HOMICIDAL GARDENER
[MURDER.]
Arrest de la cour du Parlement, qui condamne Pierre Guyon, jardinier, à étre rompu vif ... dans la Place du Pilory de la Ville de Poitiers ... pour assassinats par lui commis de dessein prémédité envers Gabrielle Desplebin sa femme, et le sieur Bellayer, curé de la paroisse de Saint Cybard, et pour vol ... Extrait des registres du Parlement. Du dix-neuf Mai mil sept cent soixante-dix huit.
Paris, Pierre-Guillaume Simon, 1778.
4to, pp. 4; drop-head title, woodcut head-piece with royal arms; some dampstaining and creasing; disbound.
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Arrest de la cour du Parlement, qui condamne Pierre Guyon, jardinier, à étre rompu vif ... dans la Place du Pilory de la Ville de Poitiers ... pour assassinats par lui commis de dessein prémédité envers Gabrielle Desplebin sa femme, et le sieur Bellayer, curé de la paroisse de Saint Cybard, et pour vol ... Extrait des registres du Parlement. Du dix-neuf Mai mil sept cent soixante-dix huit.
Very rare decree documenting the crimes and punishment of one Pierre Guyon, a murderous gardener from Poitiers; a case of green fingers turning blood-red.
According to the text, Guyon broke into the house of the curate of Saint-Cybard, where his wife Gabrielle worked as a domestic servant, at midnight on 31 March 1778, using two poles tied together, and hid himself in a barrel. Emerging from his hiding place at 9 pm the following day, he killed both his wife and the curate with a sickle, before stealing the sum of 63 livres from the curate’s cupboard. For his crimes Guyon was condemned to the nightmarish punishment of the breaking wheel. Conveyed to the scaffold in a rubbish cart bearing a sign marked ‘Uxoricide’, his arms, legs, and back were broken by the public executioner, and he was left to die face up upon the wheel; his body was burnt post mortem and his ashes scattered to the winds. Guyon’s goods were confiscated, a sum of money therefrom being put towards prayers for the repose of his victims’ souls.
Not on OCLC or CCfr. CCfr records two Poitiers editions of the same year, at BM Poitiers.
