Category Archives: Historical Ciphers

Before moving on, I thought I ought to publish my last few notes on Jean Keff and Pierre Keff, in case someone passing happens to be trying to work out their family tree. (I should again stress what a good source of information filae.com is.)

Children of Jean Keff & Reine Lichtenberger

Note that in the notes for Jules Joseph Keff, Jean Keff is referred to as “Jean Pierre Keff”.

Leon Pierre Jean Keff
b. 20 Feb 1865, Paris
d. 27 Feb 1900, Paris (named as "Pierre Jean Leon Keff")

Pierre Jean Baptiste Keff
b. 20 Jun 1866, Paris

Anais Keff
b. 24 Feb 1869, Paris
d. 06 May 1887, Paris

Jules Joseph Keff
d. 9th Match 1869, aged 2 years 9 months

Children of Pierre Keff & Catherine Birschens

Note that Pierre Keff’s profession is given as both “tailleur” and “polisseur”, while Catherine Birschens is referred to as “cartonniere”.

Catherine Birschens died on 13 Mar 1871 at Epinay-sur-Orge.

Victorine Josephine Keff
b. 27 Nov 1864
d. 03 May 1865 at 4 Rue Grange aux Belles, aged 5 months

Josephine Catherine Keff
b. 21 Jun 1863, Paris
m. (no date) Victor Pierre van de Casteele
d. 14 Mar 1944, Paris

I was certain the French archives would have good, solid information on historical prisoners, so went looking for them. And that’s how I found the official French archive site filae.com, which (modest paywall notwithstanding) was actually very impressive (To be precise, searching filae is a bit hit and miss, but the depth of the archives is excellent.)

So I can now say with certainty what happened to Jean Keff and Pierre Keff (oddly, I wasn’t able to find prison records for Marie Ratier, the widow Bon).

What Happened to Jean Keff?

As we already know, Jean Keff was given a life sentence in 1872 for the attempted rape of minor Henriette X, and his appeal was rejected. He then escaped from Le Bagne de Toulon on 14 Oct 1872, but was recaptured on 22 Oct 1872.

His prison records take up his story. (There is a note that he had a previous 13-month conviction in 1860.) For attempting to escape, he was sentenced to three years in ‘double chains’. He was then unchained on 25 Jan 1873 and transferred to Nouvelle-Caledonie on the transport ship Le Rhin. There, his attempts to escape continued:

• 20 Oct 1873: escaped Ile Nou, recaptured 22 Oct 1873
• 23 Dec 1875: escaped Ile Nou, recaptured 25 Dec 1875
• 1879: escaped Ile Nou, recaptured
• 4 May 1880: escaped Ile Nou, recaptured on the 6th
• Jul 1884: not sure what happened here

Sadly, the final entry in Jean Keff’s three pages of prison records isn’t hard to predict:

• Died at Ile Nou, 10 Feb 1894

What Happened To Pierre Keff?

From the reports we have already seen, we know that Pierre Keff too was given a life sentence in 1872 for his part in the conspiracy to rape Henriette X. His appeal against the sentence was upheld, but he was due to be rearrested and retried.

From his prison record, we can see that that the sentence given to him in his retrial was 15 years: he arrived at Le Bagne de Toulon on 09 Sep 1872. As with thousands of other bagnards, he was subsequently transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie on 18 Apr 1873. Despite escaping from Ile Nou (on 02 Dec 1873), he was recaptured on 14 Dec 1873.

However, when the authorities responded (on 06 May 1874) by extending his sentence by two years, that punishment seems to have put him off trying to escape again, because – unlike his brother Jean’s long list of escape attempts – the next event in Pierre Keff’s prison record is his release on 11 Aug 1889, 17 years after his trial.

A search of filae.com’s death records found the same Pierre Keff (still born in Chateau-Rouge to Pierre Keff and Catherine Andre, but now a widower of Catherine Derichelle) dying in Paris at 11.45am on 15 Jun 1911. His brother Jean is also mentioned here as having died in Ile Nou.

