Jean-Charles Fortuné Henry & His Brother Joseph Felix "Emile" Henry Were Notorious Anarchist Militants.
Joseph Felix "Emile" Henry was born 26 Sep 1872 in Barcelona, Spain to Fortunate Henry (1821-1882)
Rose Caubet (1842-1923).
Jean-Charles Fortune Henry was born 21 Aug 1869 in Limeil-Brévannes, Seine-et-Oise, France
He was born in Spain, where his father, Fortuné Henry , who had taken an active part in the Commune, had expatriated. The family returned to France after the amnesty of July 1880. Two years later, the father died leaving a widow, Rose Caubet and three children: Fortuné born in 1869, Émile, and Jules born in 1879. Fellow, Émile Henry achieved a brilliant schooling at the Lycée Jean-Baptiste Say and graduated at the age of sixteen. Admissible to the Polytechnic School, he failed the second part of the tests, which determined him to interrupt his studies. He then held various jobs in industry and commerce, relatively poorly paid.
In the course of 1891, he began to frequent the Parisian anarchist circles in which his older brother, Fortuné, already known as a talented orator, was evolving.
In August 1892, the miners employed by the company of the mines of Carmaux, directed by Baron Reille, went on strike to protest against the dismissal of one of theirs, Jean-Baptiste Calvignac , union and socialist leader, who came from be elected mayor of Carmaux on May 15, 1892. The conflict lasted more than three months, until his reinstatement was obtained. Five days after the resumption, on November 8, 1892, a bomb was discovered in Paris, avenue de l'Opéra, in the staircase of the building housing the offices of the Société des Mines de Carmaux. It was transported to the nearest police station, rue des Bons-Enfants, where it exploded, immediately deposited, killing five people torn to pieces by the explosion.
Émile Henry, suspected as well as other anarchists, left Paris the day after the attack to take refuge in England. The police searched his home and checked his schedule, then abandoned this lead. Until December 1893, Émile Henry stayed sometimes in London or Brussels, sometimes in Paris. In April 1893, he attended in London, in the company of Matha , the Autonomy club where he defended propaganda by the fact.
From May to July 1893, he lived on Boulevard Morland in Paris and undertook an apprenticeship with a locksmith.
In December 1893, under the name of Louis Dubois, he rented a room at Villa Faucheur, rue des Envierges, in the XXth arrondissement. from Paris. It was there that he made a homemade bomb that he launched on February 12, 1894, a week to the day after the execution of Auguste Vaillant , in the room of the Terminus café at the Gare Saint-Lazare, at one o'clock. very busy. Twenty people were injured, more or less seriously, one of them died of her injuries. Chased by one of the boys and by consumers who had seen him throw the device, Émile Henry, armed with a dagger and a revolver, defended himself against his pursuers, but was nevertheless subdued and arrested within minutes following the attack.
Before the jury's deliberation, Émile Henry asked for the floor, not to defend himself but to explain the motives for his actions. He declared that at the end of the long strike of the miners of Carmaux, he had wanted to show "to the bourgeoisie that henceforth there would be no more complete joys for them, that their triumphs would be disturbed, that their calf would gold would tremble violently on its pedestal, until the final shock which would throw it low in the mire and the blood "and which he had also wanted to make understand to the minors" that there was only one category of 'men, the anarchists, who sincerely feel their sufferings and who are ready to avenge them, men who do not sit in Parliament, like Messrs Guesde and others, but who march at the guillotine ”. As for the attack on the Terminus café, it was a response to "the draconian measures taken by the government against the anarchists" following Vaillant's attack on the House. The bourgeoisie having only made a bloc of anarchists, he had chosen to make only a bloc of the bourgeoisie: "The good bourgeois who, without being vested with any office, nevertheless receive the coupons of their obligations, who live idle on the profits produced by the labor of the workers, these too must have their share of reprisals. And not only them but also all those who are satisfied with the current order, who applaud the actions of the government and make themselves its accomplices, these employees at 300 francs and 500 francs a month who hate the people even more than the big bourgeois, this stupid and pretentious mass which always sides with the strongest, ordinary customers of the Terminus and other large cafes. That's why, I hit the pile without choosing my victims. "
Thirty years later, in Mes Cahiers, Maurice Barrès wrote that with Fénéon, he had provided Henry with the documentation to build his speech before the Court of Assizes in April 1894.
