MELODRAMA AND TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 20139, 2 April 1929, Page 6

MELODRAMA AND TRAGEDY

FRENCH JURY’S LENIENT VERDICT PARIS, March 25. A woman in Bordeaux who was about to be sold up and evicted decided that life was not worth living without her home. So she set fire to her small flat, locked herself in, and opened veins in her arm. Bailiffs and police brake in and took her to hospital. A young Frenchwoman, Josephine Jainet, has just been arrested lor a series of thefts which she carried out in a series of fashionable dressmaking establishments, where she bad been engaged as principal saleswoman. She is described as an expert linguist, and her qualifications arc said to include a degree at Oxford.

Another lenient verdict for a woman who had, killed her husband was given last night in the case of the wife of a notary at Clermont-Ferrand. As this verdict only amounted to a conviction for wounding, the sentence could not exceed eighteen months’ imprisonment which in practice, will he no more than fifteen months from the date of arrest.

The case was surrounded with melodramatic circumstances, for although the murdered man had a gallant war record, he had many mistresses, some of whom had given or bequeathed money to him, and at the moment of his death was on the eve of arrest for fraudulent bankruptcy. The eloquence of the most flamboyant of Pans advocates had been enlisted for the defence, and at the last_ moment before the retirement of the jury, the whitehaired mother of the prisoner staggered across the court saying: Gentlemen of the jury. Have pity on iny daughter. She has suffered so much.'’