Fire and Brimstone: The Animal Kingdom on Trial

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Animal Trials, Animals on trial, crimes, criminals, do animals have souls, excommunication, france, leeches, mice, Murder, Perrinot Muet, punishment, sow on trial, St Bernard of Clairveaux

‘The Law is an Ass’[1]

Image by Lenora.

One of the strangest practices that developed in the early medieval period was that of animal trials.

Animals were only brought before the law and punished if they affected people or society; animals killing other animals for food was seen as a part of the natural order of things – pretty sensible or there would have been no animals left.

For some reason the majority of cases seem to have taken place in France, maybe animals and insects held an unusually strong grudge against the French. Whatever the reason the industry surrounding animal courts and lawyers specialising in bestial crimes flourished there. Eventually it was decided that it was unfair that animals were being sentenced without the chance to prove their innocence. Obviously the animals and insects were unable to arrange their own defence and so under Francis I (1494-1547) it became illegal for an animal to be tried without a defence lawyer present to act as an intermediary between the animals and the injured human parties[2]. This practice was to some extent adopted in other mainland European countries.

There seems to have been two main types of charges; that of a single animal or small group of animals attacking an individual person and that of large numbers of a species causing harm to a community or society.

The punishment meted out depended on the crime. If an animal or insect could be identified as the culprit they could face a death sentence i.e. death by hanging, burning at the stake or decapitation.

The Death Sentence

Although dressing animals up in human clothes, appointing them a lawyer and conducting a trial is no longer employed, putting down animals which have injured or killed humans is still in use. Whereas today it seems to be dogs that are often in the news for attacking people, in the past it was pigs who dominated the animal trials.

A famous case occurred in Falaise in France where a sow was accused of killing a child and then devouring it. The sow was tried and found guilty of murder and condemned to be killed by the sword. Since the child’s head had been eaten as well as an arm, the sow’s foot was cut off and its face mutilated before it was dressed in men’s clothing and led away to face the executioner[3].

Trial of a sow from The book of days: a miscellany of popular antiquities, Public Domain.

Another occasion also in France, three sows were accused of killing the swineherd, Perrinot Muet. The sows were duly convicted but as if the case wasn’t strange enough two entire herds of swine were accused of being accessories to murder since they had heard Perrinot’s screams, ‘rushed’ to the scene of the crime and ‘witnessed’ his death. After appealing to the Duke of Burgundy, Prior Humbert de Poutier managed to get the death sentence dismissed against the herds[4]. This weird judgement was based on medieval law codes that stated that any living creature in the vicinity of certain serious crimes e.g. murder, rape and sexual assault could be seen as an accomplice and decapitated[5]. What did people expect the animals to do; fight the perpetrators, go for help or raise an alarm? It seems in these situations only Skippy, Flipper and Lassie would have survived.

Banishment

Sentences of banishment or exile were also used where the crime was not considered as severe or where the prosecutors felt sympathy for the perpetrators.

In Russia a he-goat was exiled to Siberia after butting an important official whilst he was tying his shoe[6] and in 1519 a community in Western Tyrol brought to trial some mice which were causing grave damage to the harvest. The defence lawyer argued that the mice served the community by eating insects and enriching the soil. Despite losing the mice were treated with leniency and kindness. Although they were ordered to leave immediately a fourteen day reprieve was granted to any pregnant mice that were unable to travel or any young that could not make the journey unaided[7].

Sometimes the situation was beyond the power of the law courts to deal with and the church was called in to intervene on behalf of the complainants. The church wielded two unique weapons; these were the power of excommunication and anathema.

Excommunication and Anathema

An excommunication in full swing. Public domain.

Excommunication involves ejection from the church and exclusion from its services and communion[8]. Anathema was a more severe form of excommunication and was often used to cast out the devil or his agents. Anathema involved using curses and denouncements to ban a person or thing from the light of the church and was implemented in religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority[9].

The problem with excommunication was that how can you eject something from an institution that it is not a part of in the first place? The other difficulty is that it suggested that animals and insects have souls, something the Catholic Church at that time denied. That is why anathema was often seen as a more powerful and appropriate punishment.

How the excommunication or anathema was implemented could vary. Sometimes it was on the spur of the moment and at other times a representative was appointed to argue on behalf of the accused.

The Power of a Saint

In general the success rate of these judgements against insects, mammals and birds is unknown but in one case the records definitely confirm a win.

