EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF CRIME.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4486, 5 August 1875, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF CRIME.

(From the Standard's Paris Correspondent.) An extraordinary gang of criminals, fifteen in number, yclept La Bande de Clamart, are now before the Seine Assizes on various charges, the chief crime being that of a murder

which created great sensation in Paris a few mouths ago. A widow named Rougier, living alone at Vangirard, was found strangled in her apartment in broad daylight, and all her money and jewellery stolen. For some time the police were unable to obtain any clue to the murderers, and it is probable they would still be at large, but for the confession of the chief of the baud, who, having been arrested for burglary, was seized with a fit of remorse and resolved to make a clean breast of it. The career of this man has been a most extraordinary and eventful one. His name is Maillot, alias the,Yellow-Face; this nickname was given to him by his comrades on account of the fever he contracted in the penal settlement of Cayenne. He is now about fifty years old ; his accomplices are much younger, and range from eighteen to thirty, including a girl of seventeen. Maillot was born of dissolute parents, who abandoned him when five years of age. From that period till the age of twelve he led the life of a street Arab. He then took to picking pockets, which succeeded very well until one day he tried his hand on a detective, and was sent to the House of Correction for Juvenile Criminals for three years. Here he got into the good graces of the chaplain, who taught him to read and write, and on leaving prison he resolved to take. to honest ways. But his good intentions soon vanished, and he again joined his former associations. The June insurrections of 1848 now broke out. Maillot, like a clever rogue, esgjievved the insurrectionists, and took the part of the Government. He was wounded in a scrimmage, became a martyr to “social order,” and actually got a small pension from the State for his

“ gallant and patriotic services.” The pension, however, being too small for him to live on, and having a natural prejudice to supplementing it in an honest way, he resumed his old profession. But ill luck again tracked him ; he was caught committing a burglary, and transported to Cayenne. He soon initiated himself into the good graces of the authorities by his apparent repentance and excellent conduct, and after a few years got a ticket-of-leave. He returned to France, and was ordered by the police to settle down at Melun under their surveillance. He now joined a company of strolling players, in which he played the r6le of the “ real live savage,” but here his old propensity again got the better of him, and after one or two successful performances he made off with the till, and came to Paris. The police once more captured him, and he was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment. While under-going this sentence, the Orsini attempt on the Emperor’s life occurred, the notorious “ law of general safety” was passed, and on leaving prison Maillot was re-arrested, and despatched once more to Cayenne. On returning to the convict settlement he, was greeted like a hero by his former “ companions in distress,” and appears to have got on very well in the colony for some years, at one time being the manager of a theatrical company, and at another the accepted lover of a well-to-do young Indian widow. The war and the fall of the Second Empire brought another change in his career. He was included in an amnesty, and once more set sail for the shores of France. Of course, like all Frenchmen, he at once visited his beloved Paris, and beat up his old associates. Most of them, however, had disappeared with the Commune ; the few that remained he rapidly rallied together, and, enlisting a force of young hands, he succeeded in forming the “band of Clamart,” which, under his direction, has since committed a series of wholesale robberies and burglaries, winding up with the murder which has now brought the majority of them into the dock. Maillot, during his examination, threw all the blame of his villainous career on “society;" the other prisoners did hot attempt to excuse themselves. The trial is not yet over.