Marie-Josephte Corriveau

Marie-Josephte Corriveau
La Corriveau's skeleton terrorising a traveller one stormy night. Illustration by Charles Walter Simpson for the Légendes du Saint-Laurent, 1926.
Born	January or February 1733 Saint-Vallier, Quebec
Died	April 18, 1763(1763-04-18) (age 30) Quebec City
Resting place	Saint-Joseph-de-la-Pointe-De Lévy, Lévis
Nationality	Quebecer
Other names	La Corriveau
Known for	Murder

Marie-Josephte Corriveau (1733 at Saint-Vallier, Quebec – April 18, 1763(1763-04-18) at Quebec City), better known as "la Corriveau", is one of the most popular figures in Québécois folklore. She lived in New France, and was sentenced to death by a British court martial for the murder of her second husband, was hanged for it and her body hanged in chains. Her story has become legendary in Quebec, and she is the subject of numerous books and plays.

La Corriveau was born May 24, 1721, and baptised on May 14, 1733, in the rural parish of Saint-Vallier in New France as "Marie-Josephte Corriveau". Offspring of Joseph Corriveau, a farmer twice married (first wife died due to child birth complications along with the two daughters the oldest lived to be 2 and the youngest till 17 days) and Jeanne (Rabouin) Corriveau. Of her 5 brothers and 6 sisters, 7 were married. Corriveau married at the age of 16, on November 17, 1749, to Charles Bouchard, aged 23, also a farmer. Three children were born in this marriage: two daughters, Marie-Françoise (1752) and Marie-Angélique (1754), followed by a son, Charles (1757). Rumors (that only started after the death of her second husband) say that she murdered him, as there is no concrete record of his death. Charles Bouchard was buried on April 27, 1760, and she remarried fifteen months later, on July 20, 1761, to another farmer from Saint-Vallier, Louis Étienne Dodier. On the morning of January 27, 1763, he was found dead in his barn, with multiple head wounds. Despite an official recording of the cause of death being from kicks of horses' hooves, and a speedy burial, rumours and gossip of murder spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. Dodier was on bad terms with his father-in-law and with his wife.

New France had been conquered by the British in 1760 as part of the Seven Years' War and was under the administration of the British Army at this time. On hearing the rumours the local British military authorities charged with keeping order set up an inquiry into Dodier's death. The inquiry opened in Quebec City on March 29, 1763, at the Ursulines of Quebec, charging Joseph Corriveau and his daughter Marie-Josephte, before a military tribunal made up of 12 English officers and presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Roger Morris. The case ended, on 9 April, with Joseph Corriveau being sentenced to death, for culpable homicide of his son-in-law. Marie-Josephte was found to be an accomplice to murder, and sentenced to sixty lashes and branded with the letter M on her hand. One of Joseph Corriveau's nieces, Isabelle Sylvain (who he employed as a servant), had testified but changed her story several times during the hearing; she was found guilty of perjury and given thirty lashes and branded with the letter P.