St Bernhard of Clairveaux Jorg Breu the elder. 1500. Public domain.

In 1121 St Bernard Clairvaux, initiator of the Cistercian Order and fervent proponent of the 2^nd Crusade was preaching at the monastery of Foigny which he had founded when a swarm of irreligious flies entered without permission. These flies showed no respect for the solemnity of the occasion and proceeded to irritate St Bernard and distract his parishioners. The infuriated saint reaching the end of his tether suddenly addressed the flies and announced in a prophetic voice “I excommunicate you”. The next morning all the flies were found dead on the floor and had to be swept out[10].

It does seem that even though excommunication could be performed by any clergyman, effectiveness was more likely when performed by someone high up on the religious ladder.

The curse of the caterpillars

Caterpillars for some reason in particular seemed to have raised the ire of our medieval ancestors.

Image by Bob King — kingICK2c2.

One of the earliest recorded excommunications took place in 1120 and was carried out by the Bishop of Laon when he issued a letter biding the annoying caterpillars to vacate the area. The caterpillars were apparently working in cohorts with some field mice as they were also named. It is really interesting that the formulae used by the bishop to deliver the proclamation was the same as that employed the previous year by the Council of Rheims which cursed priests who continued to marry ‘in spite of the canons’[11]. So in France it seems that rebellious priests and mutinous caterpillars warranted the same treatment!

Further decrees of excommunication against caterpillars were issued in 1480 by the spiritual court of Autun responding to complaints from the inhabitants of Mussy and Pernan, in 1543 in Grenoble, in 1585 by the Grand Vicar of Valencia who ordered the caterpillars to vacate his diocese and on the 9 July 1516 when Jean Milon, an officer of Troye passed this damning sentence,

after having heard the parties and granting the request of the inhabitants of Villenove, we admonish the caterpillars to retire within six days; and in case they do not comply, we pronounce them accursed and excommunicated [12]

In general it is not known how the caterpillars felt about these denouncements but in the case of the caterpillars of Valence in 1587 they stuck their suckers in and refused to budge[13]. It seems that the loss of the comfort of the church was less important than the pleasure of some tasty greens.

The Leeches of Geneva

In 1451 a pile of leeches were brought to court on the order of William of Saluces, the Bishop of Lausanne, to listen to the accusations against them. How this worked I have no idea as they don’t have ears but anyway it was against the rules to issue any legal edict without representatives from those accused being present. The leeches had been threatening the destruction of fish, in particular salmon stocks in Lake Geneva. The edict confined them to one specified part of the lake. It seems that the leeches on this occasion were not excommunicated as they obeyed and caused no further trouble[14].

Noah’s Ark Stowaways

Sometimes the ingenuity of the arguments given by the lawyers prosecuting and defending insects and animals smacked of brilliance and their arguments had a weird logic to them.

An Inger…? Image by Chickenstein.

In 1478 the community of Berne in Switzerland asked for judicial help against a plague of insects called ingers which were destroying their crops. A proclamation made from the pulpit gave the ingers six days to leave and if they failed to do so they had to appear at one o’clock at Wifflisburg to face trial before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his deputy. When the ingers did not appear they were appointed Thruing Fricker as their defence lawyer. The clever prosecutor dismissed Fricker’s statement that as one of god’s creatures they were allowed the right to live. He instead argued the opposite pointing out that ingers had survived the flood as stowaways aboard the Ark as they were not listed amongst the creatures invited by Noah. The prosecutor won and it was decreed that the ingers should be banned, exorcised and accursed and that wherever they go their numbers should decrease[15]. Maybe it worked, as I have never heard of ingers! If anyone has please let me know.

The Weevils’ Revenge

Probably the most drawn out animal court case concerns the weevils of Saint-Julien. In 1545 a lawsuit was taken out against weevils who were destroying a local vineyard. A preliminary judicial judgement was successful and the weevils left. Unfortunately forty-two years later they returned. This was seen as the weevils breaking the agreement. I think that this is very unfair considering weevils have a life span of at the most two months, which means at least 252 generations had passed between the original and 1587 miscreants. Even if weevils have an oral tradition it would have been unlikely this 252^nd generation of weevils would have been aware of the original judgement. Nevertheless the new trial went ahead. It was finally decided that the accused should be given another piece of land where they could live in happiness and comfort although the opposing lawyers could not agree where that should be since the prosecutors’ choice was deemed as unsuitable. It is unclear what the final decision was as possibly in revenge of theirs and their ancestors’ blackened reputation either the weevils or some of their friends ate the pages outlining the trial summary and the court proceedings[16].

