By
Gwenael Merret
Published on
Sep 18, 2024 at 3:02 AM
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“You shouldn’t have gotten angry with her!” says Justine Toy. Author of the book “The mystery of Naïa, a witch in Rochefort-en-Terre”, the trained historian, originally from the Loire Valley châteaux, publishes “La Jédado, in the footsteps of a poisoner from Brittany”. A richly documented and illustrated 240-page book published by Coop breizh. She is invited to the presentation on Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 6 p.m. at the La Grande Évasion bookstore in La Gacilly.
Hélène Jégado? “I heard about her 20 years ago when I discovered the book “La Jégado, the story of the famous poisoner” of Peter Meazey. Then under the pen of Jean Teulé In “Heart of thunder””, released in 2013 and adapted for cinema in 2017. “I like him a lot, but he romance his life with lots of mysticism. »
Ant Investigation
The investigation that Justine Jouet conducted for a year has more prosaic conclusionsabout how a maid manages to move from one family and one city to another for 18 years, leaving the sick and the dead behind, poisoning them with arsenic or with plants… “I searched through the 400 pieces of the instruction file compiled by the investigating judge Hyppolyte Vannier”, and carefully digitized by the Departmental Archives of Ille-et-Vilaine. “I have cross-referenced all the testimonies and managed to reconstruct his entire journey in all its details, house by house “, from one poisoning to another.
Hélène Jégado was born in Plouhinecin Morbihan, in 1803in a family of farmers. “She loses his mother when she has 7 years old. She is sent to work in a presbytery where she stayed for four years and then in a second where she officiated for 18 years. She is dismissed for drinking too much. »
“They say I bring death.”
His crimesshe commits them between 1833 and 1851The investigating historian feels no empathy towards this ” monster “But it’s amazing how she managed to get through it. She would come into new homes and say, ‘They say I bring death.’ Shortly after she arrived, someone would get sick or die in the house where she was working.”
“It is not not a witch. But someone driven by the jealousyL’envy and the grudge. She lashes out at people she argues with, or other employees who have the privilege of having money to buy things for the house.”
Why didn’t she never aroused suspicion ? “She herself is ill in some houses: I suspect she has poisoned herself to find out how far she could go! She watch over people that it poisons, which makes it exist”, like a arsonist firefighter. In addition, “the symptoms that arsenic poisoning is similar to those of the cholera ” which wreaked havoc at the time. It is even thought that she could be a healthy carrier of cholera, which she would carry around around her…”
Justine Jouet continues her investigative work, particularly on “the witches, in the 17th century “, this time women living on the margins of society, often repositories of knowledge passed down from generation to generation, escaping the control of clerics.
Meeting with Justine Jouet for her book “La Jégado” Saturday September 21 at 6 p.m. at the La Grande Évasion bookstore. Free, limited number of places, reservation at 02 99 70 25 99.
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