Landru is not by any means the first mam accused of burning bodies in a kitchen stove. A watchmaker named Pel, who lived at Montreuil, near Paris, was tried at the Seine Assizes in 1885 for the murder of his mistress, Elise Boehmer, and also of his wife, whom he was believed to have poisoned. The wife's body was exhumed, and arsenic was found in the remains. Of Elise Bochmer there was no trace.
Professor Prouardel, a celebrated medico-legal authority, who six years earlier had published technical treatise on the destruction of human remains by fire, was appointed to investigate the case. He did not at first believe that a corpse. could be entirely consumed in a kitchen stove, but, to make sure, he performed the operation on a hospital subject'? which he cut up and burnt piecemeal in a_ kitchen stove similar to Pel's. The job took him ten hours and he used two sacks of coal. He found that his first assumption was wrong, the remains having been reduced entirely to ashes, without leaving the smallest fragment of bone.
Pel, when brought to trial, was frequently ironical in his replies to the presiding judge, just as Landru was in his numerous encounters with the examining magistrate. His sallies were greatly relished by the public and he was pronounced a very clever and amusing fellow, but. \that of course was long before the great war, which has altered Parisian mentality a good deal. Pel was convicted of the murder Elise Boehmer, who had vanished completely, and acquitted of killing his wife of whose body enough was left to show the presence of poison—a somewhat contradictory result. The conviction was quashed on technical grounds and Pel was retried at Melun. This time he was sentenced to penal servitude for life, and varnished from the public ken. The juryman who condemned him were never troubled by any reappearance on the part of Elise Boehmer.
Finances of France: Her Worst Loss Men: Boxer Money and Banque Industrielle Nov. 18.
An interesting review of the financial position of France has just been given by M. Paul Doumer, Minister of Finance, in the course of the Budget debate. His point
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.