21st March 1870

Newspapers demand corporal punishment

Newspapers demanded that a French labourer to be given corporal punishment for attacking a woman and leaving her for dead in St Martin. Auguste Rouelle had attempted to rape Victorine Langlois when she left a pub at Anne Port Bay. She cried for help but they were too far from any houses for her to be heard, and her only chance of survival was to run.

Rouelle caught her and hurled her off the cliff. Langlois’ clothing got snagged half way down, but Rouelle wasn’t content to leave her there, from where she might be able to climb back up and summon help. So, he clambered down, unhooked her, and pushed her the rest of the way down to the beach where she landed on stones and was knocked out.

A passer-by cones to the rescue

Rouelle may well have assumed she’d been killed, as he didn’t bother to climb the rest of the way down and check, instead climbing back up and leaving her there. She wasn’t discovered for 12 hours, when a passer-by helped her back to her home.

Although she was able to give a thorough account of what had happened, Rouelle had by then fled the island, the assumption being that he had returned to France, and was thus beyond the jurisdiction of the Jersey authorities.

 

 

Other events that occured in March

  • 01

    Jersey’s occupation bailiff is knighted
    Coincidentally, on the day Lingshaw was sentenced for his treachery, it was announced in the London Gazette that Alexander Coutanche, bailiff throughout the occupation, had been knighted in recognition of his service to the island. Coutanche was again recognised in the 1961 Birthday Honours, when he was made a life peer and given the title […]

  • 02

    St Helier gunman is sentenced to death
    A gunman who killed convicted of killing one and injuring another in a late-night shooting at a St Helier cafe.

  • 03

    Jersey Zoo opens for the first time
    Jersey Zoo opened for the first time in March 1959 and, the following year, took in three unwanted rattlesnakes from the RAF.

  • 04

    Jerseyman is shot down in a Wellington aircraft
    Jerseyman William Marett died aged 23, when the Wellington aircraft in which he was flying was shot down over the Netherlands.