So I think there is, alas, no way that Pierre Keff could have been Henry Debosnys.

So… Where Next?

Given that I mistrust just about everything wife-killer Henry Debosnys claimed as his history; that his body had what looked like prison tattoos (the Philadelphia Times noted that Debosnys seemed like a French convict); and that the French journalist claiming to have known him thought his real surname was Keff and that he was born around 1833, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to wonder whether Pierre Keff – born 1833, and sent to Le Bagne de Toulon for conspiracy to rape a minor – might have been both people.

Intriguingly, Stefano Guidoni notes that Debosnys’ Portugibberish notes included the word “noumea”, which is the capital of Nouvelle-Caledonie. So, much as I doubt both the veracity and the sincerity of all Debosnys’ writings, there remains a vague suspicion that there may be something real peeking through the cracks there.

But was this even the same M. Keff described by the Parisian journalist, “a good-sized fellow with long black hair, a smooth, fat always carefully shaved face“? Here’s his physical description when he left prison:

The blond beard sounds somewhat inconsistent, hein? But it is Pierre Keff’s profession – “polisseur” – that is arguably the most inconsistent with the journalist’s account.

I don’t know: right now, I doubt I’ve even found the right Keff, never mind the right Debosnys. And for Keffs, the French historical prison records list only the two brothers.

Perhaps the historical records of Charlemagne college will be able to throw a little more light on this, if (as claimed) Keff attended there in 1845 as a 12 year old. At this distance in time, this might be the only practical way to verify the journalist’s story. (Did he even have Keff’s surname correct? We don’t know.)

At the same time, I’m wondering whether it might be worth looking at escaped French convicts from the period 1870-1880. I mentioned a few before, but Docteur Raoulx might possibly have included a list in his 1929 book. Something to think about, anyway…

I wondered whether Retronews.fr (the BnF’s old newspaper site) might have anything to say on the subject of Jean Keff and Pierre Keff. To my surprise and pleasure, it did…

Escape From Le Bagne de Toulon

I quickly found two short news articles from 1872 concerning Jean Keff’s escape from Le Bagne de Toulon, in the same year that he and his brother were imprisoned there:

L’Événement, 20 Octobre 1872, p.2

Toulon, 18 octobre. – On a constaté, il y a deux jours, l’évasion de deux forçats, Fireil et Keff, condamnés, le premier à 15 ans de travaux forcés, et le second à perpétuité. Keff est né à Strasbourg, et c’est l’idée de devenir Prussien qui l’a déterminé, dit-on, à s’évader.

La Gironde, 19 Octobre 1872, p.2

On a constaté le 14 de ce mois deux évasions du bagne de Toulon, celles du nommé Jean Foreit, condamné à quinze ans de travaux forcés, et de Jean Keff, condamné à perpétuité, le premier pour vol qualifié, et le second pour viol. Keff est né à Strasbourg. Il est probable que l’idée de s’affranchir en devenant Prussien l’aurait déterminé à s’évader. Mais tout donne à croire que, pas plus que son camarade, il ne réussira à se soustraire aux recherches de la justice, leur signalement ayant été immédiatement envoyé à toutes les autorités.

Because these are so similar, here’s my translation for the second (and slightly longer) of the two (which seems to have first appeared in the Petit Marseillais, 17 Oct 1872, p.2, but which I had to find by hand because Retronews hadn’t indexed it, bah):

On the 14th of this month, two men escaped from Toulon prison: Jean Foreit (serving fifteen years forced labour for robbery) and Jean Keff (serving life imprisonment for rape). Keff was born in Strasbourg, so it is likely that the idea of freeing himself in order to become a Prussian would have been his motivation to escape. But everything suggests that, no more than his comrade, he will not succeed in evading justice, details of their escape having immediately been sent to all the authorities.

