On January 11, the magistrates arrived at the dwelling of the Crespin spouses. Within the house, Joséphine-Anne Crespin denied having given birth; the physician who had just examined her affirmed, on the contrary, that the signs observed dated back several days. On the following day, the young woman pointed to her lover, Masselin, as the one who had purportedly killed the infant and concealed the body inside a zinc pail. Beneath the ashes, the corpse of a newborn was discovered. The prosecution had already begun to alter its form: the material proof of the body did not carry with it a plain answer regarding the acts of each woman.
The Gazette des tribunaux reported the affair in May 1873, under a headline announcing two female defendants. Its article reproduced an indictment, followed by several lines detailing the oral arguments and the sentence. This account constitutes no exhaustive trial record. It presents, above all, the theory of the prosecution, whose assertions must remain confined to their proper station, while the declarations attributed to Anne and her mother stand in opposition or undergo revision.
Joséphine-Anne Crespin’s first supposed pregnancy was said to date back to 1870. In the month of May, these outward signs had vanished; the neighborhood concluded that Anne had been delivered of a child, yet the infant was never found. In 1872, the same indications reappeared. Toward Michaelmas, the indictment states, the young woman shut herself within her bedchamber and ceased to venture forth. The inhabitants believed she was meditating a crime. The judicial authorities, however, did not repair to the family dwelling until January 11, after the attention of both mayor and neighbors had already been drawn upon the house.
Anne at first denied any delivery. The physician noted physical indications which, according to the report, placed the birth between four or five days at the earliest and eight days at the latest. On the following day, the young woman recounted an initial tale: she claimed to have given birth in a stable opening onto the garden, during the night of January 2 to 3; Masselin, she said, had assisted her, had then slain the infant, placed it within a zinc pail, and covered it with ashes. The man’s exoneration proved facile, according to the newspaper: he had severed all relations with her as early as May 1872. On January 22, Anne acknowledged having falsely accused him out of a spirit of vengeance.
She then furnished a second version. She had prepared baby linen before abandoning the thought, and had subsequently descended alone, between nine and half past nine in the evening, into the stable where she was delivered. She maintained that she had exercised no violence upon the newborn: she claimed to have wrapped it in an old chemise and two petticoats, and then abandoned it. Having returned to her chamber toward midnight, she purportedly went down again at half past six the following morning to deposit the corpse within the zinc pail and conceal it in the rabbit hutch. Her mother, she contended, had known nothing of either the pregnancy or the delivery.
The judicial report rejects this explanation. It asserts that the injuries to the cranium, the left eye, and the chin, as well as the depression of the anterior part of the head, betrayed vigorous violence; the physician reportedly concluded that death was caused by suffocation and that the infant was deposited in the pail subsequent to its demise. The indictment thus held that the child had not merely been left to perish. Yet this conclusion remains that of the prosecution as reported by the gazette, and not a full forensic autopsy laid out before our eyes.
A competing date further complicated the dossier. The medical findings pointed toward the night of January 5 to 6 rather than that of January 2 to 3. Neighbors, already instructed by the mayor to keep watch upon the house, had overheard toward two o'clock in the morning an unaccustomed stir, hushed words, and comings and goings between Anne’s chamber and an attic. A heap of dried leaves was discovered there. Beside the first zinc pail, a second contained leaves freshly stained with blood. Anne claimed to have deposited the placenta therein before casting it into a brook at the foot of the garden. The journal deemed it probable that the delivery had transpired in the attic, but it did not elevate this hypothesis to a material certainty.
On the morning of the 6th, the mother had washed linen and two petticoats belonging to her daughter. Anne had declared that she had been delivered upon those very petticoats before wrapping the infant within them; her mother replied that one of them bore a trace of blood, which she had taken for menstrual discharge, and that the linen had not been washed for three days. The neighbors had observed nothing during the night of January 2 to 3. This contrast reinforced, in the eyes of the prosecution, the date of the 5th to the 6th, without thereby settling the question of the mother’s actual role.
The father, according to the indictment, had lapsed into an infirmity that left him an utter stranger to what unfolded in the house. Mother and daughter lived in close intimacy. The ground floor comprised a stable and two small rooms, one of which housed the rabbits; the courtyard stairway led to a kitchen, and thence to the bedchambers of the parents and of Anne. To reach the exit, the young woman was obliged to pass before her mother’s door. The mayor had warned the mother of the prevailing suspicions and urged her to question her daughter. She had denied that there was any cause for suspicion, and had failed to return to give him an answer.
The bill of indictment marshaled these circumstantial signs: the baby linen laid away in a shared wardrobe, the warnings of the mayor, the cloistered retreat of both women, the washed linen, and, on January 11, the key to the rabbit hutch retained by the mother upon her arrest. The corpse was discovered there on the following day. From this, the prosecution inferred that the mother must necessarily have known, and that the two women had acted in concert. Yet the preliminary inquiry had charged the mother solely with complicity; the gazette reports that the indictment itself took the liberty of regarding her as a co-perpetrator. This wavering between the provisional legal classification and the prosecutor’s argumentation must remain visible.
Both women denied having risen during the night of January 5 to 6. The mother conceded only that she had washed the two petticoats on the morning of the 6th. These denials, as presented by the chronicle, do not suffice to reconstruct the entirety of the proceedings. The reader is granted neither the full interrogatories, nor the detailed forensic findings, nor the speeches for the defense. One knows only that Advocate General Tardif de Moidrey sustained the accusation, and that Maître Blanchard and Maître Lemoine, court-appointed counsel, defended the daughter and the mother, respectively.
The jury granted mitigating circumstances to the mother, but refused them to Anne. The former was sentenced to penal servitude for life, on account of her advanced age; her daughter received the death penalty. The court decreed that the execution should take place at Caen. The Gazette does not record whether this execution was ultimately carried out; the reported sentence affords no basis for such an affirmation. When Anne was asked whether she had anything to add regarding the application of the penalty, she replied solely that her mother was innocent.
The utterance resolves nothing. It may be construed as a final gesture of protection, yet the chronicle grants no access to her inward intent. The record that has reached us rests upon a printed indictment, successive depositions, and a judicial sentence; it allows us neither to rehabilitate Masselin beyond his reported justification, nor to accept as proven every inference directed against the mother. The zinc pail was brought to light, the child was dead, two women were condemned. Between these bare facts and the certitude of a complete narrative, there remains a distance that the newspaper column cannot bridge.
Documentary note: Account drawn from the Gazette des tribunaux of May 14, 1873, printed pages 460–461, article entitled “Cour d’assises du Calvados. Infanticide. — Deux accusées.” The text follows the bill of indictment and a brief account of the verdict; the allegations, the versions offered by Anne Crespin and her mother, and the medico-legal findings are duly attributed. The article offers no documentation concerning the carrying out of the capital sentence it records.