The Rat Attorney

Image by Lenora.

One of the most successful animal lawyers was Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, a French jurist and theologian who studied law in France and Italy. He worked in the service of the duchy of Milan and Pope Julius II but moved back to France after a plague outbreak where he became famous for defending a group of rats who were destroying a barley crop in the vicinity of Autun. The citizens of Autun finally applied to the Episcopal Court to get the rats excommunicated as all other means of removal had failed. The court appointed Chasseneuz to represent the rats. Chasseneuz studied the evidence and put forward an interesting argument for adjoining the trial i.e. that the rats had not been properly summoned to the hearing as not all the priests in the infected areas had issued formal citations. This approach did not result in a dismissal of the case so he then tried to delay the trial by arguing that not enough time had been allowed for the rats to present at court considering the physical peril they faced in having to negotiate the church cats[17]. I could not find a record of the sentence but this group of rats probably lost and were excommunicated.

The Deviancy of Birds

Birds did not escape the wrath of the church. Most often they were excommunicated for damaging harvest crops or livestock as in Canada at the end of the 17^th century when a number of birds of prey were excommunicated, but occasionally there were other concerns.

In 1559 the Saxon vicar, Daniel Greyber, excommunicated a flock of birds which were residing in his church. Greyber was angry at them disrupting his services and even more concerned at their sexual shenanigans or “scandalous acts of unchastity”[18]. Possibly the vicar was worried about the birds setting a bad example!

Cockchafers and their Deceased Defender

Sometimes the law was ignored and insects not given their proper legal aid. For instance in 1479 in the Lausanne area some cockchafers (whatever they are) were invited to appear at the bishops’ court to face charges. Perrodet was appointed to represent them but neither Perrodet or the cockchafers showed up. Both had good excuses, the cockchafers were insects – enough said and Perrodet had been dead for six months. In their absence a judgement was given in the name of the Holy Trinity and Blessed Virgin and the insects ordered to quit the area forever[19].

Parson Hawker

One of the last known animal excommunications took place in England by the 19^th century vicar, Robert Stephen Hawker of Morwenstow who excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays.

Image by Lenora.

The difference between this and most of the earlier examples is that Hawker was a minister of the Church of England and not a Catholic priest. Putting that aside his parishioners saw the excommunication as an extension of Hawker’s eccentric behaviour rather than religious adherence, for instance he was known to dress on occasion as a mermaid[20].

“Four legs good, two legs bad”[21]

The list of animals that faced a legal trial is a long one and includes aside from those already mentioned snails, slugs, locusts, moles, eels, grasshoppers and dolphins. Nearly 144 excommunications and executions of animals and insects took place between 824 and 1845[22] but in reality by the 1700s animal trials had begun to fall out of favour.

Although we can laugh at it now at the time animal trials were taken completely seriously as in the medieval mind the devil was working through these creatures and so they needed to be dealt with severely.

As to the views of the members of the animal kingdom that were executed, exiled and condemned, we are in the dark but if Christianity is wrong and Hinduism right about reincarnation then we know who has had the last laugh!

Miss Piggy on trial. Image by Michell O’Connell from Spiked 9 Sept 2015

Bibliography

Popular Science, Dec 1882, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JSsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA248&lpg=PA248&d#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38, Number 5867, 15 January 1870, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18700115.2.10&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–1

Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages, Thomas A Fudge, 2016

Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People, Charlie Campbell, 2011

Encyclopædia metropolitana; or, Universal dictionary of knowledge, Volume 18, (ed) Edward Smedley, 1845, https://books.google.co.uk/books

Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barth%C3%A9lemy_de_Chasseneuz

Popular Science Feb 1876, Feb 1876, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=CSIDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA504&lpg=PA504&dq=the+bishop+of+laon+excommunicate+caterpillars&source=bl&ots=r8dx_n0saM&sig=Wq3xCjO7hpFd9NWYNoGsPww6zvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6lfGjyPfdAhXLKMAKHaD-ChgQ6AEwA3oECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=bishop%20of%20laon%20excommunicate%20caterpillars&f=false

The criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals, Edward Payson Evans, 1906

Bugs and Beasts Before the Law, Nicholas Humphrey, Chapter 18 in The Mind made Flesh, OUP 2002, http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2002BugsAndBeasts.pdf