Errm… That Didn’t Go To Plan

A little bit of follow-on Googling handily revealed that the two Jeans’ escape indeed failed to go to plan. Here’s what Le Petit Marseillais, 25 Oct 1872, reported (which I found online here):

Voici quelques nouveaux détails assez curieux sur l’arrestation des deux forçats évadés du bagne de Toulon.
On les croyait d’abord cachés dans les magasins généraux de l’arsenal et supposant les avoir là bloqués on espérait les prendre par la famine.
Pendant, ce temps les deux forçats avaient réussi à prendre la clef des champs, ils ne marchaient que pendant la nuit et se dirigeaient, par la montagne, vers la frontière. Arrivés dans le canton de Trets sur la route d’Aix à St-Maximin ils avisèrent une maison isolée et s’y présentèrent hardiment pour demander l’hospitalité. Mal leur en prit, car ils venaient de tomber en pleine caserne de gendarmerie du Rousset. On divine bien l’accueil qui leur fut fait. Le lendemain ils furent conduits sous bonne escorte à Aix, et delà à Toulon, où les portes de bagne s’ouvrirent de nouveau pour eux.

My translation (note that even though the article doesn’t specifically mention Keff’s name, it was published less than a fortnight after the previous story, so I think it extremely likely both are connected):

Here are some new and rather curious details about the arrest of the two convicts who recently escaped from the Toulon penal colony.
It had initially been thought that the two had hidden in the general stores of the arsenal and, assuming they had been stranded there, the hope was to starve them out.
However, while all that was going on, the two convicts succeeded in scarpering via the back door, and, walking only at night, headed via the mountain road towards the border. When they arrived in the canton of Trets on the road from Aix to St-Maximin, they noticed an isolated house and confidently presented themselves there to ask for hospitality. This, however, worked out badly for them, because the house was in fact right in the middle of the Rousset gendarmerie barracks. It really isn’t hard to imagine the welcome they received there. The next day the two were securely escorted to Aix, and from there to Toulon, where the prison doors opened once more for them.

(The story had previously been briefly reported in Le Petit Marseillais, 24 Oct 1872, p.2: “Les deux forçats dont nous avons annoncé l’évasion du bagne de Toulon ont été arrêtés par un gendarme dans la commune de Rousset. Ils avaient encore au pied l’anneau du bagne.“)

Escaping from Le Bagne de Toulon

As an aside, anyone living in Toulon was incentivized to capture prison escapees: according to the Petit Marseillais 24 May 1873 p.3, you’d get 100 francs for an arrest outside the city walls, 50 francs inside the city walls, or 25 francs inside the port itself.

Searching Le Petit Marseillais for 1872-1873 revealed only two actual escapees from Le Bagne de Toulon in those years: Jean Canot and Francois Truchet on 28 Sep 1872. The final report (before the Bagne was close down) of an attempted escape was on 5th Apr 1873:

Hier, après-midi, cinq forçats se sont évadés du l’arsenal ; ils ont exécuté leur opération en plein jour, en franchissant le mur d’enceinte.

Le premier qui s’est évadé a failli, en sautant, tomber sur les épaules d’une femme qui passait sur le chemin de ronde.

Afin de dissimuler la coupe des cheveux, qui aurait pu les compromettre, ils s’etaient munis de couffins qui leur servaient de parasol et de coiffure à la fois ; puis, comme ils n’avaient pas de temps à perdre ils filaient lestement en ayant encore les fers aux pieds. Tout à coup ils se trouvèrent en présence d’un obstable imprévu. C’était un factionnaire intelligent qui, étonné de voir circuler des condamnés sans l’assistance d’un garde chiourme, leur barra résolument le passage.

Pendant que I’on essayait do parlementer, la gendarmerie maritime, qui était lancée à leur poursuite, vint mettre un terme aux explications.

Les cinq forçats ont été ramenés au bagne, avec une note qui leur donne droit au prochain départ pour la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

A quicky translation:

Yesterday afternoon, five convicts attempted to escape from the arsenal in broad daylight, clambering over the perimeter wall.

The first to escape almost fell on the shoulders of a woman walking on the rampart while jumping.

