criminals
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“Robert Macaire,” caricature of M. Rosolin by Honoré Daumier (1835). Collection: Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 1848, the melodrama Fualdès was staged in Paris at the Théâtre de la Gaité on the Boulevard du Temple, popularly known as the “Boulevard of Crime.”[1] Melodrama, pioneered by playwright Guilbert de Pixerécourt at the end of the…
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Engraving by Louis Dupré, “Mr. Fualdès” (1817). Private Collection: Ciminocorpus. The morning of March 20, 1817, the corpse of retired prosecutor Antoine Bernadin Fualdès was discovered with a slashed jugular vein along the banks of the Aveyron River, outside the city of Rodez in Southern France. Over the next two years, an entirely fabricated and…
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Frontispiece portrait of Lacenaire by Levilly in Mémoires, révélations et poésies de Lacenaire écrits par lui-même, à la Conciergerie, 2 vols. (Paris: Chez les Marchands de Nouveautés, 1836). Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. In the month before his execution in January 1836, convicted thief and murderer Pierre-François Lacenaire spent his final days in the Conciergerie…
Shady Detectives, Elegant Criminals & Dark Avengers 