MALINGERERS' POWDERS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 112, 13 May 1915, Page 3

MALINGERERS' POWDERS

¦¦¦ ? Recently five, individuals, of both sexes, were arrested in Paris, on a charge of supplying soldiers at the front with the means ot tricking the army surgeons, and getting themselves sent home as no longer fit for military service. This is the way in which the gang was discovered. Some days ago the postal authorities opened an envelope addressed to a Territorial, suspecting that there was something in it more than a letter. Their suspicions were justified, for they discovered four packets of a greyish powder wrapped up in -a sheet of notepaper, which bore the following message : — "Dear Husband, — I have at last discovered a powder which will give you such palpitation of the heart that the surgeon- major will have to send you home." It was signed Marie Foutbonne, and gave an address in Aubervilliers. The police commissary, to whom the envelope pud its contents had been submitted, immediately went to the address given, and questioned the woman. She broke down and confessed, and her avowals have enabled the police to lay their hands on a gang of five, who, it appears, had been driving a lucrative trade in the sale of the traitor powder to soldiers at the front. Whether the soldiers took the powder, and as to its ability to deceive by means of its effects the surgeon-major if they did, is another matter.