Jean Lanfray (1873/74 – February 26, 1906) was a Swiss laborer convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two children in a drunken rage on the afternoon of August 28, 1905.
It was later revealed by police that he had drunk an excessive amount of wine and hard liquors that morning, along with two ounces of absinthe. However, due to the moral panic against absinthe in Europe at that time, his murders were blamed solely on the influence of absinthe, leading to a moral panic and a petition to ban absinthe in Switzerland shortly after the murders.
The petition received 82,000 signatures and absinthe was banned in Vaud shortly thereafter. A 1908 constitutional referendum led to absinthe being banned in all of Switzerland, and absinthe was banned in most European countries (and the United States) before the outbreak of World War I.
The murders
During lunch on August 28, 1905, Lanfray consumed seven glasses of wine, six glasses of cognac, one coffee laced with brandy, two crème de menthes, and two glasses of absinthe after eating a sandwich. He returned home drunk with his father, and drank another coffee with brandy.
He then got into an argument with his wife, and asked his wife to polish his shoes for him. When she refused, Lanfray retrieved a rifle and shot her once in the head, killing her instantly, causing his father to flee.
His four-year-old daughter, Rose, heard the noise and ran into the room, where Lanfray shot and killed her and his two-year-old daughter, Blanche. He then shot himself in the jaw and carried Blanche's body to the garden, where he collapsed.
He was discovered minutes later by police after his father notified the police. After being taken to a hospital, Lanfray eventually recovered and was put on trial for murder.
Trial and death
The trial started on February 23, 1906 and ended that same day. It was argued by his attorneys that the two ounces of absinthe he consumed prior to the murders were solely to blame for his actions; Dr. Albert Mahaim, a leading Swiss psychologist, testified that Lanfray suffered from "a classic case of absinthe madness".
However, the prosecuter, Alfred Obrist, argued that the two ounces of absinthe he had ingested were minor in relation to the large amounts of other alcoholic beverages he had consumed that day.
Lanfray was eventually found guilty on all three counts of murder and received thirty years' imprionment. Due to his intoxicated state at the time of the murders, he did not face capital punishment.
Three days after the trial, on February 26, 1906, Lanfray committed suicide by hanging in his prison cell.
Public reaction
The Lanfray case received an astonishing amount of coverage, especially by Europe's temperance movement. It set off a moral panic against absinthe in Switzerland and other countries. A petition to ban absinthe in Switzerland received 82,000 signatures, and on May 15, 1906, the Vaud legislature voted to ban absinthe.
Following pressure from cafe owners and absinthe manufacturers, a referendum to reverse this decision was launched, but failed 23,062 to 16,025. On February 2, 1907, the Grand Conseil voted to ban the retail sale of absinthe, including its imitations.
Finally, on July 5, 1908, Article 32 to the Swiss Constitution was proposed, which would prohibit manufacturing or possession on absinthe in Switzerland. The article was added following a referendum, in which it won by 241,078 to 139,699 votes, and would be effective October 7, 1910. Eventually, similar incidents led to bans on absinthe in every European country (except the United Kingdom and Spain) as well as the United States.
Wikipedia.org
What were the Lanfray murders?
Oxigenee.com
Like a vice slowly
tightening, the pressure to ban absinthe inexorably
increased. The last straw was a series of particularly
brutal family murders which were – largely unfairly –
blamed on absinthe consumption. The most notorious of
these was the celebrated Lanfray case, which riveted the
European press in 1905.
Maurice Zolotow, in a 1971 article,
takes up the story:
"On August 28 1905, Jean Lanfray, a
vineyard worker and day laborer in the little village of
Commugny, Switzerland, awoke at 4.30 in the morning. He
began his day with his usual eye opener: a shot of
absinthe, to which he added three parts of water. Before
the day was over, Lanfray would commit a series of
horrible murders and, ultimately, he would bring about
the downfall of a $100,000,000 industry. Lanfray was a
tough, burly peasant. He weighed 180 pounds. He was
almost six feet tall and was in robust health. He was a
Frenchman by birth.
He had served
his three years of military service with the Chasseurs
Alpins regiment of the French Army. There he had learned
two things: how to kill and how to drink absinthe.
At that time, absinthe was the
best-selling before-dinner drink in much of the
civilized world. It was - and is - an anise-flavored
liquor of high alcoholic strength, preferably 136 proof.
It is made by steeping various herbs in neutral grape
spirits for eight days and then redistilling the
concoction. Among the 15 herbs in absinthe are the dried
flowers and leaves of wormwood, a plant that grows about
three feet high and is botanically related to our South-Western
sagebrush. The German word for wormwood is Wermut, or
vermouth; there are small amounts of wormwood oil in
vermouth. The Latin for wormwood is Artemisia absinthium,
and its oil is known as absinthol, hence the name of
this elixir. For many years, a considerable number of
French physicians and biologists had regarded the
wormwood plant as deadly poisonous.