Fantastically Wrong: Europe’s Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them, Matt Simon, https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-insane-history-putting-animals-trial-executing/

Bernard of Clairvaux, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux

Beasts before the Bar, Frank A Beach, http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/041873/beasts-before-the-bar?page=2

Robert Stephen Hawker, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stephen_Hawker

Legal Prosecutions of Animals, William Jones, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_17/September_1880/Legal_Prosecutions_of_Animals

Anathema, https://orthodoxwiki.org/Anathema

Excommunication, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Notes

[1] Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

[2] Popular Science, Dec 1882

[3] ibid

[4] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[5] ibid

[6] Beasts before the Bar

[7] ibid

[8] Excommunication

[9] Anathema

[10] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[11] ibid

[12] The Popular Science, December 1882

[13] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[14] ibid

[15] Bugs and Beasts

[16] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[17] Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 38

[18] Medieval Religion and its Anxieties: History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages

[19] Legal Prosecutions of Animals

[20] Robert Stephen Hawker

[21] Animal Farm, George Orwell

[22] Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People

The Bonfire of Ballet Girls

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America, Ballerina, Ballet, bobbinet, burns, Clara Webster, continental theatre, dance, dance history, dancers, death, Drury Lane, Emma Livry, England, fire, flame-proof, footlights, france, health and safety, Machine woven lace, Paris Opera, Philadelphia, Romantic, The Gale Sisters, tulle, US, William Wheatley

In the nineteenth century the epitome of grace and elegance – and sexual frisson – was to be found in the Romantic Ballet.

Ballet had originally developed in sixteenth century Italy as a ritualised Court pass time and was adopted by royal courts through out Europe.  Early ballet costumes reflected the elaborate styles of the day.[1]

Industrial developments in the nineteenth century saw a revolution in fabric manufacture, allowing for lighter more gauzy fabrics to be mass produced.  This manufacturing development caused a revolution in ballet costumes.

Many of these ethereal dancers became feted stars of the day, but the glamour and fame of these ballet girls came at a high price and it could  sometimes be fatal.

The Romantic Ballet

Marie Taglioni.  V&A collection.

1832 Marie Taglioni brought the house down when she performed La Sylphide in a frothy concoction of white tulle.  Her performance cemented the gauzy white tutu as the derigueur costume of the Romantic Ballet.  It was an ideal fabric for depicting the typical dryads, nymphs and other supernatural creatures that populated the ballet blanche in the nineteenth century, and it also looked divine by gaslight.

The new costume was made of much lighter fabric and revealed more of the ballet dancer’s legs.  But this change from the earlier, heavier, corseted and more restrictive costumes of earlier centuries was not caused by vanity – it was necessitated by the higher jumps and pointe work that ballet dancers were now expected to perform as the technique had evolved.[2][3]

Ballet dress 1781 by James Roberts. V&A Collection.

Alison Matthews David notes that the changes were considered highly scandalous, and many men attended the ballet for less than artistic reasons – after all, these aerial sylphs were all sexually available, for the right price.   The sexual market-place aspect of the ballet had the knock on effect of pushing ballerinas to the front of the stage, nearer to the footlights and their potential patrons, and inadvertently placing them much closer to danger.

Despite the other-worldly, untouchable quality of Romantic Era ballerinas, the cold hard truth was that ballet girls were often lower class girls sold by their parents to ballet companies.  They were underfed, over-worked and often sexually exploited. Yet they dared not complain about their dangerous and exploitative conditions or risk their livelihoods. [4]

Dancing with Death

Skeleton Ballerina. Source Pinterest. Artist unknown.

Consequently ballerinas danced with death on a daily basis, so much so that they regularly incinerated both themselves and their audiences in truly incendiary performances.  The combination ballet and firey death was so ingrained in the popular imagination that tickets to the ballet were macabrely nick-named ‘tickets to the tomb’ due to the risk of death by fire, smoke inhalation or toxic gases [5].  Perhaps this was one of the aspects of the ballet that appealed to the well developed sense of morbidity of the Victorians – ballet at its extreme could encompass both sex and death, an alluring combination.

Media and literature of the day also took a morbid, and at times misogynistic, delight in reporting fatal tragedies when they struck, often lingering on the terrible injuries of the unfortunate girls.

