A simple payment stamp had the power to pronounce as discharged an installment that had never been paid. Upon the bonds of the City of Paris, counterfeit marks and forged signatures thus transformed an incomplete security into scrip that appeared entirely free and clear. On August 13, 1875, three men stood trial for these frauds. Gabriel Lagutaire confessed to having had the stamps manufactured and to having affixed them alongside forged signatures; yet he ascribed the design to one Dormois, whom he depicted as the true instigator. The prosecution contended that Dormois was merely the alias under which Gabriel himself had negotiated the securities.
The law of April 18, 1869, had authorized the City to issue 753,623 bonds redeemable at four hundred francs; the subscriber was required to pay 345 francs in successive installments. Each provisional certificate set forth the due dates and reserved compartments for the stamps attesting to each payment, accompanied by the signature of the clerk who had received it. The municipal bureaus kept ledgers designed to monitor the exchange of these provisional certificates for definitive bonds. The bill of indictment recalled that the fire at the Hôtel de Ville, in May 1871, had consumed this accounting. Certain men, it alleged, had turned the destruction of the registers to their profit by affixing forged marks and negotiating bonds that were far from fully paid up.
According to the indictment, Gabriel Lagutaire acknowledged proceeds amounting to 240,000 or 250,000 francs for certain transactions, though he deemed this sum inferior to the actual profits reaped. The first securities seized led the investigation to Raymond Fillion and to a dealer named Féchot. In October 1871, Fillion asked Jules Lagutaire to procure municipal loan bonds for him. Jules called upon Féchot in company with his brother Gabriel, introducing the latter under the name of Dormois. Gabriel claimed to have just arrived from England and to be desirous of parting with the bonds without delay. Féchot could advance him no more than five hundred francs; Jules thereupon conducted him to Fillion, who purchased the securities.
The transaction was repeated. According to the indictment, approximately one thousand forged bonds passed through Féchot’s hands in the course of the operations described. Gabriel sold them under the name of Dormois, delivering receipts penned in his own hand. Féchot and his wife subsequently recognized Gabriel as the man Jules had introduced to them. Gabriel admitted having affixed the false stamps and forged signatures to the bonds sold to Féchot, and having signed the receipts with the name of Dormois. Yet he persisted in maintaining that Dormois was another man entirely—the true contriver of the crime. Jules, for his part, denied having ever presented his brother under such a name.
By May 1873, the police suspected Jules of complicity in the forgery. Police Commissioner Macé summoned him and threatened him with arrest. Jules offered to run down Dormois, whom he designated as the true culprit, and was accordingly left at liberty. On May 24, he vanished, fleeing to Geneva. Three days later, Gabriel joined him there. The two brothers waited out the conclusion of the preliminary inquiry opened in Paris. At that juncture, the investigators had not established Gabriel’s share in the fraud. The order of dismissal of July 12, 1873, brought this first prosecution to a close for want of sufficient evidence; it did not prejudge the fresh facts that later came to light.
The following year, the bonds resurfaced in the hands of several holders. The judicial record traced a fresh series of dealings to Geneva. There, Gabriel caused stamps imitating those of the Prefecture of the Seine to be engraved, and subsequently stamped them onto certificates brought to him by Jules. Thenadey, an unlicensed business agent who shared Gabriel’s lodgings, undertook to place the bonds in Switzerland or in France. In the eyes of the prosecution, their duties were complementary: Jules procured the lightly paid certificates, Gabriel manufactured the marks that lent them the appearance of being discharged, and Thenadey offered them to purchasers.
The banker Favre received twenty-five bonds bearing the first two payment stamps, amounting to 145 francs. He agreed to advance merely one thousand francs. The securities were transmitted to the Crédit Lyonnais, which detected a counterfeit payment notation and handed them over to the judicial authorities. Favre lodged a complaint in Geneva against Gabriel and Thenadey, and both men were arrested. They satisfied the banker’s claim, whereupon he withdrew his complaint, and the chamber of the council rendered an order of dismissal. The French indictment maintained, however, that this outcome in no way dissolved their confederacy: eighteen further bonds negotiated with Favre or another banker were subsequently seized in Paris, at the Crédit Lyonnais, at Witzel’s, and with the stockbroker Laurent.
In July 1874, Thenadey sent seven certificates to Tripier in Paris, instructing him to ascertain whether they were subject to any stop-payment orders, whether their final discharge was feasible, and whether the City would accept them. At the Prefecture, it was discovered that the payment notation was forged. Tripier alerted Thenadey, who replied with a missive from Gabriel. The public prosecutor viewed this as proof that the two men worked in concert to falsify and negotiate the certificates. Thenadey was arrested in Lyon on January 13, 1875; four forged bonds were found in his possession.
Thenadey pleaded his own good faith, asserting that he had been blind to Gabriel’s machinations. The prosecution answered this with the intimacy of their relations, their shared bedchamber, and the presence within those lodgings of the forged stamps and the very certificates Gabriel was altering. Jules likewise maintained that his brother alone had tampered with the bonds he had negotiated. He acknowledged his journeys to Switzerland, his meetings with Gabriel, and his possession of forged securities, but explained them as part of his pursuit of the mysterious Dormois whom he had pledged to unmask in 1873. The chronicle records that this line of defense was set forth at length in a letter addressed to Commissioner Macé.
The affair thus returned to its initial enigma: was Dormois a distinct accomplice, or merely the name under which Gabriel had sold the scrip and pocketed the proceeds? Monsieur and Madame Féchot identified Gabriel; the receipts were in his hand; and the handwriting experts linked him to the signatures upon the bonds of the first consignment. Regarding the later certificates, the prosecution relied upon the encounters in Switzerland, the stamps fabricated in Geneva, the negotiations with bankers, and the four bonds found upon Thenadey’s person. Gabriel admitted having altered the seized certificates, with the exception of the first ninety-two; the indictment added that graphological expertise attributed to him the signatures affixed to those initial titles as well. He continued to speak of another Dormois. The record gives no detailed account of the pleadings nor the full arguments of counsel, noting only that the Advocate General sustained the indictment and that the three defenders presented their clients’ cases separately.
The jury answered 1,940 questions. It returned a verdict of guilty against all three defendants, according the benefit of extenuating circumstances to Thenadey alone. The court sentenced Jules and Gabriel Lagutaire to ten years of hard labor apiece; Thenadey received three years’ imprisonment. These differing outcomes marked the graduation of their penalties without diminishing the determination of guilt common to all three.
The earliest certificates had circulated on the strength of small printed boxes intended to receive the evidence of a payment. Once the ledgers had perished in the flames, these impressions could be counterfeited and the bonds passed from hand to hand. The investigators were left to trace not a payment, but a labyrinth of brokers, receipts, journeys, and signatures. The name of Dormois, held up as the master key to the entire mystery, was also the shadow behind which Gabriel had sought to vanish.
Archival Note: Gazette des Tribunaux, August 15, 1875, p. 786, proceedings of August 13 before the Seine Assize Court. The normalized OCR transcript reproduces the account of the bill of indictment and its brief summary of the verdict; the accusations and items of evidence are attributed strictly to the judicial proceedings. The full debates and speeches of counsel are not recorded in this issue. The printed indictment indicates an ending date of April 30, 1869, which is irreconcilable with the commencement of the operations in October 1871; the narrative preserves this discrepancy without conjectural emendation. The initial dismissal in Paris in July 1873 and that rendered in Geneva following the withdrawal of the complaint are distinguished from the conviction handed down in 1875.