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.
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Other events that occured in March
BBC Radio Jersey takes to the air
- BBC Radio Jersey went on the air in March 1982, after the States had debated whether to welcome the national broadcaster to the island.
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Foot and mouth arrives in Jersey
- When foot and mouth was detected in Jersey in 1981, it was the first time it had been found in the British Isles for more than a decade.
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Another Mother’s Son has its cinema première
- Louisa Gould’s story was turned into the film Another Mother’s Son, which was written by Jenny Lecoat and had its London premiere in March 2017.
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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 […]
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