In 1856 Theophile Gautier’s novel Jettatura described the death of a ballerina:

“The dancer brushed that row of fire which in the theatre separates the ideal world from the real; her light sylphide costume fluttered like the wings of a dove about to take flight.  A gas jet shot out its blue and white tongue and touched the flimsy material.  In a moment the girl was enveloped in flame; for a few seconds she danced like a firefly in a red glow, and then darted towards the wings, frantic, crazy with terror, consumed alive by her burning costume.”

Clara Webster by John Brandard.

This is no artistic flight of fancy, Gautier was inspired by the death of real life ballerina Clara Vestris Webster at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in 1844.

Clara had been playing Zelika, a royal slave, in the ballet The Revolt of the Harem.  In a playful and erotic harem bath scene, she had been throwing water over other ballerinas, when her skirts caught fire on one of the sunken lights being used to represent the bath.  Terrified, the other dancers did nothing to help – fearing the same fate.  Gautier, writing her obituary for the Paris papers, in a spectacular display of misogyny and callousness said:

“it was said that she would recover, but her beautiful hair had blazed about her red cheeks, and her pure profile had been disfigured.  So it was for the best that she died.”

The Media also revelled in the gory details of the girl’s death,  reporting that:

“The body was so much burnt that when it was put into the coffin, the flesh in parts came off in the hands of the persons who were lifting it, and on the same account it could not be dressed.” [6]

As with many similar cases, the inquest found the death to be an accident and attached no blame to the theatre, even though the fire buckets by the stage had been empty.

Clara’s death did encourage more research into the fire-proofing of dresses.  Queen Victoria also helped instigate research into flame-proofing fabrics even putting the royal laundry at the disposal of Dr Alphons Oppenheim and Mr F Versmann.  They found that treating fabrics with Tungstate of Soda and Sulphate of Ammonia solution made fabrics safer.  However there were drawbacks: once washed, the fabrics had to be re-treated.  Despite these promising findings, no safety legislation or regulations were enacted in Britain.

Famous Ballerinas of the Romantic Age. Lithograph by AE Challon

In 1861 the beautiful Gale sisters, Ruth, Cecilia (known as Zela), Hannah and Abeona (know as Adeline), took the USA by storm.  The English ballerinas toured the states wowing audiences wherever they went; however it was their final venue that has made them famous: The Continental Theatre in Philadelphia.

In August 1861 Actor Manager William Wheatley leased the theatre on Walnut Street.  He spared no expense going so far as importing a special effects expert and the beautiful Gale sisters from England.  The Ballerinas had their dressing room directly above the stage, it was fitted out with mirrors with gas jets next to them, in order to maximise the light they gave off.

On the evening of the 14 September 1861 an audience of 1500 people filled the Continental Theatre for the first night performance: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, adapted as a ballet.   Many no doubt hoping for a glimpse of the fine legs of the beautiful Gale sisters as they floated about the set, the audience was unprepared for the horror about to unfold just off stage.

At the end of Act one, the Gale sisters and the corps de ballet had to flit up the narrow staircase to their dressing room 50 feet above the stage – a quick change was required for the next scene.  While the show continued beneath them, the Gale sisters began to change costumes.  Ruth climbed upon a settee to retrieve her gauzy tarletan costume, but the hem caught on the gas jet and within seconds Ruth was ablaze.  In terror, Ruth ran through the dressing room and dashed herself into a plate glass mirror, adding to her horrific injuries.  Her sisters, in trying to help her were caught up in the blaze. [7]

The Gale Sisters on fire at the Continental Theatre. 1861. Frank Leslie Illustrated News 28 Sept 1861

In the panic and confusion they flung themselves from the window onto the street below.  A Miss McBride ran flaming on to the stage and fell into the orchestra pit, where she was eventually put out by stagehands.

Initially Wheatley had called for the curtain to fall and asked the audience to remain seated, however he soon realised the severity of the unfolding tragedy and ordered an evacuation.  It is remarkable that no members of the audience were killed during the fire.

That was not the case with the ballerinas.  Burned and broken ballerinas littered the streets outside the theatre as police, doctors and bystanders desperately tried to help.  Harper’s Weekly described the scenes as ‘most piteous and agonising’.  The burnt ballerinas were taken to taverns and hotels, and eventually by carriage to the Pennsylvania Hospital.  With little or no pain killers available, the journey must have been agony.  Over a four day period between six and nine ballerinas, including all of the Gale sisters, lost their lives. [8][9]

Burning Ballerinas fling them selves from the Continental Theatre. Frank Leslies Illustrated News 28 Sept 1861.

