Marguerite Steinheil

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Marguerite Jeanne "Meg" Steinheil, née Japy (April 16, 1869 - July 17, 1954) was a French woman famous in connection with the deaths of President Félix Faure and her own husband and stepmother.

Born in Beaucourt, in the Territoire de Belfort, in a rich industrial family, she married the well-known French painter Adolphe Steinheil in July 1890. She became a prominent figure in Parisian society, and her salon was frequented by men of eminence in French political and social circles.

She became the mistress of President Faure, and legend has it that she was performing oral sex on him when he suddenly died on February 16, 1899, and that his stiff hands were tangled in her hair. Of course nothing of this was officially announced, but rumours started spreading immediately, although for several years it was believed that his partner in the last moments was actress Cécile Sorel.

On May 31, 1908, Marguerite's stepmother and husband were found dead in their residence in the Impasse Ronsin, off the Rue de Vaugirard. Both had died of suffocation, the latter by strangling and the former by choking on her false teeth. Marguerite was found gagged and bound to a bed. She initially said that she had been tied up by four black-robed strangers, three men and a woman. Some papers speculated that they had come to her house in search of certain secret documents which Faure had entrusted to her keeping, possibly relating to the Dreyfus affair.

The police suspected her early on, but had no hard evidence and made a pretense of abandoning the investigation. But Steinheil herself would not let the affair rest. She made an attempt to frame her manservant, Rémy Couillard, by concealing a small pearl which she affirmed had been stolen at the time of the murder in a pocketbook belonging to Couillard; after that fabrication was proved, she blamed Alexandre Wolff, the son of her old housekeeper, but he could establish an alibi. She was arrested in November 1908 and taken to St. Lazare prison. The affair caused the greatest excitement in Paris. It was revealed that she had had a great number of admirers, including even King Sisowath of Cambodia. Opponents of the government tried to make political capital of the affair, the anti-Semitic Libre Parole even charging her with having poisoned President Faure. A sensational trial finally ended in her acquittal on November 14, 1909, although the judge called her stories "tissues of lies".

After the trial she came to live in London, where she was known as Mme de Serignac. She wrote My Memoirs in 1912. On June 26, 1917, she married Robert Brooke Campbell Scarlett, 6th Baron Abinger, who died in 1927. She died in a nursing home in Hove.

[edit] Reference

• Armand Lanoux wrote a book about her affair with Faure, Madame Steinheil ou la Connaissance du président (1983). This title is a pun on connaissance meaning both "consciousness" and "acquaintance". The priest who came for Félix Faure's when he died allegedly asked a police officer whether the president still "had his consciousness/acquaintance", to which the police officer replied "no, she left through the backdoor".