Adrienne Chailliey

After a childhood marked by abuse and confinement in several boarding schools, Chailliey managed to escape and reach Paris in the 1880s. Becoming politically active in anarchist and feminist circles, she began performing and singing anarchist songs in the capital. As she gradually gained prominence as an anarchist artist and mingled with other artists, she met Émile Henry, whom she may have sheltered in early 1892. Chailliey, Henry, and other anarchist militants were likely responsible for the Carmaux-Bons Enfants bombing on 8 November 1892, targeting the headquarters of the Compagnie minière de Carmaux. She likely placed the bomb while Henry stood watch outside. The explosion killed four police officers and a company employee. Chailliey was never put on trial for her role in the bombing, though she was arrested.

Chailliey remained involved in feminist activism and spoke for women's rights at feminist gatherings. After one of these meetings, she was assaulted by two men dissatisfied with her speech as she left the venue. She died in Auch in 1937.

Early life

Adrienne Stéphanie Chailliey was born in 1860 in Philippeville, French Algeria. The daughter of a gendarmerie captain and the sister of a Saint-Cyr military academy student, she suffered abuse from her mother during her childhood.

She quickly became one of the most well-known anarchist singers in the capital, spreading anarchist ideology through her performances, including during family evenings. As a result, she became a target of the conservative press, particularly the Journal de Saint-Quentin, which portrayed her in a highly negative light—as a woman manipulated by other anarchists who supposedly took advantage of her and led her astray. Vivien Bouhey. In August of the same year, the Carmaux strike began after the abrupt dismissal of a unionist, Jean-Baptiste Calvignac, and quickly became a subject of national attention. Chailliey's reaction is unknown, but Henry, with whom she was close, considered the agreement signed between socialists like Jean Jaurès and the employers' association – an agreement sending workers back to work poorer than before – to be a betrayal by the socialists. It is highly likely that Chailliey, Henry, his brother Jean-Charles Fortuné Henry, and other anarchist militants from a small group, such as Paul Bonnard, devised a plot aiming to blow up the company's headquarters in Paris. Chailliey's participation in the plot, which was identified by the French police and Bouhey, was rendered invisible by Henry's trial, where he assumed full responsibility for the preparation and execution of the attack, presumably to save his accomplices.thumb Names of the perpetrators of the Carmaux-Bons Enfants bombing in the Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (22 February 1894)In any case, on 8 November 1892, Henry and Chailliey likely went together to the headquarters of the Carmaux Mining Company. Chailliey would have taken the bomb before going to plant it herself. Several witnesses identified a woman as the bomb carrier. Henry kept watch. The police were called to take possession of this suspicious package and returned to the police station on rue des Bons-Enfants. While attempting to open it, the bomb exploded, killing four police officers and the company employee who accompanied them. This was the deadliest attack during the French Ère des attentats (1892–1894). Henry fled, possibly after staying at her place for a short time, and made his way to the United Kingdom and Belgium. Chailliey underwent a complete change in attitude that appeared highly suspicious to informants of the French police. She abruptly distanced herself from anarchism – at least outwardly – and ceased all activism during this period. She also began attempting to establish an alibi by asking a friend to testify that she had been with her on the day of the attack. All these rather unnatural developments seemed very suspicious to the French authorities and informants, who increasingly focused on her case. In talks with other militants, Chailliey repeatedly asserted that it was Henry who had carried out the attack – which set the police, until then unaware of the perpetrators of the bombing, on the trail of the exile.

At the same time, she attended feminist meetings in Paris and was invited by her friend, Marie-Rose Astié de Valsayre, founder of the Ligue de l’affranchissement des femmes ("League for the Emancipation of Women"), to participate in a rally in April 1893. She was arrested after being denounced by an accomplice named Mérigeau but refused to provide any information to authorities.