In order to conceal their haircuts, which could have given them away, they had brought along baskets which served as both parasols and head wear; then, as they had no time to waste, they sped nimbly off, though still wearing irons on their feet. Suddenly they found themselves in the presence of an unforeseen obstacle. This was an intelligent sentry who, astonished to see convicts circulating without the assistance of a guard, resolutely barred their passage.

While trying to talk their way past him, the maritime gendarmerie, which had been in hot pursuit, quickly appeared, putting a rapid end to their discussion.

The five convicts were hauled back to the penal colony, and given a note entitling them to the next departure for New Caledonia. [Which held the Pacific prison that many of the Toulon bagnards would soon be moved to.]

The Nouvelle Caledonie Prisons

As an aside, you might think that escaping from France’s maritime prisons on New Caledonia (in the Pacific!) would be completely impossible. Yet a number of convicts did manage to escape and make the crossing to Queensland. Arguably the most famous was Henri, Marquis of Rochefort (editor of “La Lanterne”), who made it across along with a number of his fellow Communard political prisoners in March 1874.

This 1955 paper claims that in the decade to 1884, “no fewer than 247 escaped convicts from New Caledonia had landed in Australia”, though the figures given to Queensland’s Attorney General in 1883 (quoted in the much more recent paper here, p.563) was significantly lower.

But technology killed that whole route stone dead: when an undersea telegraph cable was established between New Caledonia and Australia in the 1890s, any final hope of escape by sea dwindled to nothing.

French Prison Tattoos – Fleurs de Bagne

One last thing: on a French tattoo-themed fashion brand’s website, I learnt a little about “Fleurs de Bagne” – prison tattoos. Perhaps more importantly, the page included a reading list for books about Fleurs de Bagne:

• Les Tatouages du milieu by Jacques Delarue and Robert Giraud
• Au Bagne by Albert Londres
• Une Histoire Du Milieu by Jérôme Pierrat
• Dry Guillotine by René Belbenoit
• L’Argot du Milieu by Jean Lacassagne
• Le Travailleur de la Nuit, a comic book about Alexandre Jacob
• Les Pegriots by Auguste Le Breton

I’m hoping that one of these might possibly fleetingly mention French prison ciphers but… that’s just the kind of lucky dumb stuff I tend to hope for, without really believing it will come true. I guess that’s why I sit here surrounded by unbelievably niche books. 😉

A trawl through newspapers.com’s (paywalled) archive throws up various tidbits to do with fantasy-spinning wife-killer Henry Debosnys. For example, that his defence counsel consisted of Arod K. Dudley of Elizabethtown and Royal Corbin of Plattsburgh; that his brain “weighed fifty-two ounces“; and that on the day of his execution, “he commenced the day with his usual series of noises in imitation of different animals, of which he was a perfect mimic”.

On that same day, he was asked by the Reverend Father Reddington if there was anything he wanted to say. Debosnys’ reply: “I have, I am innocent of the crime. You have made a mistake. The blood on my knife was the blood of a chipmunk.” Just so we have his – completely credible – story of how he didn’t kill his wife on record. Lying bastard.

“Paris green and vinegar”

Perhaps more intriguingly, a short piece in the Citizen-Examiner of Hayneville, Alabama (15th Nov 1882) shows a further side to Debosnys:

He wrote an ordinary letter and handed it, open, to the sheriff and asked him to mail it to the address in New York. It became incidentally mislaid, and several days afterwards the sheriff was astounded, on reverting to it, to find another complete letter in green ink, written between the lines. It showed the prisoner and the correspondent to be members of a communits [sic] society, and suggested plans of escape, threatening the sheriff and asking aid. It was discovered afterward that the miscreant had procured by some means Paris green and vinegar, which formed a liquid whose traces were at first invisible, and by the lapse of time developed these characters.

