Marie LaFarge

Marie-Fortunée Lafarge (née Capelle; 15 January 1816 – 7 November 1852) was a Frenchwoman who was convicted of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning in 1840. Her case became notable, because it was one of the first trials to be followed by the public through daily newspaper reports, and because she was the first person convicted largely on direct forensic toxicological evidence. However, questions about her guilt had divided French society to the extent that it is often compared to the better-known Dreyfus affair.

Marie Lafarge was born in Paris in 1816, the daughter of an artillery officer. She is said to be a descendant of Louis XIII of France through her grandmother, Hermine, Baroness Collard, from a liaison between Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis and Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Marie lost her father to a hunting accident at the age of twelve; her mother, who remarried soon after, died seven years later. At eighteen, Marie was adopted by her maternal aunt, who was married to the secretary-general of the Bank of France. The two women did not get along. Despite the fact that her foster parents treated her well and sent her to the best schools, Marie was kept aware of her status as a poor relative. Because she attended an elite school, Marie interacted with daughters of the moneyed aristocracy. She used every means to persuade them that she too came from a wealthy family, and she became envious when she saw her friends marrying rich noblemen. However, Marie had little say in the matter of matrimony. Her marriage dowry of 90,000 francs, while considerable, was not that impressive considering her family's status, and Marie was left with feelings of inadequacy, which fueled her pride and ambition.

As Marie remained unmarried when she turned 23, one of her uncles took responsibility for finding her a husband. Unbeknownst to Marie, he engaged the services of a marriage broker. This produced just one candidate who fit the advice of her father that "no marriage contract should be made with a man whose only income is his salary as a subprefect."

Charles Pouch-Lafarge was a big, coarse man of twenty-eight, a son of Jean-Baptiste Lafarge, justice of the peace in Vigeois. In 1817, his father bought the former charterhouse, or Carthusian monastery, in the hamlet of Le Glandier in Corrèze, run by Carthusian monks since the 13th century, but fallen into disrepair after its suppression in the French Revolution. In an effort to make it profitable, Charles turned part of the estate into a foundry, a venture that plunged him into debt. In 1839, bankrupt, he saw a good marriage as the only way to pay his creditors. He engaged the same marriage broker who was hired to find a husband for Marie. Charles advertised himself as a wealthy iron master with property worth more than 200,000 francs with an annual income of 30,000 from the foundry alone. He also carried letters of recommendation from his priest and local deputy. To hide the fact that a marriage broker was involved in this, Marie's uncle passed off Charles as a friend and arranged a fortuitous meeting with Marie at the opera. Marie found Charles common and repulsive, but since he advertised himself as the owner of a palatial estate, she agreed to marry him. Thus, four days after the meeting, her aunt announced their engagement, and they were married on 10 August 1839. The couple then left Paris for Le Glandier to live at the estate.

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