Prohibitionists could not have imagined a more potent metaphor for social decay. The press seized on Lanfray’s story, dubbing it “the absinthe murder.” For members of the anti-absinthe movement (including many newspaper editors), two glasses of pale-green liquid explained why a family lay dead.
#Absinthe liquor series
“Absinthe,” Commugny’s mayor publicly declared, “is the principal cause of a series of bloody crimes in our country.” A petition to outlaw the drink gathered 82,000 signatures in just a few days. Anti-absinthe sentiment had been bubbling throughout Europe, and in Switzerland it boiled over. Then he went into the next room, walked to the crib of his other daughter, Blanche, and shot her.įrom this domestic tragedy the people of Commugny drew one inescapable conclusion: the absinthe made him do it. When his daughter Rose came to investigate, he shot her too. He took his loaded rifle from the wall and shot her through the forehead. Back home Lanfray finished a liter of wine as his wife watched in disgust. Heading home, Lanfray stopped at a café and drank black coffee with brandy. He drank another glass before leaving work. At lunch and during his afternoon break from work at a nearby vineyard, he downed six glasses of strong wine. Lanfray had drunk his way through the previous day, beginning near dawn with a shot of absinthe diluted in water. “I loved my family and children so much!” “Please tell me I haven’t done this,” he wailed. Facing the bodies of his family, he wept, insisting he didn’t remember shooting the three. In the smallest coffin lay her two-year-old daughter, Blanche.īefore the coffins stood Jean Lanfray, a burly, French-speaking laborer. The mother’s was the largest, adult-sized a smaller casket held her four-year-old daughter, Rose. It was late August 1905 in the small village of Commugny, Switzerland, and three coffins stood open to the air.