In August 1781, a twenty-one-year-old domestic servant named Marie Françoise Victoire Salmon walked into a house in Caen, Normandy, and into one of the most extraordinary criminal cases of eighteenth-century France. She had been in her new position for only five days when her elderly charge died, and within hours she found herself accused of poisoning an entire household. Over the next five years, she would be sentenced twice to be burned alive, twice come within days of execution, and finally be recognized as innocent by the highest court in the land. Marie had been born in 1760 in the small Norman village of Miette, the third of seven children of a farm laborer.
Her childhood was marked by misfortune. A pig attack left her left hand permanently damaged and of little use. Her mother died, her father remarried, and at fifteen Marie left home to work as a domestic servant. In 1780, while employed in the parish of Formigny, she met Monsieur Revel, the king’s prosecutor in Caen, who treated her kindly and advised her to seek better opportunities in the city.
She tried first to establish herself in Bayeux as a seamstress, but her injured hand made that impossible, so she followed his advice and went to Caen. She arrived on the first of August 1781. By the fourth, she had secured a position with Madame Dupart, who was favorably impressed by her manners and appearance. The household numbered seven: Monsieur and Madame Dupart, their two sons, aged twenty-one and eleven, their seventeen-year-old daughter, and Madame Dupart’s elderly parents, Monsieur and Madame Bellier, both over eighty.
Madame Dupart explained what was expected. Marie was to prepare porridge for Monsieur Bellier, ready at exactly seven in the morning, with no salt added. She would then accompany Madame Bellier to church, run errands, and complete domestic duties, with her mistress and daughter helping with the heavier tasks. The first days passed well, and Madame Dupart seemed satisfied.
On Sunday the fifth of August, Marie changed into her better blue and white striped dress, as was expected of even working people on the Sabbath. The following morning, she returned to her ordinary blue dress with white and yellow stripes. After she fetched milk and cleaned the pots, Madame Dupart gave her oats, water, and milk to prepare Monsieur Bellier’s porridge. As Marie stirred it over the fire, her mistress suddenly asked whether she had added salt.
Marie replied that she had not, reminding her mistress that salt was forbidden. Madame Dupart then took the pot from the fire, went to the sideboard, and sprinkled something over the porridge before it was served. Marie accompanied Madame Bellier to church, then ran errands until half past eleven. When she returned, she was told that Monsieur Bellier had fallen ill and begun vomiting shortly after eating.
Madame Dupart seemed angry and ordered Marie to nurse him, but his condition only worsened. An apothecary’s apprentice applied blisters to the old man’s skin, a standard eighteenth-century treatment believed to draw illness from the body, but it did no good. Madame Dupart’s husband was away, so her eldest son was sent on horseback to inform him, yet he did not return promptly. At about half past five that afternoon, Monsieur Bellier died.
Madame Dupart brought in a nurse to prepare and watch over the body, and Marie was made to sit through the night in a chair beside the corpse. She had almost no sleep. The next morning, her mistress scolded her for still wearing her Sunday clothes and ordered her to change. As the household prepared dinner, Madame Dupart and her daughter made soup, adding salt and vegetables to a pot on the fire.
That morning, Monsieur Dupart returned home. At one o’clock, the family sat down to eat, joined by Madame Dupart’s sister and nephew, though the mood was subdued and both sisters seemed visibly affected by their father’s death. As the meal progressed, Madame Dupart and her son complained that something was caught in their teeth. By half past two, the son and nephew began suffering from stomach pains.
Others at the table said they felt ill, and Madame Dupart screamed that she could smell burning arsenic and that they had all been poisoned. The apothecary, Monsieur Thiery, was called and began treating the family. Yet, strangely, not everyone present at the meal had experienced the effects expected of arsenic poisoning. Marie was questioned by the criminal magistrate under the customary laws of Normandy and maintained she knew nothing.
The story, however, spread quickly through Caen. Word circulated that the servant had poisoned seven members of the household and murdered the elderly Monsieur Bellier with arsenic in his porridge. A crowd gathered outside the house. Madame Dupart did nothing to discourage the rumors, and a group of local women was eventually allowed inside, surrounding Marie and shouting questions and accusations.
The young servant stood frightened at the center of the commotion as more people pressed in from the streets. The local surgeon, Monsieur Hébert, a friend of the family, said Marie’s pocket should be searched. She objected little, believing the search would cause her no trouble, but she was mistaken. In her left pocket, a pocket she rarely used because of her injured hand, Hébert discovered bread crumbs mixed with pieces of a white, shiny substance.