On what was to be a most eventful
day in the history of drinking, Lanfray, 31, got dressed
. He lived with his wife and two children on the second
floor of a farmhouse. His parents and his brother, Paul,
lived downstairs. Lanfray had a second absinthe and
water. He wiped his lips. He told his wife to wax his
boots while he went about his chores, as he planned to
go mushroom hunting in the woods the next morning. His
wife grumbled something or other. During the past year,
the couple had been constantly quarreling - about money,
about her in-laws, about his drinking habits.
"Don't forget to wax my boots,"
Lanfray repeated. "And make it good, you hear?"
He went to the barn and watered the
cows and let them out into the pasture. He returned and
had some coffee and bread. The children - Rose, four and
a half, and Blanche, one and a half - were still asleep.
Lanfray went downstairs. He joined his father and
brother. The three Lanfrays then began walking to the
vineyards near the village where they were employed. En
route, they passed the local auberge and Jean, a man who
could not go very long without slaking his awesome
thirst, went in.
It was about
5:30 A.M. (a Swiss law- enforcement official, as we
shall see, compiled a meticulous record of Lanfrey's
alcoholic intake that fatal day) and our man had, first,
a creme de menthe with water, and then a cognac and
soda. He worked until noon. He had brought bread, cheese
and sausage for lunch. With the food, he downed two or
three glasses of chambertin . (This was not the famous
Burgundian chambertin so prized by wine experts but a
local homemade wine made from the district's pinot noir
grapes and known in the patois as piquette.) Jean
Lanfray's piquette was celebrated for being the
strongest in the area. Lanfray could have paraphrased
Will Rogers' famous remark about men and said that he
had never met a drink he didn't like.
At three P.M., he took a wine break
- two more glasses of his piquette. At 4:15, he accepted
another glass of red wine offered by a neighbor. At
4:30, the day's work over, Lanfray, his father and his
brother dropped into a cafe and he had a cup of black
coffee laced with brandy. Later, when the police and
psychiatrists delved into his behavior pattern, they
found that he drank every day two to two and a half
liters of vin ordinaire and two to two and a half liters
of the stronger piquette - about six quarts in all.
Besides this, he consumed several brandies and cordials
plus one or two absinthes a day.
It was then about five P.M. Jean
Lanfray and his father went home. There, they each
polished off a liter of piquette. Jean's wife was in a
bad mood. Besides having two small children to look
after, she had to clean the house, cook the meals and
help out with the farm chores.
She asked her
husband to milk the cows. They had a herd of 20 and sold
the milk to a local creamery. Lanfray, having put in a
hard day of drinking and digging, was not up to milking
cows. He ordered his wife to go to hell and milk the
cows herself. Then he demanded hot coffee. She put the
coffeepot on the stove. She did not say anything.
In those days,
women who knew what was good for them didn't get sassy
with their husbands. Lanfray laced the coffee with a
healthy slug of marc, a powerful brandy he made himself.
His wife went outside. Sometime later, she returned and
said she was going to take the milk to the creamery. Her
husband complained that the coffee had not been hot
enough. She shrugged. Suddenly, he noticed his boots
under the sink - unwaxed. He gave her a further piece of
his mind. His father started to leave, not wanting any
part of this family quarrel. He said goodbye to his
daughter-in-law. She shrugged insolently.
Lanfray fils
shouted that she should behave more politely to the old
man. She shrugged again. He was enraged. He began
yelling. And then she yelled back.
"Shut up!" he barked.
She lost her temper: "I'd like to
see you make me!"
You would, would you?" he snarled.
He went and got his old Vetterli rifle, a long-barreled
(33.2 inches), bolt-action repeater that took a magazine
of 12 cartridges.
"Don't do anything foolish," the
old man pleaded.
"You stay out of this, Poppa,
unless you want trouble yourself!"
Lanfray raised his Vetterli, took
aim and shot his wife in the head. She fell and died
almost instantly. The old man ran out, shouting, "Au
secours, secours!" The oldest daughter ran into the
room. She screamed. Jean shot her in the chest. She fell,
mortally wounded. Next, he went to the cradle where
little Blanche was sleeping. He killed the infant.
Then he set out
to take his own life. He held out the rifle and tried to
aim it at his head, but it was too long. He got a string
and tied it to the trigger, passed it behind the trigger
bar, then held the free end of the string with one hand
and the rifle by the barrel with the other hand. He was
thus able to draw a bead on his own head, but he missed
his brain; the bullet lodged in his lower jaw. Bleeding
profusely, Lanfray tucked the corpse of his youngest
girl under his arm. He went into the barn. He lay down
on the ground and fell into a deep sleep, where the
police found him and took him into custody. He was "dazed
and incoherent," according to their account.
He was taken
first to the hospital in nearby Nyon, where the bullet
was removed from his jaw. He fell asleep again at once.
Later, he was taken to see his three victims in their
coffins. Nurse Marie Blaser said that the murderer wept
and moaned over and over, "It is not me who did this.
Tell me, O God, please tell me that I have not done this.
I loved my wife and children so much." Lanfray insisted
he did not remember anything about the murders.
On September 3, 1905, a Sunday, the
citizens of Commugny held a mass meeting in the
schoolhouse. The villagers, horrified by the crime,
learned after an autopsy on Mme. Lanfray that she was
four months pregnant with a male fetus. The community
had to find a scapegoat. Absinthe became that scapegoat.