Monsieur Keff

There’s also an intriguing account courtesy of a French journalist that appeared in the Post-Star (Glens Falls, NY) on 07 Jul 1883, which Cheri Farnsworth quotes a slightly fuller version of (from the New York Sun) on pp.84-86 (but somewhat scoffs at, it has to be said):

I am positive that the so-called Henry DeBosnys was my comrade Keff. I see him still, a good-sized fellow, with long, black hair, a smooth, fat, always carefully shaved face emerging from a high white cravat, a very emphatic talker and elocutionist, especially when he recited his own verses. watching lovingly in the meantime the skillful blackening up of an old Marseillaise pipe which he seemed to have been born smoking. For five years, we met in Paris during the regular six weeks’ vacation of the provincial colleges in which he was a teacher, the university not allowing him a stay of more than one scholastic year, whether in the north, the east, the west, the south, Corsica, or even Algeria, because he always ran into debt and kept company with tipplers. I have still in my panoply the pretty pocket pistol with a damascened butt which I lent him three times to blow out what he used to call his brains, in consequence of three distinct failures in hunting rich heiresses. Keff showed me the last time I saw him the following letter:

“MR. KEFF: I’ve just found among my daughter’s papers two letters, one which is in very poor poetry, signed by you, and states that you are ready to elope with my Giuseppa on the horse of a certain Mazeppa, whom I suspect to be a licensed vendor of Bastia. The other is signed by a Mr. Peyrodal, a druggist’s clerk, now with his family at Cette. I warn you both that I give you two weeks to come and marry my daughter Giuseppa. So much the worse for the one who arrives second in the race. He is a dead man. With much respect,
BRASCATELLI D’ISTRIA,
Non-commissioned officer in the gendarmerie of Bastia.”

[…] Keff said he was going to San Domingo, and proposed to join the army there. “I am sure,” he said, “It is my true calling in this world. When young I fought like a lion near Colonel de Montagnac when we attacked Lidi-Brahim’s [sic] marabout. I even remember that I fled wonderfully quick with Major Courby de Cognord and his forty hussars, and wrote on that affair a magnificent piece of poetry.” “What nonsense, man!” [I said] “At that time you were only twelve years of age, and at Charlemagne college with me.” “You must be mistaken; I was at Lidi-Brahim, for I wrote verses about it.” I did not insist, knowing well that it was his hobby to think that he had been a witness of whatever he wrote verses about. I have not heard of him since.

Well, Farnsworth’s scoffing notwithstanding, I think you have to admit this perpetually-heiress-chasing mad-fantasist Keff does sound a great deal like our Henry Debosnys.

At the same time, I’d add that the (actual) battle of Sidi-Brahim was in September 1845, which (if Keff was, as the correspondent writes, 12 years old at the time) would make Keff’s birth year 1833.

Pierre Keff

Looking at the Keff surname, it turns out that there is a whole cluster of Keffs from Alsace-Lorraine. Because of Alsace’s close connections with Germany, a register of people from Alsace was drawn up in February and September 1872 (just after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871), which still exists and has been digitized. Of these Keffs, two in particular stand out:

• Pierre Keff, b. 12 May 1833 in Chateaurouge, who in September 1872 was living in Toulon
• Jean Keff, b. 25 July 1841 in Bouzonville, who in September 1872 was living in Toulon

Jean Keff appears in FamilySearch as having been born on 25 July 1841 in Bouzonville to Pierre Keff and Catherine Andre. Separately, FamilySearch lists the same-named couple (without ever connecting the dots) as having been the parents of:

• Madeleine Keff (born and died in January 1844 in Bouzonville)
• Elisabeth Keff (b. 11 April 1843 in Bouzonville, and who was living in Paris in 1872)
• Joseph Keff (b. 30 April 1845 in Bouzonville, baptized 1 May 1845, died 19 Jan 1846)

A Jean Keff (again, with the same parents) married a Reine Lichtenberger (daughter of Michel Lichtenberger and Reine Keser, born in 25 Sep 1836 in Oberentzen) on 18 Feb 1865 in Paris (district 19e). Though I should add that by the time of the 1872 register, Reine Keff was listed as a “femme separee” living in Paris.

