Surprise German Holiday Day 4

The walls of Fritzlar and water management for wow factor.

Surprise German Holiday Days 1, 2, and 3

On Sunday we left home to drive to Fritzlar to lend moral support to my cousin Linda as she gave her talk about our family's connection to the town.

Some of the things we saw along the way:

The Guibout Telegraph Fraud

We have written about the Chappe Telegraph system before (here and here) but what we didn't know was that the telegraph in Tours was involved in an intriguing criminal case.

The Chappe Telegraph in Chambray les Tours 

As is the case today, even in the nineteenth century if you receive market information before your rivals did, you could make money. A lot of money. If you know whether government bonds have risen or fallen before your competitors do, you can buy or sell accordingly.

In 1836, a fraud involving the Chappe telegraph was uncovered at Tours. It involved Guibout, a telegraph "stationnaire" at Tours, and the Blanc brothers, bankers in Bordeaux.

The Blanc brothers worked out a system by which they received information about movements in the Paris price of government funds before that information reached Bordeaux by normal means. Use of the telegraph was restricted to official government communications, so ordinary commercial news travelled by mail.

The scheme was simple, but effective. Their Paris correspondent, Gormand, (and later a man called Franck), sent parcels to Guibout by mail coach. The parcels contained gloves or stockings. Their colour indicated whether the price had risen or fallen. Between August 1834 and August 1836, 121 parcels were sent.

Guibout worked at telegraph station No. 4, which was situated on the mairie in Tours. After receiving the parcel, he inserted a false signal into the first message he had to transmit towards Bordeaux and then sent the telegraph signal meaning “error”. The false signal continued along the line and was repeated from station to station until it reached Bordeaux. There, the message was corrected with the error signal and the false signal removed from the official transmission

At Bordeaux, the inserted signal was received by Pierre Renaud, a former telegraph employee, who passed the information to the Blanc brothers.

The fraud was discovered in August 1836. A search of Guibout's house foun letters, telegraph notes, gloves and money. The investigators also found a notebook containing telegraph signs corresponding to the days of the week and indications involving white or coloured gloves. 

The trial took place before the Court of Assizes at Tours from 11 to 14 March 1837. Guibout, Renaud and the Blanc brothers were prosecuted under the provisions of the Penal Code concerning corruption. The prosecution alleged that Guibout had received payments for transmitting the signals and that the Blanc brothers had arranged the payments. The possible penalties included civic degradation, a fine equal to twice the value of the payments or goods received, and imprisonment for up to five years. 

The jury found that Guibout had transmitted signals other than those of the administration and had received payments for doing so. However, it found that he had not made those transmissions "in the exercise of his official employment". This meant that the corruption provisions did not apply. Guibout and the Blanc brothers were therefore absolved and ordered to pay the costs of the trial.

The case showed the government that its control of the telegraph rested on administrative practice rather than legislation. A law was subsequently passed establishing the government's monopoly over telegraph communications. It was enacted on 2 May 1837.

A big thanks to my brother who alerted me to this!

Perfect with Your Melon

I was in Karim's (the CocciMarket in Preuilly-sur-Claise) the other day, and noticed the Vendee Ham has an instruction on it.

Who am I to disobey an instruction?

Ok, it's not really an instruction, but ham and Charentais melon is a local classic, and if they suggest their ham is "parfait avec vôtre melon" that's good enough for me.

Jambon de Vendée is a traditional raw ham that is cured by hand in dry salt before being rubbed with a blend of wine, brandy and aromatic herbs and spices, including cinnamon, pepper, thyme and bay leaf.

The ham is then wrapped in cloth and pressed between two wooden boards, which gives it its distinctive rectangular shape. Unlike many other cured hams, this variety undergoes only a relatively short drying period, as the pressing process helps to accelerate the curing.

In October 2014, Jambon de Vendée was awarded Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status, a designation that recognises the product's regional origins and quality as well as its traditional production methods. It is now considered the third most popular French ham, after those of Bayonne and Aoste.

A Missed Anniversary

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of our first blog post.

The blog started as an open letter to our friends and families, partly to counter accusations of "you didn't tell us that". At first we posted whenever we had something we needed to say and had time to write about it, which meant we wrote on 2 January 2007 about the fact we had bought this house - an event which happened on 21 November 2006. On 8 February 2008 we started posting daily at 9.00am. More recently we stopped posting at the weekend, because even scintillating writers like us need a rest.

Two weeks ago we also missed the 20th anniversary of signing to buy this house. Our only excuse is that the recent string of canicule (5 so far this year) have turned our brains to mush.

We recently lost probably our most avid reader, which caused us to question whether we would continue.

As you can see, we have decided we will. We have met many interesting people through the blog, and it would be a pity if we lost that.

I don't know if we have another 10 years of blogging in us, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

PhotObjectif

Rieja van Aart, a local art photographer https://riejavanaart.ultra-book.com/, recently organised a photography exhibition https://www.lepetitpressigny.fr/medias/association/Flyer_photobjectif_2026.pdf over the weekend just gone in Le Petit Pressigny. Our friend Ingrid de Winter was invited to submit works and we went to support her. There was quite a crowd on Sunday afternoon when we were there, and the quality of the works was very high. The exhibition was a credit to all concerned, and quite remarkable in such a small village (population about 350 I reckon). The venue was the old school and surrounds. I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for over a year, which was really nice, and got to chat briefly with Rieja and her husband Leonard, who I've known for a while. We encountered Ingrid on our way over as she was cycling back home in the heat!

Here are a few photos I took. I avoided taking photos of people and people's works of art out of courtesy to them as it didn't feel appropriate on the day. So you will just have to take my word for it that the exhibition was very interesting and varied.

The exhibition banner.

I got very excited as we arrived and I saw someone putting blue cloths out in the sun. Oooh goody I thought, someone is doing a cyanotype demonstration. Ahem...they turned out to be tea towels drying, after doing the lunchtime washing up...

One of the artists was producing works using compost.

You can see why I was confused -- someone had done a cyanotype!

Ingrid is a wildlife photographer, so her submissions are of birds. On the left a crow and on the right a spoonbill.