At the Coroner’s Inquest William Wheatley was cleared of all wrong-doing, and it must be said that he and his wife did all they could after the tragedy to pay medical bills and funeral costs for the lost girls.  Wheatley also erected a memorial to them in Mount Moriah Cemetery.   However, one wonders, in his no-expenses spared refit of the Continental, how much expense was spared for safety measures? [10]

The dangers faced by ballerinas in their highly flammable costumes was not entirely ignored by the authorities, in France an Imperial Decree was issued in 1858 which attempted to introduce flame-retardant fabrics for ballet dancers.  When the fabrics were treated it had the unfortunate side-effect of rendering the formerly ethereal white tutu heavy, dingy and stiff.  The safer tutu, where it was available, was often rejected outright by those it was intended to protect, as the case of Emma Livry shows.

Emma Livry. Last star of the Romantic Ballet. Wikimedia.

Emma Livry, the illegitimate daughter of a ballet dancer and a baron,  was the last great star of the Paris Opera Ballet from her debut in 1858 until her death in 1863.

She had been offered a drab flame retardant dress, but Emma simply refused to wear it.  Her attitude may seem blase, but it cannot have been uninformed.  There were too many high profile cases for Emma not to have been aware of the very real dangers faced by ballerinas in their flimsy tulle tutus.

Emma’s unintended final performance was on 15th November 1862, during rehearsals for the ballet opera La Muette de Portia. Sitting down, she raised her tutu above her head to prevent crushing the delicate fabric, the rush of air this created caused a nearby gas light to flame and this set light to her tutu.  The fire blazed to three times her height.  Engulfed in flames, she ran across the stage several times before she was finally caught, and the fire put out.

Her injuries were catastrophic, Emma suffered 40% burns, her stays were burned on to her, although her face was untouched.  She survived for eight months eventually dying on 26th July 1863 of Septicaemia caused by her burns.  She was barely 21.  Shortly before her death she was still unrepentant,  saying of the flame-retardant materials, “Yes, they are, as you say, less dangerous, but should I ever return to the stage, I would never think of wearing them – they are so ugly.” [11]

Bonfire of Vanities

The Gale sisters. Harpers Weekly.

It is important to remember that there were a lot of reasons for Emma, and others like her, to have made such a fatal choice of costume.  It is disingenuous and a little to easy to attribute it to the vanity of these girls.

Flame-proofed tutus were stiffer and dull looking. Tulle tutus looked celestial, glowed softly in the low lights of the theatre, and made the dancers look like sylphlike creatures from another world. Dancers were poor girls, worked to exhaustion for minimal wages.  They depended upon captivating the audience, in particular wealthy men who might become their patrons and lovers, they needed to look stunning to be marketable. If they did not bring in paying punters, there was a real chance they would end up back in the gutter, starving.  The irony is that they risked their lives in order to survive.

Responsibility must also rest with governments who either did not bother with health and safety legislation, or where they did so, they failed to enforce it or hold anyone to account.  More could have been done to make theatres safer places for ballerinas, fire blankets and fire buckets are simple measures but could have been effective safety measures, but too often these measures were overlooked with catastrophic consequences.

Sarcophagus containing Emma Livry’s burnt tutu. Paris Bibliotechque National via Fashion Victims.

Epilogue

The Tragic Gale sisters found their final resting place in Mount Moriah Cemetery.  Though their grave stone is worn and faded now, the New York Clipper reproduced the text of their memorial:

“Over the deep broad grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia, in which repose in eternal silence the four sisters Gale, a memorial tablet has been erected by the subscription of many kind friends who knew the poor girls in their pure life. And upon it has been graven the following inscriptions :

On one side –

With a mother’s tearful blessing They sleep beneath the sod, Her dearest earthly treasures Restored again to God!

And upon the other –

IN MEMORIAM Stranger, who through the city of the dead With thoughtful soul and feeling heart may tread, Pause here a moment – those who sleep below With careless ear ne’er heard a tale of woe: Four sisters fair and young together rest In saddest slumber on earth’s kindly breast; Torn out of life in one disastrous hour, The rose unfolded and the budding flower: Life did not part them – Death might not divide They lived – they loved – they perished, side by side. O’er doom like theatre let gentle pity shed The softest tears that mourn the early fled, For whom – lost children of another land! This marble raised by weeping friendship’s hand To us, to future time remains to tell How even in death they loved each other well.”

