THE APACHE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 132, 25 November 1911, Page 8

THE APACHE

HOW'HE THRIVES IX PARIS. As the word "A pat lie" lias begun to figure not infrequently hi English newspapers and peirodicais, its origin and signification to the present-day Parisian may be of interest to readers. The word is the name of a tribe of North American Jndh'.n-i who were at one time infamous for the cruelties they practised on the inhabitants of one of the provinces of Mexico. In lOCIj, when I first remarked the word in a Parisian journal (says a correspondent) it was apparently new to most French people, as it was still being printed between inverted commas, as it is now being printed in other countries. This tribal name has been adopted in a spirit of brutal bravado by the most terrible criminal type at present inhabiting the French capital. From a student for many months of the crimes committed by the Apaches in Paris, I found that the ages of these desperadoes 'ranged between sixteen and twenty-three. Very few of the class appear to reach the latter age. Before that time the great majority of them have either been laid low by the police or have been murdered by their associates. Return to respectability seems to lie impossible for them. An Apache of sixteen has in nil probability already committed murder, for the rules of the association to which he belongs forces him to show his valor (!)' while he is still a boy. Many of these Apaches are the sons of respectable professional men. Becoming intolerant of control and discipline, they have run away from home and taken to the slums adjoining the great boulevards, or more especially to the outer boulevards and the fortifications. They are always armed with revolver and knife, and the female Apache, who is invariably in attendance on the male, is as quick and as dexterous with these weapons as her protector. The crimes committed by the Apaches became appallingly frequent about six years ago, when capital punishment was. formally abolished in France. At that time the salary of Monsieur Deibler. the State executioner, was stopped; a place in a public museum was marked off for the guillotine, and economists of public money began to rub their hands in glee at the saving of two thousand five hundred francs (a hundred pounds sterling), which each execution outside Paris is said to have cost Monsieur Deibler, I may say, is a quiet-looking individual, who lives (or used to live) in a retired self-contained house in the southwestern district of Paris, not far from the point where the river leaves the city. "He is always dressed in black," an old Parisian once said to me, "ho has a red beard and large hands - , and drives a motor painted green. You may sometimes see him playing cards in a quiet cafe with some friends, who are careful not to address him by Ills surname. He is said to be rich, and has a considerable amount of house property." It was said that the stoppage of his salary caused Monsieur Deibler no uneasiness, for he had shown signs of nervousness at his last execution, and had bungled his work, the fatal cut being made obliquely; but the alarming increase of murders by Apaches recalled him to office. At Betrune, in the Pas de Calais, he had to carry through a quadruple, execution; and as each head fell into the basket, the spectators who had lived in a state of terror for months, shouted "Vive Deibler!'' and "Vive la votive!" (Long life to the widow!), the term jocularly applied by tho French to the guillotine; hence the phrase, opousor la neuve (to marry the widow, or, to be guillotined).

Perhaps the most impelling cause for the reinstitntiou of the death sentence was a murder committed l>v three Apaches, all under twenty years of a.ge, in a jewellery warehouse in ihe centre of Paris. When these young desperadoes were sentenced to death, they jeered at and insulted the judge, for they knew that they would not be executed. Xor were they: for. in a few weeks, they were transported to one, of the colonial penal settlements. There is one part of Paris which is carefully avoided hy the Apaches -- 1 he Latin Quarter (where llie.ru are thousands of students who always welcome a, disturbance. 1 only oijce heard of an Apache crime'—or attempted crime, rather —in the "Quarter.'' A young American, going to his lodgings late one night, was attacked in La Hue Monsieur le Prince by two Apaches. The American, who possessed exceptional bodily strength, seized one of his assailants, and dashing his head against, the wall, killed him on the spot. He then collared the other and dragged him to the nearest police station. The word "Apache'' now ligures in music hall programmes in England in connection with dances and sketches depicting slum life in Paris. The Apache is a direct product of life in Paris where outdoor sports are unknown among the working and the lower classes.