 Jean Lanfray was a vineyard worker from the small village of Commugny, in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. He is best known for being the catalyst of the Swiss absinthe prohibition after he murdered his wife and children on the afternoon of August 28th, 1905. That morning Jean Lanfray awoke at 4.30 to his usual glass of absinthe before getting dressed, he lived on the second floor of a farmhouse while his parents and brother lived downstairs. Lanfray finished off a second absinthe then ordered his wife to wax his boots for the following day before leaving for work, along with his father and brother.
The Lanfrays made their way to the vineyard at which they were employed, at approximately 5.30 they passed an auberge (Inn) en route where Lanfray consumed a crème de menthe followed by a cognac before continuing on to work. At noon Lanfray stopped for lunch, along with which he drank three glasses of the local piquette, a homemade wine made with the district’s pinot noir grapes. Before his working day was over Lanfray had consumed a further three glasses of wine. At 4.30 Lanfray, along with his father and brother, stopped at a café and had a black coffee laced with brandy before Lanfray and his father headed home. Once there they each consumed a litre of the strong piquette. After a long day of servitude, Jean’s wife wasn’t in the best of moods: She asked her husband to go and milk the herd of cows which they kept on their farm, Lanfray refused - then demanded she put the coffeepot on the stove and head out to milk the cows herself. She put the coffeepot on the stove before leaving - she didn’t say anything. Lanfray laced his coffee with a large dose of his own homemade brandy, and after his wife had returned they bickered further, at which point Lanfray noticed his boots under the sink - still to be waxed. The bickering escalated and his father took his cue to leave, saying goodbye to his daughter-in-law as he passed, she simply shrugged; this enraged Lanfray, and a heated argument ensued - culminating in this fateful exchange: "Shut up!" he barked.
She lost her temper: "I'd like to see you make me!"
You would, would you?" he snarled. He went and got his old Vetterli rifle, a long-barreled (33.2 inches), bolt-action repeater that took a magazine of 12 cartridges.
"Don't do anything foolish," the old man pleaded.
"You stay out of this, Poppa, unless you want trouble yourself!" Lanfray then raised his rifle, took aim and shot his wife in the head, his father fled, shouting out for help. At this point his four year old daughter Rose entered the room, screaming upon witnessing this horror; Jean proceeded to shoot her in the chest, before moving onto the cradle where his youngest daughter Blanche was sleeping. He killed her also. After this, Lanfray then set out to take his own life, attempting to aim the rifle at his own head - but the rifle was too long for him to reach the trigger. He crudely tied a piece of string to the trigger, passed it behind the trigger bar and held the remaining string in one hand while holding the barrel to his head with the other. The lack of stability with this crude set-up presumably caused him to miss; the bullet avoided his brain and became lodged in his lower jaw. With blooding pouring from his self inflicted wound, he picked up the body of young Blanche and clambered outside to his barn before collapsing. After Lanfray was found, he was taken to a nearby hospital in Nyon, where he had the bullet removed from his jaw. After a brief recovery he was taken to see the bodies of his murdered family, where he was said to have wept and repeated “It is not me who did this, Tell me, O God, please tell me that I have not done this. I loved my wife and children so much”. After an autopsy on Madame Lanfray it was found she was four months pregnant. The trail against Jean Lanfray took place on February 23rd 1906, and he was found guilty by the end of the day. He escaped capital punishment due to his intoxicated state at the time of the murders, with leading Swiss psychologist Dr Albert Mahaim stating Lanfray suffered from “a classic case of absinthe madness”. Jean Lanfray was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment, but three days after the trial he committed suicide, hanging himself in his prison cell. The Lanfray case became extremely well publicised, blaming the small amount of absinthe for the state which Jean Lanfray was in, and the temperance movement utilised this scapegoat to rally public support for the banning of absinthe. Contains excerpts from Maurice Zolotow’s article “Absinthe” from the June 1971 issue of Playboy |