Memorial to the Gale Sisters. Image from Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery website.

Sources and Notes

https://bellanta.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/this-holocaust-of-ballet-girls/ [8]

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/flames-in-gauze-and-crinolines-the-gale-sisters-last-dance-together-sept-14-1861.140489/  

(The above includes extracts from Frank Leslie’s 1861 editorial on the Gale sisters demise). [[7] [11]

http://friendsofmountmoriahcemetery.org/cecilia-ruth-adeline-and-hannah-gale-ballerinas/

Daily Dispatch, October 1 1861, The recent terrible accident at the Continental Theatre in Philadelphia, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2006.05.0285%3Aarticle%3Dpos%D11

Matthews David, Alison, 2015, ‘Fashion Victims The Dangers of Dress Past and Present’ [4]-[6] [9]

http://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-ballet-girls-who-burned-to-death/71244 [11]

https://tidingsofyore.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/ballerinas-on-fire-1861/

The Public Ledger, 18 March 1845 Shocking Death of Miss Clara Webster: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=59&dat=18450318&id=cSA1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=GicDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6310,1978758&hl=en

http://www.tutuetoile.com/ballet-costume-history/ [1]

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/o/origins-of-ballet/ [2][3]

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/romantic-ballet/ [2][3]

 

 

The Beast of Gevaudan: the Napoleon Bonaparte of Wolves*

Tags

Beast of Chazes, Beast of Gévaudan, eighteenth century, france, Jean Chastel, Louis XV, Loup Garou, werewolves, Wolf Hunters, wolves

The Beast of Gévaudan

Max Von Sydow in The Wolfman, 2010, Copyright Universal Pictures

I first came across the legend of the Beast of Gévaudan in The Wolfman, Joe Johnson’s 2010 version of the 1941 film.  Despite the criticism the film garnered I thought it was a very atmospheric take on the  ‘classic’ horror film oeuvre and had some beautifully crafted scenes and wonderful settings.

One of my favourite scenes (which was cut from the theatrical edit but is in the extended version) finds the hero Lawrence Talbot travelling by train to his ancestral home Blackmoor on the wild Yorkshire moors.  He awakes to find a mysterious old gentleman in his compartment (played by the patrician and always slightly menacing Max Von Sydow).

Engaging in conversation Von Sydow offers Talbot his walking cane, a fine stick with an ornate Wolf’s Head handle.  He explains that he obtained the stick in Gévaudan, many years ago.  His character has few words, but what he says holds much significance.  Although Talbot refuses the offer, he wakes later to find the old man gone, and the stick remaining.

Even if you refuse your destiny it has a way of claiming you anyway the scene seems to say.

The History of the Beast

But what was behind this casual but loaded reference to the Beast of Gévaudan – what was the beast?  Was the big bad wolf simply a fairy tale or was it based on real events?  As it turns out, the beast was real, and even came to the attention of a King.

Woman fighting off the Beast of Gevaudan, Public Domain, via Wikimedia

The Beast’s reign of tooth and claw lasted from the early Summer of 1764 to midsummer 1767, it ranged over an area 50miles Sq in the Gévaudan province, in the mountainous South Central region of France.  The beast is said to have attacked over 200 people over 100 of whom died, many of those were partially eaten. Others were injured, and the lucky few escaped unscathed but with one hell of a tale to tell.

Descriptions from survivors had common features – the creature was large and wolf-like, it had sharp fangs, shaggy red fur, a hugely long tail and a foul stink.  It was also noticed that the beast had a marked preference for human prey.   The first sighting was by a woman walking with her cattle, she spotted a fanged beast hurtling out of the treeline towards her and was only saved when the bull of the herd chased the creature away.  That was at the beginning of June 1764.

Later that month teenager Jan Boulet was not so lucky.  She was savaged and killed by the beast.  It had made its first kill and from then on had a taste for blood, human blood.

Another documented attack occurred in January the following year.  A group of friends, both male and female, were attacked en masse by the beast.  They only survived because of the particular bravery of one of their number, Jacques Portefaix, and through sticking together.

By now the gruesome events in the South of France had come to the attention of non other than King Louis XV himself.  Louis made a special award to Jacques, and to his friends for their bravery.   As a keen huntsman himself the beast piqued his interest and he despatched a crack father/son team of huntsmen.  Jean Charles Mare Antoine and Jean-Francoise Vaumesle D’Enneval packed up their guns and their specially trained hounds and set off for Gévaudan.  Despite spending months tracking the beast through forest and field their search was fruitless and the beast’s predation continued.

