On the evening of February 5, 1828, laborers washing cotton aboard a river craft heard, along the banks of the Seine, the voice of a child crying out “no.” A few minutes later, they caught sight of a woman walking along the embankment; she denied having heard anything whatsoever and continued on her way. Presently the cries broke out anew, this time in their immediate vicinity. A young domestic servant and two fishermen rushed toward the water. From it they drew an exhausted boy, who regained consciousness only after being carried to the home of a local resident of Rouen. When asked how he had come to fall into the river, he pointed to his mother.
The first laborers were at work upon a boat at the foot of the Chaussée des Curandiers, nearly two hundred paces from the spot whence the voice arose. They believed they heard a child calling for “my little Désirée” and crying out that he could no longer see her. They could not clearly distinguish the woman who subsequently passed along the causeway. To their inquiry—had she seen anyone in the Seine?—she replied that she did not know what they meant and had heard nothing. She asserted that she was not coming from the direction they indicated, and then hastened away.
The renewed cries drew a young servant from his master’s house and brought the laborers back to the riverbank. The child was struggling against the current. Two fishermen coming down the river in a boat rowed with all speed and succeeded in pulling him from the water. He had lost consciousness. He was carried to the house of a man named Delahaye, where he was tended to; only after two hours did he regain his senses. It was then possible to question him regarding the peril from which he had just escaped.
Joseph Dubord, aged six to seven years, recounted that his mother had led him to the edge of the river and pushed him in. The chronicle by Champagnac attributes these words to the boy during the initial questioning, and subsequently before the police commissioner and the examining magistrate. The text also records the initial denials of the woman Dubord and the confession she subsequently offered. It is necessary to keep the child’s testimony separate from the depositions of the other witnesses, even though the case was tried before the Court of Assizes.
That very morning, his mother had told him to rise and go to work for Morel, a cotton spinner. Joseph had not gone; he had spent the day playing with other children. That evening, the woman Dubord found him on the Place Saint-Sever, took him by the hand, and led him along the shore toward the little causeway of Quevilly, opposite Alexandre’s house. The child stated that she had seized him by the arm and cast him into the Seine. He initially managed to rise to the surface and clung to his mother’s skirts; he said that she thrust him back into the water. The current carried him away until the fishermen took him up.
The woman Dubord had been a widow since January 15 and had three children. Joseph was the only one residing with her; another was with his grandmother and the third with his brother-in-law. Her husband had died less than a month before. The chapter records that she had already served a year’s imprisonment for theft and that she received a married man, Ballières, in the very bed where her son also slept. These elements formed the moral portrait drawn by Champagnac, but they did not, in themselves, establish the precise circumstances of the attempt of February 5.
During the initial interrogations, the mother denied the deed. When she learned that her son was alive and would therefore be able to speak, she asked to be brought back before the examining magistrate and confessed to the crime, according to the chronicler. She explained that she wished to rid herself of the child; the source characterizes this statement as an admission and sees in it the principal motive. Prior incidents were likewise recorded: Joseph had declared that when he was about three years old, his mother had already sought to drown him, only to be prevented by his father. This remains the boy’s own account, as reported during the preliminary investigation.
Prior to the attempt, Joseph had been placed in the hospice. He had returned to his mother only a fortnight earlier. She had explained to the commissioner that the boy refused to work, and she had raised the possibility of sending him to sea aboard a navy vessel. The hospice had returned him to her; the naval authorities had deemed him too young to be taken aboard. These measures, as presented by Champagnac, shortly preceded the scene on the Seine and shed light on the alternatives discussed by the adults, without the boy having any say in the decisions that governed his life.
Ballières appeared as a witness. A twenty-eight-year-old spinner, he claimed to have had no knowledge of the crime and to have occasionally protected the child when the mother mistreated him. On the evening of February 5, around eleven o’clock, he had asked the woman Dubord where the boy was. She had replied that she did not know and supposed he had gone off to Gisors. Ballières had objected that a six-year-old child could not make such a journey alone and would doubtless be brought back the following day. He denied having ever advised her to throw Joseph into the water; he maintained that he had spoken only of the hospice or the navy.
The woman Dubord then spoke through her tears. She said she had grown attached to Ballières and had asked him whether he would consent to live with her if she had no children left. According to her, he had replied that the child ought to be placed in the hospice or with the navy. Because she did not know where to place him, she said, she had cast him into the river; she added, however, that Ballières had never advised her to kill him. This deposition links her confession to a conversation, but it does not transform the talk of an institutional placement into a homicidal command: Ballières denied all instigation, and the source does not report that he was ever prosecuted for the attempt.
The trial took place on May 23 before the Court of Assizes of Seine-Inférieure. The witnesses corroborated the principal circumstances of the accusation. Ballières reiterated that he knew nothing of the crime and had never wished for the child’s death. The Advocate General set forth the elements he held to establish premeditation; the court-appointed defense counsel sought to have that aggravating circumstance dismissed. The jury answered the questions put to them in the affirmative, and the woman Dubord was sentenced to death.
The condemned woman lodged an appeal in cassation and petitioned for clemency. Both pleas were rejected. The sentence was carried out on July 31, 1828, on the Place du Vieux-Marché in Rouen. The chronicle does not describe the subsequent fate of Joseph following his rescue and the trial; it does not say where the child was placed nor who cared for him after his mother’s execution. This silence leaves the resolution of the case centered entirely upon the penalty, while the boy, whose cries had drawn the witnesses to the riverbank, vanishes from the final lines.
The drama played out along the water’s edge, where a woman could still walk away into the dark and a child could call only upon those who happened to hear him. The laborers two hundred paces away could not see his face; the young servant and the fishermen only later glimpsed the boy in the water. Their intervention restored his voice. After the rescue, at Delahaye’s house, he was questioned; his account was subsequently brought before the authorities and set against his mother’s denials, then her confession. The judicial sentence of 1828 was unsparing; the chronicle ends before revealing what became of the child who survived.