Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection

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Book: Read Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection for Free Online
Authors: Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler
Tags: History
established order.
    Anarchism exploded on the scene in the 1890s in Paris and in other European cities. Its adherents called bomb throwing the
     “propaganda of the deed.” In Paris, a new reign of terror started in 1891, when workers protesting low pay marched under the
     black anarchist banner on May Day. This led to fighting between the police and anarchists in the Clichy section of Montmartre.
     Three marchers were arrested and one was sent to prison. In retaliation for the arrests, on March 11, 1892, bombs were set
     off at the house of the judge who had sentenced the protesters. A few days later another bomb went off at the house of the
     public prosecutor who had pressed the case. The chief culprit, a man named Ravachol, was captured largely through the efforts
     of Alphonse Bertillon, chief of the Service of Judicial Identity of the Paris police. Bertillon had developed a system of
     identifying suspects based on measurements of their faces and bodies and had introduced other scientific crime-fighting techniques.
     Ravachol’s capture, however, made Bertillon a household name.
    Even so, the violence continued when an anarchist named Auguste Vaillant struck inside the Chamber of Deputies in December
     1893. Vaillant had gone to the Chamber with a bomb, intending to kill the premier of France and the president of the Chamber.
     But when he hurled his explosive device from the public gallery, a female spectator jostled his arm and the bomb hit a pillar,
     sending a shower of plaster and nails onto the floor, wounding many deputies and spectators.
    Two months later, Émile Henry set off a bomb in a hotel café. It ripped through the crowd, killing one person and wounding
     twenty others. Running from the scene, Henry shot at a pursuing policeman but stumbled and was caught. Both Vaillant and Henry
     were convicted and guillotined. Nevertheless, Paris remained in a state of siege, with residents looking suspiciously at any
     package.
    The greatest outrage of the anarchists was the assassination of French president Marie-François-Sadi Carnot in 1894. This
     time the culprit was an Italian named Sante Caserio, who had been booted from his homeland for distributing anarchist pamphlets.
     When he learned that Sadi Carnot was to go to Lyons to open the Colonial Exhibit, Caserio decided to assassinate him there.
     On June 24, as the president rode by in his carriage, Caserio pushed his way through the crowd, carrying a knife. While the
     noise of celebratory fireworks distracted the president’s security guards, Caserio lunged inside the carriage and stabbed
     the president in the stomach. Shouting, “Vive l’Anarchie!” the assassin tried to run away, but spectators captured him and
     turned him over to the police. Caserio was unrepentant, declaring from his cell, “I am an anarchist and I have struck the
     Head of State. I’ve done it as I would have killed any king or emperor, of no matter what nationality.” 37 Though his lawyers argued that he was insane and should not get the death penalty, he was guillotined on August 16.
    Despite the violence and outrages, many artists and writers sympathized with anarchism, feeling that they shared the anarchists’
     aim of breaking down society’s repressive rules. The cafés of Montmartre were particular hotbeds of support; entertainers
     there sometimes glorified the anarchists in song. Maxime Lisbonne, a former Communard who had returned from New Caledonia
     in 1880, ran a cabaret where the doors had bars, the tables were chained to the floor, and the waiters were dressed as galley
     slaves, dragging shackles behind them as they served customers. Lisbonne tried to take advantage of the anarchist outrages
     by advertising that his establishment was “the sole Concert sheltered from the Bombs.” 38 This claim in fact brought to his establishment a slew of police informers who filed regular reports about the goings-on
     there.
    Another cabaret associated with anarchism

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