LAFARGE, Marie.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Grande complainte sur le Procès Lafarge et sur les alchimistes ais, par un homme de lettres et de pharmacie; [together with:] Quelques vérités nouvelles sur le procès Lafarge, avec un facsimilé de Bayen, par un pauvre villageois. First editions of two pamphlets relating to the sensational Lafarge trial, which captivated France.The 23-year old Parisian Marie Lafarge (1816-1852), of noble descent, was married against her will to Charles Lafarge, an foundry owner who claimed to be wealthy but was in fact bankrupt. He received a cake in the mail from his wife, and died soon after from arsenic poisoning. The following trial aroused great public interest, and is important as one of the earliest public trials to extensively use forensic evidence, which nonetheless was contradictory and saw much dispute among the experts. People travelled from across Europe to witness the trial, and there were prominent pro- and anti-Lafarge factions active in the press and issuing pamphlets. She was found guilty - the first known person to be convicted with modern forensic toxicology - and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was released in 1852 with tuberculosis and died the same year, protesting her innocence to the last.The first publication is a pro-Lafarge poem, in the style of the tune of "Joseph trahi par sa famille", with an illustration of Lafarge and of a rat. The second is a detailed rejection of the medical evidence given by Mathieu Orfila, evidence which was extensively used in the case

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