He showed his finding to several people before it was presented to the authorities. Soon after, the magistrate’s representative arrived, heard Madame Dupart’s account, and informed the king’s prosecutor, Monsieur Revel, the very man who had once encouraged Marie to leave the countryside. Revel ordered an autopsy, and the doctors concluded that Monsieur Bellier had been poisoned and that the poison had caused his death. The investigation intensified.
Statements were taken from everyone in the house on the fifth and sixth of August, with great weight placed on the white substances found in Marie’s pocket. Yet from the beginning there was reason to question the case. Marie had been in the household for only days. Why would a young servant suddenly poison her employers, gaining nothing from the crime?
A rumor also circulated that someone connected to the Dupart family had purchased arsenic days earlier. And the eldest son’s unexplained disappearance after his grandfather’s death drew attention. Instead, the investigation turned towards Madame Dupart’s claim that Marie had stolen from the house. Marie denied both theft and poisoning, but she was nonetheless charged with the murder of Monsieur Bellier.
Her case was first heard on the eighteenth of April 1782, in the lower court in Caen, presided over by Monsieur Revel. Marie was unanimously found guilty and sentenced to be burned alive. She was ordered to be questioned under torture to reveal supposed accomplices, to appear barefoot carrying a torch, and to beg forgiveness before her execution. She appealed, but on the seventeenth of May, the court in Rouen upheld the sentence.
As the execution date approached, priests visited Marie in prison and became so moved by her distress that they became convinced of her innocence. One of them, Father François Lambert, advised her to claim she was pregnant, which would at least delay the execution. Marie did so, and two midwives were sent to examine her, but they could not agree on her condition. The authorities could not establish the truth, and the execution was postponed.
When they realized she was not in fact pregnant, a new date was set for the twenty-ninth of July. Before that day arrived, however, her supporters brought news of the case to Versailles, and the king ordered the execution stopped. The order reached Caen on the twenty-eighth of July. Once again, Marie escaped the executioner.
Her legal representative, Monsieur Le Caux Choisel, believed she had been wrongly convicted. Examining the original proceedings, he found serious problems with the investigation and trial. On the eighteenth of May 1784, royal authorities concluded there were grounds for a retrial, and the case was referred to Rouen. Le Caux Choisel argued that too much weight had been placed on Madame Dupart’s accusations and not enough on actual evidence.
Important witnesses had not been properly questioned, and evidence that might have helped Marie had been overlooked. He noted that the suspicious pocket was one she rarely used because of her childhood injury, and he questioned the prosecution’s claim that Marie had a motive, pointing out that she had spoken favorably of her new position before the old man’s death. The court in Rouen annulled the original judgment, but Marie was not released. A further investigation was ordered.
She appealed to the king, and the proceedings were transferred to the highest court in Paris. Le Caux Choisel spent years preparing detailed legal briefs, and another leading lawyer, Jean François Fournel, joined the defense. The two lawyers published their opinions, allowing the public to examine the evidence for themselves. The pamphlets circulated widely throughout Paris, and engravings of Marie appeared alongside them, portraying a young woman who had left her village after a pig attack and her mother’s death, only to be accused of poisoning a family and spending years under sentence of death.
Her story became an example of the dangers of a justice system that could condemn the innocent on inadequate evidence. Finally, in May 1786, the case came before the court in Paris. The proceedings lasted three days. At the end, the court declared Marie Françoise Victoire Salmon innocent of all charges.
After five years in prison, she was released and given permission to bring civil action against her accusers, though she chose not to. The reaction in Paris was extraordinary. A large crowd gathered outside the court, and when she emerged, everyone applauded and many were moved to tears. She became one of the most talked-about women in Paris.
She and her lawyer were received by members of the aristocracy, and King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette granted them a private audience. She received financial assistance, including gold coins and a pension. When she attended the theater with Le Caux Choisel, both were applauded by the actors and audience. Engravings celebrating her innocence, often bearing the words “innocence recognized,” circulated throughout France, and her story was turned into songs and other popular works.
On the twenty-sixth of August 1786, just three months after her acquittal, Marie married Jean Louis Savere, a twenty-eight-year-old former soldier, in the church of Saint Séverin in Paris. The wedding attracted such a crowd that soldiers were called to control those who had gathered. After the excitement faded, Marie and her husband settled into a quieter life. They had a daughter, but fortune was again unkind, as both her husband and daughter died before her.
Later in life, she adopted her young niece after the death of one of her brothers. Marie died in Paris on the second of May 1827, at the age of sixty-seven. In her eventful life, she had spent nearly five years in prison for a crime she was ultimately declared innocent of committing, and had twice come within days of being burned alive.
