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 Old World Trials.

OLD

WORLD

239

TRIALS.

X. MADAME JONIAUX'S CASE. FROM the spring of 1894 up to the to Madame Joniaux's charge were due to commencement of February in the poison. In the two earlier cases — those of present year, Belgian, and indeed one might Leonie Ablay and M. Van Kerchone — the say continental, society had been filled with evidence on this point was of a negative all sorts of reports and rumors as to a sen character; and if they had stood alone, she sational criminal cause, which was about to could not have been convicted. Two years come before the courts of Antwerp. The elapsed between Mile. Ablay's death and actual facts in the possession of the public the postmortem on her body, and of course were somewhat scanty. But they were in that interval all traces probably even of numerous and cogent enough to form a mineral and certainly of vegetable poison foundation for a goodly edifice of conjec must have disappeared; nor were there any tures, on dits and suspicions. It was known reliable circumstances to show that the that in the early spring of 1894 M. Alfred symptoms which preceded her death were Ablay, a Belgian officer of good family, had due to morphine, which the prosecution died suddenly in Antwerp at the house of alleged to have caused it. All that the his sister, Madame Joniaux, a lady of over Crown experts could have said was that they fifty years of age, the widow of M. Faber, a found in her corpse no evidences that she had well-known bibliophile, and the wife of an died from natural disease. M. Van Kerequally well-known and distinguished Bel chone's case was still more mysterious, gian engineer; that the English " Gresham " although his body was examined one year insurance office with which the deceased after his death. Here, again, there were had been insured for one hundred thousand no traces of poison; it was admitted that francs refused to pay the policy money; the deceased had died after a dinner at his that the authorities ordered an examination niece's house at which he had drunk cham of M. Ablay's body, and that the result of pagne and burgundy to excess, and the the inquiries of the investigating judge was medical experts conceded that the death the arrest of Madame Joniaux on a charge might have been due to alcoholism. In M. of having poisoned, not only her brother, in Alfred Ablay's case, however, where the February, 1894, but also her sister, Leonie postmortem examination took place nine Ablay, in March, 1892, and her uncle, M. days after death, morphine was found, and Van Kerchone, in March, 1893. Madame the efforts of the defense to rebut this fact Joniaux has now been convicted of all three were rather unhappy. First, the presence crimes, and sentenced to death — a sentence of the poison was disputed. Then it was con which in Belgium is merely penal servitude tended that enough had not been discovered "writ large," as it is invariably commuted, to account for death. This line of argument and it may be interesting to analyze the evi clearly involved the fallacy of at once at dence adduced against her, and draw the tacking the Crown experts for having said appropriate morals from her case. The that there was morphine in M. Ablay's body, first thing that the Belgian "Crown" — we and at the same time upholding them as use the term "State" or "People" — had sufficiently skillful to have detected enough to establish was that the three deaths laid morphine to take away life if it was there.