wound upon her neck and bit her fingers. The mother defended herself with sufficient vigor to prevent Jeanne from throwing her down. Giving over the struggle, Jeanne took flight and returned to her mother’s house. She descended into the cellar. There she concealed the knife by removing the bung atop a wine cask, then wrenched away the spigot beneath. The wine poured out over the earthen floor.
The widow Dorneron had watched her enter the cellar. She summoned the neighbours; men and women gathered and encircled the house. When Jeanne attempted to emerge and flee, they apprehended her. The mayor, the justice of the peace, the King’s prosecutor, physicians, and the constabulary were summoned. The judicial inquiry was charged with establishing the sequence of these acts; it was likewise tasked with discerning the mental state of the young woman, whose gestures and speech had already alarmed her acquaintance.
Interrogated on the 19th of June before the King’s prosecutor and the physicians, Jeanne confessed to her deeds. She stated that she had left Pommiers with the design of putting her mother to death, though without the intention of slaying so many persons. She offered two motives: she believed her mother had always favoured her sister; and the perusal of pious books had instilled in her a dread of damnation. The physicians noted that her pulse beat with violence, but that her answers were lucid and her recollection accurate. Finding at that moment no evidence of mental alienation in her physical appearance or her discourse, they requested a period of further observation.
The examining magistrate questioned her anew on the 21st of June. Her utterances of two days prior had mingled contrition with defiance: she had declared that she would do it again and felt no sorrow, while nevertheless acknowledging that her mother had not deserved death. On the 21st, she wept upon speaking of that mother “who loved her so dearly,” then was overcome with emotion at the memory of little Dorneron. “Poor child! who was so charming!” she said, and broke off. Her relation to the victims, like her depositions, defied any singular explanation.
She also related that the prayer books had wrought torment upon her: the more she read and prayed, she said, the more she believed herself damned; she slept poorly and dreamt of beasts. At other times, she spoke of a “stirring” in her shoulder, a sudden rush of blood to the head, or maintained that she knew not what she did. The terror of damnation, the sleepless nights, and the alterations in her demeanour had been observed by her sister Marie and by other witnesses prior to the marriage. Champagnac connected these signs with the criminal acts and the destruction of the religious volumes.
Three physicians from Villefranche subsequently examined Jeanne in prison. In their report, they opined that habitual melancholy might have acted upon her brain and deranged her faculties; they proposed the terms of religious monomania or demonomania to account for her deeds. Such notions belonged to the medical understanding of the era. The defence invoked them, whilst the prosecution laid the facts before the jury; Jeanne remained in custody, and the proceedings took their course.
At the beginning of August, her conduct altered abruptly in the prison of Roanne, at Lyon. Following a period of composure, broken only occasionally by night terrors, she threw herself upon her fellow prisoners. She bore no weapon; the warders subdued her and confined her to a dungeon cell. She screamed throughout the night and, according to the chronicle, dashed her head against the masonry, inflicting grievous wounds upon herself. When her counsel reproached her for this fresh outburst, she asked him whether she had done far more harm on this occasion than on the first.
Maître Margerand visited her frequently and became convinced of her insanity by the nature of her replies. In his plea, he maintained that she ought to be placed under restraint and confined rather than sent to the scaffold. The chronicler takes his part, discerning in the jury’s verdict a mark of hesitation: the jurors answered affirmatively to the questions of wilful homicide and premeditation, yet declared by a majority of more than seven votes that extenuating circumstances existed.
Jeanne Desroches was sentenced to ten years of penal servitude, without public exposure, and to the costs of the proceedings.