As far as Pierre Keff goes: Chateau-Rouge is a commune in Moselle, right on the modern French-German border (i.e. we’re not interested in the Parisian Metro station here). And we have a marriage record for a Pierre Keff (with the same parents) marrying a Catherine Birschens (born in Pays-Bas, daughter of Jean Birschens and Marie Scharbantger) on 02 Aug 1862 in Paris (district 19e).

According to Caroline Seckel’s Ancestry tree, a Catherine Birschens was born in 2 May 1835 in Waldbillig, Echternach, Grevenmacher, Luxembourg to Jean Berchen and Anne Marie Charpentier: although she is marked down as having been married to an “unknown spouse”, it seems a solid bet that this is the same person.

As always with genealogy, it’s not 100% certain but I think it’s safe to say there would seem to be strong evidence from all this that Pierre Keff and Jean Keff were brothers, with Elisabeth Keff their sister.

Putting this together with the Parisian journalist’s recollection of Keff’s having been 12 years old in 1845, it seems reasonably likely to me that the heiress-chasing fantasist he recalled from Paris was in fact Pierre Keff (b. 12 May 1833).

What Happened to Pierre Keff?

That, alas, would seem to be a very much harder question to answer. There seems to be no immigration record of any Keff going to America, or of any Keff naturalization etc. So it seemed likely to me that the best place to search would be French archival records. So I looked at Gallica, and found a hit from 5th May 1872 in Le Petit journal des tribunaux. This was a really awful slice of history, which I’ll give in French and then translate:

Jean Keff a quitté sa femme et ses enfants pour vivre en concubinage avec la veuve Bon. En allant chercher cette femme à l’atelier où elle travaillait, Jean Keff evait vu une jeune fille nommée Henriette, ouvrière du même atelier, et il conçut le projet d’abuser de cette jeune fille.

Se faisant passer pour mari et femme, Keff et la veuve Bon parvinrent à se faire confier la jeune Henriette sous prétexte d’une partie à Grenelle. Ils avaient promis que la jeune fille serait ramenée avant dix heures du soir. Cette promesse ne fut pas tenue et ils firent coucher la jeune fille dans laur logis. Pendant la nuit, eurent lieu des tentatives doieuses auxquels put heureusement résister la jeune Henriette.

C’est à l’occasion de ces faits que Jean Keff, Pierre Keff at la veuve Bon comparaissaient devant le jury sous l’accusation de tentative de voil, de complicité du même crime at d’attentat à la pudeur. L’affaire a eu lieu à huis clos.

Déclarées coupables sans circonstances atténuantes, ils ont été tous trois condamnés à la peine des travaux forcés à perpetuité.

Au sortir de l’audience, Jean keff a voulu se frapper avec un couteau qu’il était parvenu à dissimuler ; mais il a été aussitôt désarmé.

My translation (free and easy, of course you can translate it better):

Jean Keff left his wife and children and moved in with the widow of M. Bon. While going to look for this woman in the workshop where she worked, Jean Keff saw a young girl named Henriette, who worked at the same place, and conceived a plan to rape her.

Passing themselves off as husband and wife, Keff and the widow Bon managed to get the young Henriette into their trust under the pretext of a game at Grenelle. Their promise that the girl would be brought back before 10pm was not kept, and they made the young girl sleep in their home. During the night, various dubious attempts [at sexual assault] took place which fortunately the young Henriette was able to resist.

It was in respect of the above events that Jean Keff, Pierre Keff and the widow Bon appeared before the jury on charges of attempted deception, complicity and indecent assault. The case took place behind closed doors. Found guilty without extenuating circumstances, all three were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Coming out of the hearing, Jean Keff attempted to stab himself with a knife he had managed to conceal on his person; but he was immediately disarmed.

The three convicts appealed to the Supreme Court.

(There’s also a report in Le Petite Presse of 3rd May 1872 covering the same trial.)

In the appeal hearing of 30 May 1872, the court rejected the appeals of Jean Keff and Marie Ratier (la veuve Bon), but upheld Pierre Keff’s appeal because of a procedural error in his interrogation. However, the court insisted Pierre Keff should be immediately rearrested, reinterrogated (properly this time) and re-tried for the same offence.

