The Belle Epoque… Its cabarets, its balls, its inventions, its painters and its universal exhibitions. And his murders.
“We have a somewhat distorted vision of this period. We can talk about a good time, it’s true, but it’s also a very violent society, ”recalls Pierre Piazza. Lecturer in political science at Cergy Paris University, this specialist in technical and scientific police –who has a YouTube channel– seems to have at heart to restore a certain reality to what were the first years of the 20th century. He had done so by providing scientific advice for the amazing Canal + series “Paris police 1900 (and 1905)” for the past two years. We discovered a city plagued by the anti-Semitic leagues which raged in broad daylight (in season 1) and the appalling living conditions imposed on prostitutes (in the dismal prison Saint-Lazare…), on women in general or on homosexuals (in season 2).
With “Meurtres à la une”, Pierre Piazza takes us, this time in writing, to the ultra-violent Paris of those years. Homicides there are almost daily and are probably counted in the hundreds each year – a figure to be compared, with caution, to the 948 crimes recorded throughout France in 2022. is therefore hard to quantify, explains Pierre Piazza, who meticulously went through the newspapers of those years. But with the iconography of judicial identification and the mass-circulation press, one can get a fairly precise idea of crime. »
“No one seems safe from a violent death”
With these two sources, police and press, the author sheds light on around twenty cases which he recounts in a 250-page book that could be placed in the “beautiful books” section despite the lot of corpses that it conceals. At the beginning of the book, a warning warns that “some images may offend the sensibilities of readers”. Indeed, the photographs of dead bodies taken by forensic identification, this scientific police service which was born in the Paris police headquarters with Alphone Bertillon, cross newspaper articles, often sensationalist in tone.
The book opens with the murder of an Alsatian salesman, Jean-Louis Groetzinger, in 1901. A newspaper clipping The Messin precedes the photograph of the 45-year-old, lying on his bed, a trickle of blood flowing from his nose. We learn that he was “slain by several bullets fired at close range” and that his wife was sentenced to death before being pardoned by the President of the Republic. A procession of anonymous victims follows, killed by firearms, hammer blows or strangled, their faces sometimes distorted by pain.
“From socially well-to-do people living in the upscale neighborhoods of central Paris, to individuals residing in the inner rural suburbs or settling in the vacant lots adjoining the fortifications, no one seems safe from violent death” , writes the author.
Throughout the pages, we discover the first photos of crime scenes taken by Bertillon’s team, where we see the great destitution in which many French people lived at the time. Corpses, blood and misery that black and white (and historical distance) make acceptable, even aesthetic. “I forbade myself to put the most disturbing images, indicates Pierre Piazza. But it is true that there is a certain beauty in these images. »
“They are fools who rob and murder”
We encounter the faces of the suspects collected in the new anthropometric files, and the press cartoons illustrating the crimes. A press that widely commented on crime, making it a social issue: “Now it’s beardless, almost kids, who rob and murder”, worries in 1905 Gallic, believing that “vagrancy and begging have always been plagues in our social organization”. The violence in the France of 1900 was also in the words.
“Journalists did their own investigations and sometimes they collaborated with the police, but they could be critical, recalls Pierre Piazza. The press grew impatient, wondered if the forces of order were sufficient, and talked about the questions posed by crime: what feeds it? Is it poverty, vice or the perversity of certain individuals? How to curb crime? While the law of separation of Church and State is promulgated, the press also wonders if the secularization of the world does not alienate people from moral values…”
“Blood Press”
In the France of the Belle Epoque, crimes already fascinated public opinion and the press, nicknamed “blood press”. The pictures taken by the scientific police allow the newspapers to illustrate, in photo or drawing, a murder. To identify a suspect. To present a culprit. But also to feed the democratic debate. “The press talks about crimes every day, and this raises interesting questions at the time, relates Pierre Piazza. Is the press becoming a public poisoner? Does it encourage criminals to take action? »
The murders and assassinations committed in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century are those of a criminality rooted in daily life: “We have crimes of passion, others motivated by money, sometimes by perverse amusement… We cannot not draw a murderer’s profile. There are young people, older people, from very diverse social backgrounds, and operating methods that vary,” notes Pierre Piazza. His work is a journey through time, through the press and the scientific police. A little piece of history. A curiosity that has nothing unhealthy, even if “Meurtres à la une” is not to be put in all hands.
Murders on the front page, the daily life of crime in Paris in 1900by Pierre Puazza, 250 pages, Editions de la Martinière, 34.50 euros.