A few days before his execution, Émile Henry wrote in his cell at La Roquette prison: "I believe that acts of brutal revolt are just right, because they awaken the masses, shake them with a violent lash and show them the vulnerable side of the bourgeoisie still trembling when the rebel climbs the scaffold. He was guillotined on May 21, 1894, and was buried in the Limeil-Brévannes cemetery, his family's place of residence. Georges Clemenceau and Maurice Barrès , who attended the execution, gave a touching account of his ordeal. The first thus concludes his article in Justiceof May 23, 1894: “The crime of Émile Henry is a savage. The act of society seems to me like a low revenge ”while the second wrote in Le Journal of May 22, 1894:“ Émile Henry had promised himself to die as a hero of an idea. He succeeded in imposing his cerebral pride on his poor childish limbs (...) This journey did not last a minute, but in all times and in all civilizations, he who persists in the face of death has forced the admirations, because men are above all energy lovers. (…) It was a psychological fault to execute Émile Henry. You made him the very destiny he claimed. He had killed for ideas, which is inexcusable, you also wanted him to die for his ideas. "
Newspaper with his guilty verdict
Jean-Charles Fortuné Henry was a little smarter than his brother, though he spent many terms in prison he was never executed.
Fortuné began working at a young age as an employee at the Pharmacie centrale de Paris, a position he left in December 1889. He was then close to the Workers' Party from which he left in 1891. He began to frequent anarchist circles (see Lucien Fetis , Gustave Bouillard , François Durey , Michel Antoine , Marie Coquus , Nicolas Thomassin , Arsène Dupont , Edmond Clamart ) and quickly gave lectures while touring France and collaborated with Père Peinard. For remarks exalting violence, he was condemned, during the year 1893, by the Assize Courts of the Ardennes, Aisne and Cher, to prison terms (thirteen years in total) and to fines. The following year, his younger brother Émile was guillotined after having committed two bloody attacks. Shortly after, in November 1894, he was released after a two-year stay in Clairvaux prison. He moved in with his mother whom he had promised to support. He put his activist activities on hold for a while, without ceasing to be monitored by the police. Thus, on the first three anniversaries of Émile's execution, the authorities prevented him and a hundred of his anarchist friends from making a pilgrimage to his brother's grave. Fortuné lived on breeding and market gardening. He sold eggs, poultry, rabbits, butter, fruits and vegetables produced on his mother's property. This agricultural experience was later useful to him in the colony of Aiglemont. Fortuné resumed his militant activities from 1895.
Below are photos of his colony, the first one is of him while living there.
In 1910 he would have been the editorial secretary of the labor union newspaper. He then lived at 34 rue du Port Arthur (currently rue Eugène Pottier) in Champigny-sur-Marne in a pavilion he owned and worked, it seems, as a well-digger then as a mason. He lived there with or near his partner Adrienne Tarby and his youngest daughter.
Registered in Carnet B, Fortuné Henry, kept reformed on January 5, 1915, was not mobilized. According to a police report (dated October 1924) he would have installed in his pavilion a workshop for the manufacture of machine gun supports intended for the army and would have ceased all contact with the Parisian libertarian movement. When he died in 1931 on his property, he was a mechanic.
There mother Rose after losing her husband opened a refreshment bar, photo below along with her son Jean.
Their father Fortunate
Until now, the name of this Communard was written with great fancy, although he was well known and whose two sons, Fortuné Henry and Émile Henry , were notorious anarchist militants. This fantasy is expressed a few pages apart in volume I of the Minutes of the Municipality of 1871 where it is a question of HENRY Fortuné on page 117, of FORTUNÉ Henri on page 135 and of FORTUNÉ HENRI on page 157. It was also said that his real name was Sixte CASSE or Sixte-Casse HENRY and that he was born on August 3, 1822 in Les Cabannes (Ariège), which is false, but the error is true. is repeated from book to book (there is indeed a Guillaume Sixte Cassé, born August 7, 1819 in La Cabannes (Ariège), died December 30, 1879 in Paris, accountant, but who has nothing to do with our Fortuné Henry).
Henry & Jean had a sister who, a servant in a large house, married her master and became the Marquise Moynier de Chamborant. She lived in Passy. He also had two engineer brothers Eucher Henry , Fourierist like Henry, and Charles, who made careers in South America.
What an incredible story of a family who had strong political views. I didn't post this just because of the Anarchy but the era and the mugshots are what drew me in. This families genealogy is a long and old one and I made them a tree on Ancestry, although there are few French records for now, I know in time they will add more and this tree will flourish.
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