We bring you news of historic events from arounf the area. The stories vary from the macabre and the sad to celebrations of village life.
December 1842: The Eymet exhumation
This macabre story was published in “Des inhumations précipitées” written by Léonce Lenormand and published in 1843. The source of this extract is to be found in BNF/Gallica.
“An inhabitant of the town of Eymet, a district of Bergerac in the Dordogne department, was long afflicted by a chronic illness which was not in itself serious and whose worst symptom was a continual insomnia, which didn’t allow the poor sufferer a moment of rest. Weary of this state, he decided to summon from the nearest town a doctor who enjoyed something of a reputation and who prescribed pills containing a fairly considerable proportion of opium extract, advising the sick man to use them with precaution – that is to say, only to take a predetermined quantity each day. The invalid, full of the unfortunate prejudice which is widespread in certain classes of society that a medicine produces good results in direct proportion with the quantity one takes, took a dose for several days all in one go. Soon he fell into a profound sleep, which he only awoke from over twenty four hours late. The village surgeon was summoned, who found the body cold and without pulse. He opened the veins in both arms and only got a few drops of black and near-coagulated blood. The sick man was dead: there was no reason to doubt that. The surgeon left and, the next day, we proceeded to burial. However, after a few days, new information was discovered on the recklessness the unfortunate man had committed by using the narcotic pills he had been prescribed with excess. We started to suspect a part of the truth. A muffled rumour arose among the inhabitants of the village, which clamoured for and finally obtained authorisation to proceed with the exhumation. Crowds went to the cemetery, the coffin was extracted and opened, and the most distressing spectacle was before our eyes: the unfortunate man had turned around in his coffin, the blood, which had flowed from the two opened veins, had bathed his shroud; his convulsed features and tensed limbs attested the horror which he had endured before dying. This happened in the month of December 1842.”
August 1937: The Queysell air crash
The source for this story is the 23rd August 1937 edition of “Ce soir” .
The story’s headline was “Ne fais pas le malin” which translates as “don’t be a smart Alec” or “don’t show off” and was the “Parisianised” name of the plane that crashed killing both the pilots; the newspaper takes up the story in, perhaps to us now, a relatively unsympathetic style:
“Nostalgia for their home region and the desire to get their address admired in their country cost the lives of two aviation sergeants yesterday: Jean Cadiot, 22, born at Saint-Aubin-d’Eymet, pilot at the aeronautic centre in Nancy, and Germain Gay, 20, born at Miramont, pilot at the Orly centre. Having come to Bergerac yesterday on leave, they came up with the idea of visiting their family by plane and, with that in mind, had rented a small place belonging to the Aero Club of Bergerac. About 11 o’clock, the plane arrived above Saint-Aubin and, flying very low, the two pilots saluted the group of their relatives who had run over to watch them pass. Alas! Flying very low, unable to pick themselves up, Jean Cadiot hit a large elm about ten metres from the field near the village of Queyssel, a village of Saint-Nazaire-de-Lauzin. That was the disaster: while the wings, torn off in one movement, remained attached to the tree, the body of the place went and crashed out of the other side and the two victims died without having regained consciousness. As for the plane, only the wheels remained intact, and in 1 ..the rest could have been swept into a wheelbarrow, an eyewitness of the accident told us. In the opinion of a skilled figure near to the Aero Club of Bergerac, the immediate cause of the accident was obviously a fault of piloting. At the origin, however, of the tragic escapade was a touching and somewhat childish motive: the desire of gaining admiration from those who knew them as children. By an irony of fate, the two-seater Caudron from the Aero-Club of Bergerac was locally known as “Don’t be a ‘lou-couyoune’”. In Paris, we say “Don’t be a smart Alec. That was an excellent piece of advice that the unfortunate Cadiot would have done well to follow.”