Caillaux, Henriette

SOCIALITE, MURDERER (FRANCE)
BORN 5 Dec 1874, Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine - DIED 29 Jan 1943, Mamers, Sarthe
BIRTH NAME Raynouard, Geneviève Joséphine Henriette
GRAVE LOCATION Paris: Père Lachaise, Rue du Repos 16 (division 58, ligne 01 (chapelle Raynouard))

In 1894 Henriette Raynouard married the author Léo Clarétie, who was twelve years her senior. They had two children. She met the politician Joseph Caillaux in 1907 and she started an affair with him. After they both obtained divorce they married in 1911. In 1911 her husband was prime minister for a while and in 1913 he became Minister of Finance. He was attacked in the press in a campaign by "Le Figaro". Gaston Calmette, the editor-in-chief of "Le Figaro" possessed twelve love letters from before their marriage and he threatened to make them public.

Henriette went to Calmette's office on 16 March 1914 and shot him several times. He died shortly afterwards in a hospital. She was arrested and the lawyer Fernand Gustave Gaston Labori defended her during her trial. She was acquitted because of 'acute mental distress' and 'uncontrollable female emotions''. There was a lot of protest against the verdict and Caillaux resigned from his post. Because of their contacts with Germans, they were under observation of the French special services in the 1920s. For that purpose one agent even started an affair with her.

Early in the 1930s she graduated from the École du Louvre with a thesis on the sculptor Jules Dalou. In 1935 she published a reference work on him. In 1940 she retired to Mamers with her husband. She died there in 1943.

Related persons
• is the murderer of Calmette, Gaston

Images

The grave of Henriette Caillaux at Père Lachaise, Paris.
Picture by Androom (02 Nov 2019)

 

The grave of Henriette Caillaux at Père Lachaise, Paris.
Picture by Androom (02 Nov 2019)

 

Sources
Henriette Caillaux - Wikipedia
Henriette Caillaux - Wikipédia


Caillavet, Simone de

Published: 24 Nov 2023
Last update: 24 Nov 2023