Is it Anarchist Justice?

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 18, 22 January 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

Is it Anarchist Justice?

(Faoai Oun Special Cobeebpondbnt.) London, 10th December. The revenge of Anarchist and kindred societies on unfaithful members haB Ibug formed a popular theme for the novelist, and it seems as if we are likely to have a parallel case in real life brought before the public. On Wednesday of last week was fouud in his lodgings in Castle- street, a somewhat low part of West London, the body of a man who passed under the name of Antoine Brossette. Sticking out of a frightful wound in the throat was a thin knife, and there were also several terrible injuries about the head inflicted ,with a chopper. The doctor called in by the man with whom Brossette lodged, and who made the disoovery, was of opinion that death had occurred Borne twenty-four hours before the finding of the body. At the inquest on Saturday no light was thrown ' on the mystery, the police deoliniug to divulge either the fruits of their enquiries ' or their theories. Lloyd's Newspaper, however, publishes, as follows, a most romantic story of Brossette's past, inserting it as sent by a correspondent ; ' The man known as Antoine Brossette, but whose real name was Jean Paschal, took a prominent part in the organisation of the Commune of Paris. When the siege was approaching its end, and the triumph of the Versaillaise army was but a question of hours, it was Jean Paschal who was entrusted by Ladislaus Dombrowski, a Polish 'soldier of fortune,' Commandant of Paris, with the organisation of those women of the streets and the markets— ever since infamously known as ' petroleuses ' — and .with the task of firing Paris. He was also one of those who superintended the execution of the venerable Darboy, the Arohbishop of Paris, and four other priests. Captured by the Government troops, ho should have shared with the other leaders and many of their dupes and accomplices their fate at the rifle's mouth on the plain of Satory. But in some mysterious manner, when others were marched forth to execution, he was left behind, and he was afterwards sent to New Caledonia. It is said and believed by ex -Communards now in London that he was purposely overlooked, he having given information to General Gallifet as to the hiding-places of certain of his colleagues. At all events he was sent to New Caledonia, and was there some six months when he made his escape— again said to have been connived at by the authorities — in an open boat, but well supplied with provisions and a compass, aud was picked up some 300 miles from land by the American whaler Seth Jones, and eventually landed at San Francisco. How and by what means he got to London is not known, but in 1882 he was a member of the Anarchist club, long since closed, in Featherstone street, City-road, where the present writer knew him. His method of livelihood in those days was somewhat of a mystery, for he seldom worked, yet always had money. Suspicion was, however, aroused when it was noticed that whenever a member of the ' Party ' ventured on a stolen visit to the Continent he was inevitably arrested, and that the said arrest was usually coincident with an unusual flushness of money on Paschal' s part. This was the case after the arrest of Neve. John Neve, who went to Paris, his departure being supposed to be unknown except to Paschal, Frank Kitcsher, and the present writer, was never seen after he stepped out of the train on its arrival in Paris, and has never been heard of since. He (Neve) had been ooncerned in many plots, and was undoubtedly forewarned of the intended assassination of the Tsar Alexander 11. Theße suspicious coincidences caused Paschal or ' Brossette ' to be somewhat 'cold-shouldered,' and he had gradually dropped out of the inner oirole of 1 the movement, ' as the Revolutionary Anarchist propaganda is termed by the initiated. Of late he had been known as a dealer with French ' souteneurs, , buying of them the jewellery which the unfortunate women who keep them had purloined or otherwise obtained from the unwary men whom they had enticed home with them. Probably, then, it may be assumed that he met his death at the hands of one or more of those whom he had betrayed to the Frenoh or other foreign police. It is a fact, of which I have had undeniable proof in my hands in the chape of a letter from the late Parisian Pref eot of Police, that a number of men are kept in London by the different foreign police authorities as spies on their suspected countrymen here, and if the many refugees from justice now in London once obtaiued sure proof that Brossette was a spy, they are just the sort of men to make short work of him. Should this account of the life of Brossette be even partially true, he certainly had as adventurous an existence as many a character in Anarchist fiction. And there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence to conneot Brossette with some such past. He kept very uncertain hours, and was, if his landlord's statement may be believed, in mortal terror of certain people being admitted to see him. As yet, however, the police have made no arrest, and are apparently working on the more prosaic theory that robbery was the motive of the crime, the outward signs of which were as revolting as anything of the sort for some time past.