So… What Happened Next?

If both Jean Keff and Pierre Keff were in Toulon in September 1872, it seems likely to me that they were both in the Bagne of Toulon (1748-1873), the gigantic prison made (in-)famous by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. So it would seem likely that Pierre Keff’s retrial happened, and that Pierre was then sent to the Bagne with his brother for a similar life imprisonment.

We know that Henry Debosnys’ body was found to be covered in (what seemed like) shocking tattoos (typical of prisons), and that he was also thought to be expert in escaping from prisons. So this would seem to be the point where the two bigger narratives might somehow overlap and merge into one, right?

What are the odds that Pierre Keff escaped from the Bagne, and fled to America under an assumed name, leaving his – errrm – miserable life in France behind him? Actually, it turns out that this is fairly unlikely, because few people escaped Le Bagne. (If anyone has access to Docteur Raoulx’s (1929) “Le Bagne de Toulon“, a (small) roll-call of escapees is apparently on pages 17-20.)

All the same, given that it was 1873 when Le Bagne was closed, the Keff brothers were almost certainly then moved on to other prisons: so it could well be from a different prison that one (or indeed both) escaped. But I haven’t found any record of this.

Huge kudos to anyone who can find evidence that Pierre Keff escaped from prison, because despite my best efforts I’ve basically run out of runway here. 🙁

Mary Celestine

One last brief thing: because Debosnys talks of “Mrs Celestine”, I wondered whether ‘Celestine’ might have in fact been his previous wife’s surname rather than her first name. And a quick search of Ancestry revealed that in 1870 there was indeed a Mary Celestine (age 30, born in Pennsylvania) working as a teacher in Philadelphia Ward 27 District 89, and apparently living with lots of other teachers and children. Given that the lady at the top of the page seems to have a job title “Lady Superioress”, my guess is that this was a small Catholic boarding school.

So: might Mary Celestine have actually been a nun at an earlier stage in her life? After everything else I’ve found out today, that wouldn’t surprise me one little bit. Perhaps we shall see.

Some interesting correspondence in the last few days has brought the case of hanged murderer Henry Debosnys (along with his curious unsolved ciphers and his not-very-credible autobiography) back to mind. It has also reminded me of a number of Debosnys-related things I’ve been meaning to post to Cipher Mysteries for ages…

Sektu on the Portuguese that isn’t

Having originally posted about Debosnys here back in 2015, I’ve long meant to get round to posting links to the Sektu blog. Back in 2017, its author (someone called Brian, who now seems to have gone very quiet) attempted to see how far the clues embedded in Debosnys’ self-serving mixture of misdirections and lies could be pursued.

For example, Brian notes that even though Debosnys claimed to have been born in Portugal, the fragments of (what seems like) Portuguese in his papers aren’t really much like Portuguese:

Comoderondas inacia bêco olondo inoto para
Imbiabo kotaronc molonk niarotan pérana
[…]
inno calledaz
Ontro de palade mosa kaen faleï tonüe dhala pico indor kouniss plaira colrose, inbello monozy impiodo cara. ûntez noüméa, tintems oda formandore, artosa passat Otiva …[remaining text not clear or cut off]

Any suggestions as to what to make of this folderol?

Brian also notes that Debosnys’ Greek poem is basically an incomplete copy of Thomas Moore’s preface to his Odes of Anacreon: and separately wonders whether the ciphered lines might be Debosnys’ version of how he thought the poem should have ended. It’s an interesting suggestion, for sure.

Brian also transcribed part of Debosnys’ cipher (though he seems not to have posted his transcription anywhere), though I’d caution (just as before) that it’s not at all obvious what the best transcription strategy would be for it. He also posted some notes on what he called the “N glyph“, along with various difficulties with it.

