Fernand-Gustave-Gaston Labori (April 18, 1860 – March 14, 1917) was a French attorney. He was born in
Reims and educated at the
Faculty of Law of Paris
The Faculty of Law of Paris (french: Faculté de droit de Paris), called from the late 1950s to 1970 the Faculty of Law and Economics of Paris, is the second-oldest faculty of law in the world and one of the four and eventually five faculties ...
.
In his professional life, he defended the accused in some of the most prominent political cases of his day. Among his noted clients was
Alfred Dreyfus, who was eventually acquitted of
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
. During the Dreyfus trial, Labori was the victim of an assassination attempt which hospitalized him for a week. The attacker was never identified.
Legal career
Labori was elected second secrétaire de
Conférence du barreau de Paris, and he was the defence counsel for:
* Anarchist
Auguste Vaillant
Auguste Vaillant (27 December 1861 – 5 February 1894) was a French anarchist, most famous for his bomb attack on the French Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1893. The government's reaction to this attack was the passing of the infamous repre ...
, who threw a bomb into the French
Chamber of Deputies, injuring 20 people, and who was sentenced to death
*
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...
in 1898 in the Dreyfus trial
* Captain
Alfred Dreyfus, at his court martial in
Rennes in 1899
*
Thérèse Humbert
Thérèse Humbert (1856–after 1936) was a French female fraudster, who pretended to be an heir of an imaginary American millionaire named Robert Crawford.
Biography
Humbert was born Thérèse Daurignac, a peasant girl in Aussonne, Midi-Pyrà ...
, in the case of the ''Crawford inheritance'', who pretended to be an heir of American millionaire Robert Crawford; the case sometimes was described as 'the swindle of the century'
*
Henriette Caillaux
Henriette Caillaux (5 December 1874 – 29 January 1943) was a Parisian socialite and second wife of the former Prime Minister of France, Joseph Caillaux. On March 16, 1914, she shot and killed Gaston Calmette, editor of the newspaper ''Le Figa ...
in 1914, who was the wife of former Prime Minister of France Joseph Caillaux
His speeches were regarded as masterpieces of forensic eloquence.
Death
He is buried at the
Montparnasse Cemetery.
References
Bibliography
* ''Labori, ses notes manuscrites, sa vie.'' Editor V. Attinger. Author Marguerite Labori, 1947, Paris,
* ''Labori, pour Zola, pour Dreyfus, contre la terre entière, un avocat.'' Editor L. Audibert, Authors Thierry Lévy and Jean-Pierre Royer, Paris 2006,
External links
*
*
Portrait du centre d'études du 19e siècle français - Université de TorontoEtat des Archives de Fernand LaboriListe biliographique des principales plaidoiries sur Criminocorpus - site du CNRSPortrait sur La vie rémoise
1860 births
1917 deaths
People associated with the Dreyfus affair
People from Reims
19th-century French lawyers
20th-century French lawyers
{{France-law-bio-stub