Undaunted by the failure of his first team of hunters, the King then despatched his own personal harquebus bearer and Lieutenant of the Hunt, Francois Antoine to bring down the Beast of Gévaudan.  He arrived on 22 June 1765 perhaps with as much trepidation as exhilaration; after all his rivals had failed spectacularly so he may have had a general fear of losing the king’s favour and of damaging his reputation as a hunter should the beast elude him as well.

Louis XV meets the king of the Wolves, 1765. Public domain via Wikipedia

Within three months Antoine was proclaiming his triumph over the terrible beast.  On 21 September 1765 he killed a huge grey wolf, which became know as Le Loup de Chazes after the area is was found in.  Despite the fact previous reports had said the wolf-like creature had red fur, a number of survivors identified the lupine corpse as their attacker by various scars on its body.

The carcass of the huge wolf was swiftly transported to Versailles for the edification and entertainment of the King and court.  Antoine was loaded with money and honours for his success.

There was only one small fly in the ointment….the attacks did not end with the death of Le Loup de Chazes.  In December 1765 two children were badly injured in another attack at La Besseyre Saint Mary.  Bringing Antoine’s success into question.

Typical French village viewed from woodland.

Eventually, on 19 June 1767, a pious local hunter called Jean Chastel finally ended the beast of Gévaudan’s reign of blood  – some say with a silver bullet.

Local legend has it that Jean had been hunting the beast but paused to read a prayer from his Bible when the beast appeared.  Instead of following its usual pattern of immediate and devastating attack, the beast patiently waited until Jean finished his prayer and meekly took the bullet when he fired.  This can only have added to the supernatural interpretation of the beast as either a punishment from God or a Loup Garou/werewolf.

Theories about the Beast….

There are many theories about the nature of the beast.  Was it, as some villagers believed, a punishment from God? Was it just an unusually large wolf or a pack of wolves? Or some sort of wolf-domestic dog cross-breed? Or was it a were-wolf?

The Beast of Gevaudan – was it a cross-breed? Public Domain via Wikipedia

When I first read about the wolf, particularly the colour, the savagery of its attacks and the smell, I thought perhaps it had been a Hyena or some other exotic animal collected and released by some local grandee.  But this theory has been dispelled by Michel Louis who referred to the fact that the beast had 42 teeth a lupine characteristic, whereas Hyenas have only 34. He favored the idea of a cross-breed which he felt could account for the strange colouring of the wolf.

In fact the colouring of the wolf killed by Antoine struck me as problematic.  Many witnesses commented on its distinctive red colouring, yet he killed a grey wolf.  Did the King’s huntsman, drop a few coins into the hands of the locals to get them to confirm his kill and enhance his reputation?  Human remains were found in the stomach of the second beast killed – were they also found in Antoine’s kill? Or was there simply more than one beast?

Jean Chastel also comes out as an ambiguous figure.  He is said to have been known for having a large red hound, which made some people think perhaps he had more connection with the beast than he admitted too.  The fact that the beast did not attack him while he was reading also made people suspicious of his part in the tragedy.  But would someone really intentionally release such a beast – after all it killed upwards of 200 people many of whom Chastel would have known.  Was it an accidental breeding from his dog?  Or was he a genuine accidental hero?

The truth is we will probably never know for sure.  It could have been a Wolf, but perhaps a cross-breed might be a more likely explanation.  Except in very harsh winters, or when sick, I have not heard of wolves targeting people over say, cattle or other prey.  A cross-breed might have less fear of humans and be more inclined to attack them.

Oh, and as for the silver bullets, I was devastated to find out they were added into the tale as late as the 1930’s by the novelist Chevalley and are not part of the contemporary tale.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that the huge bounty placed on the beast by the King encouraged masses of hunters to descend on the region and engage in a killing spree. Hundreds of innocent wolves were killed, all of which helped to reinforce the deep rooted mistrust of humans for their lupine neigbours and to ultimately to lead to the point where wolves were nearly wiped out in much of Europe.

Contemporary Wanted Poster for the Beast, Public domain, via Wikipedia.

 Sources

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan

http://www.unmuseum.org/werewolf.htm

*Stevenson, Robert Louis, Travels with a Donkey (Quote: “the Napoleon Bonaparte of Wolves.”)