Savignat, Henrietta Vie

Partially deafened at age 4 from illness. Never attended a school; in 1882, married Charles Savignat, a deaf shoemaker in Montargis, France 15 years older than her. She soon discovered the faults of that marriage: he was extremely jealous of her interactions with other men, prone to drink and to beating her, not as interested in social life as her, not successful in his business, and virtually impotent in bed as well. She began to try various ways of getting rid of him without getting caught herself. Attempts at poisoning his food failed. The Savignats moved in 1888 to Gien, where a former lover of hers, a deaf potter of about her same age and named Henri Mathieu, happened to live. They soon began an affair, and Mathieu also tried to get rid of Charles by poisoning his food. Two other deaf people were drafted into their plot, and on Jan. 1, 1889, they got Charles roaring drunk with the plan of throwing him into the Loire river to drown. That plot failed when police brought the drunken Charles home after finding him on the riverbank. The next day, Henriette told neighbors Charles had just killed himself in an accident by striking his head on the stove in a fall. Examination by doctors and police quickly revealed that the body was totally cold and that the head injuries were more consistent with a beating than a fall, and Henriette was arrested. She confessed but claimed it was self-defense when he attacked her in a drunken rage. The police determined she was lying, and in April 1889 she went on trial for murder. Unusually for that time and for France, the trial involved an interpreter and a chalkboard for communication. In the trial, it came out that Mathieu, frustrated at the failure of the drowning plot, had gone to the Savignat house and beaten Charles with a heavy tool. When this too failed to kill Charles, Mathieu finished the job by strangulating him. Henrietta had then added some blows of her own to support her claim of self-defense. With Mathieu implicated, he was arrested and placed on trial also. The jury returned a verdict of guilty for both defendants. Henriette was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor; the remainder of her life is unknown. Mathieu was sentenced to 6 years of hard labor, and what then happened to him is also unknown.