POSTHUMOUS RETRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 16

POSTHUMOUS RETRIAL

FRENCH WOMAN STILL HELD TO

BE GTJTLTY.

Although it is $4 years since Madame Lafarge was found guilty of murdering her husband by administering arsenic, there are still many people in France (writes tho Paris correspondent of the " Daily Telegraph ") who are endeavouring to clear her name as an act of posthumous justice. Their case is based on tho groat advance made in tho discoveries concerning the presence of arsenic in human bodies, and iii many common objects, in which its presence was unsuspected at the time of tho Lafa rge trial. One recent consequence of tins advance in medico-legal science was the reyisipu pi the case of the chemist Dajival, who had served a Jong term of imprisonment as the poisoner of his wife, Before it was shown by the experts that from the a,mo,unt of arsenic found in his wife's body she could not have died of arsenic poisoning. Danval,. a tree man, and now acknowledged innocent, enjoys a State pension as a recompense for the injury done him. The case of Lafarge. however,' is recorded as one of the greatest poison trials, and, though the woman has always been accounted gui>t, students of crime are divided on the subject still. Her defenders make much 'of tho evidence of experts who in this trial first made generally known their belief that the discovery of arsenic in a body was not sufficient to prove poisoning. It was concerning this trial that the great chemist, Easpail said that ho could get more arsenic out of the Judge's chair than had. been found in Lafarge's body. Madame. Lafarge was unofficially, and, of course, posthun)frus)v, retried by ;i, body of lawyers, who reproduced in the i-jilrps c]e Justice all the circumstances or Lhe actual trial, and went again over all the evidence gjven then, but this time in the light of modern knowledge. There were Judge, jury, prisoner, witnesses, and counsel, all dealing impartially with the case, as though it were a • matter of yesterday. JHit things went no bolter for iMaciume Lafarge this tinici for lhe jury of to-day, like that oi 1340, returned a verdict of guilty.