RAVACHOL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 25, 18 June 1892, Page 619

RAVACHOL.

Crime has epochs. It advances, or its mode of operation does, with civilisation. Poisoning has always been a science, and counterbalanced by science. In that direction crime has had periodical outbursts. In the beginning of the century we had highwaymen and highway murders, the streets in crowded parts were not safe, and the river had its full tale of victims. Journalists told of the deeds of professional criminals, and of the terrois of the period when robbery, lynching, and murder were remunerative callings. We are better now, our system of repression effective, but ever and again some gigantic criminal organisation is run to earth or some successful or wholesale assassin brought to bay. To day we have just finished with the brutalised, sordid, and unnatural murderer, Deeming, and our neighbours, the French, with the fiendish Anarchist, Ravachol, names that will in the annals of time stand alone in utter degradation and disunion from all we count human.

Itavachol began his career as a murderer of old men and helpless women for the sake of such moneys as they had about them. He butchered his victims with an axe. He was also a coiner. He then became the head of a group of Anarchists, whose watchword was murder—their medium dynamite. He was the means of his own arrest. A waiter

in a wine shop noticed how exultant he was over the dynamite outrage, and comparing him with his description as given in the papers, he led the police to seize him. This was attended with danger, and so desperate was the struggle it was not until several policemen were called in that he was overpowered. When he saw the game was up he shouted. ‘Yes: lam Itavachol. Vivel’Anarchie’! vive la dynamite !’ Incriminating explosives were found in his lodging, but knowing the game was up, he, with callous effrontery, boasted of his part in the explosions of the Boulevard Saint Germain and the Rue de Clichy. He is now in Conciergerie Prison, and watched day and night by three warders. His real name is Koenigstein. He is the natural son of a German father, but was born in France. It is believed that his gang was the only group of Anarchists that had resolved to work with dynamite, and of these only Gustave Mathieu is at liberty.