Sektu on Debosnys’ real name

Brian made four interesting posts on trying to work out Debosnys’ real name. His first post points out that when Debosnys talks of the “franck terror“, he is almost certainly referring to “franc-tireurs“, who were volunteers (many from other countries and/or from overseas) who joined guerilla groups to fight for France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Yet as with everything else in Debosnys’ account, his claims of importance (he implies he was a leader of a group) are very probably exaggerated (for example, Brian’s second post points out that he was not Louis Delpech): but Debosnys may well have taken part.

In a more promising vein, Brian’s third post in the set goes through the passenger list of the Cimbria (which Debosnys claimed to have sailed on with his wife Judith, but which I had previously not been very impressed by). In his fourth post, he considers that Debosnys and his wife might have in fact been Jacob Pomries (a slatemaker) and his wife Elise (aged 35 and 22 on the Cimbria). But… he doesn’t actually seem hugely convinced, to be fair.

Brian also tried to pursue Debosnys’ tattoo-like handshake drawing, but without huge success. He also noted a possible connection between Debosnys’ curious middle name “Deletnack” and the (not very plausible-looking reverse anagram) M. le vicomte de Letnac, whose memories of Italy was published as a book by J. Cantel of Paris.

Finally, Brian dug up an interesting story about a “Colonel Henry” from the Paris Commune (Debosnys loosely implied that he was “Colonel Henry”). Was he Debosnys? It seems a little unlikely to me, but… who can tell?

Celestine Debosnys

One of Debosnys’ wives was called Celestine: she was born around 1839, and died in Philadelphia on the 5th March 1882 (presumably at Debosnys’ “miserable shanty […] on South 1st Street near Greenwich Point in the Quaker City”, according to the Essex County Republican, Farnsworth p.91), having starved to death. All Ancestry has to say is that she was white, and was buried in the Alms House Cemetery.

Farnsworth gives her name (once) as “Celestine Desmarais”, but I suspect that this is a conflation of “Celestine” and “Judith Desmarais” (a different dead Debosnys wife). (Note that miscamusca tumbled down an Ancestry rabbit hole chasing Canadian Adeline Desmarais’ 1865 marriage to Joseph Jourdain, but I believe that was someone else.)

It seems bizarre to me that we know so little about her, so I went a-looking myself for any Celestines in Philadelphia born close to 1839. However, I found little of interest there, not even French-born Celestine Munch (b. 6 Nov 1838, d. 12 Jan 1915). The 1870 US Census has very few Celestines in Philadelphia born 1838-1840: apart from Celestine Munch, there’s just Celestine Brown age 30 (born Pennsylvania, Sales Lady, daughter of Anthony Brown (born Baden) & Celestine (born France)).

I also looked for any women called Celestine who got married in Canada in December 1872 (as Debosnys claimed to have done), but found the Canadian search tools frustratingly inexact: perhaps Celestine Commier, Celestine Menard, Celestine Lavaris, or Celestine Lafounesse?

I also looked for any women called Celestine living in Wilmington Delaware (“as I’m sure you’re well aware”) in the 1880 Census (Debosnys claimed to have been living there in 1880), but found only Celestine J. Miller, wife of John F. Miller, with daughters Mary (14) and Cecelia (12).

As for looking in the 1880 US Census for any women called Celestine born in Canada, that yielded only Celestine Lazette (wife of Joseph (50), mother of Maggie (18), Libbie (15) and Julius (14)), in Monroe Michigan. And the only Celestine born in France living in Philadelphia was Celestine Munch.

Having said all that, it might be that someone more skilled at navigating the US Census will be able to see if anyone with a similar name was living “on South 1st Street near Greenwich Point” in 1880. You know, just in case Debosnys was lying about just about everything in his whole life. Which I certainly can’t rule out at the moment.

DNA, and why not?

Back in 2015, Byron Deveson suggested that someone should carefully recover Henry Debosnys’ DNA from the pieces in the museum (there’s a skull and, gorily enough, a hangman’s noose) and drop it into GEDmatch etc.

So why is it 2021 and nobody has thought to do this yet? Makes no sense to me.