---
title: "Jules Liégeois"
chunk: 5/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Liégeois"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:27:26.427074+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

"[In the mid-1880s, in addition to concerns relating to the possibility] of rape under hypnotic sleep ... another type of moral concern associated with hypnotism was gaining public attention abroad: the possibility of inciting people under hypnosis to commit criminal acts. It was Jules Liégeois, the French lawyer associated with the Nancy School of hypnotism, who in 1884 first pointed to this danger in a report for the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences." — Kaat Wils (2017).
Liégeois' own experiments, relating to both serious and petty crimes, which employed a wide range of suggested "mock" activities involving fake weapons, fake poisons, etc. — i.e.,  "crimes expérimentaux" ('experimental crimes'), or "crimes de laboratoire" ('laboratory crimes), in place of "crimes véritable" ('real crimes') — was work for which he was much admired by the experimental psychologist, Joseph Delbœuf (e.g., Delbœuf, 1892), and much denigrated by Charcot's associate, Georges Gilles de la Tourette (e.g., Gilles de la Tourette, 1891b). However, as Bogousslavsky, Walusinski & Veyrunes (2009, pp. 197-198) observe, Gilles de la Tourette's criticism was somewhat unfair: not only had Gilles de la Tourette (some time earlier) personally conducted similar "hypnotic murder" experiments involving fake pistols and mock poisons at the Salpêtrière, but he had also reported them in detail in his 1887 work. 
Notwithstanding the obvious fact that individuals, subjected to extended processes of incremental (non-hypnotic) suggestion, can be induced to self-harm (e.g., Peoples Temple suicides in Guyana in 1978, Heaven's Gate suicides in California in 1997, etc.) or coerced to commit a crime, most advocates of "hypnotic crimes" also recognized that the successful demonstration of an "experimental crime" did not, in and of itself, provide sufficient proof of the possible existence of an analogous "real crime"; for instance:

"It may be set down as an axiom in experimental hypnotism that no laboratory experiment conducted for the purpose of ascertaining whether suggestion can be successfully employed to induce an hypnotic subject to perpetrate a crime is of any evidential value whatever. When a subject is hypnotized for that purpose he knows that he is among friends. He knows that they are law-abiding citizens who will take care that no harm shall result from the experiments about to be made. He generally knows that he is expected to carry out all suggestions that are made to him. He is very probably aware that he is expected to demonstrate the truth of the proposition that a criminal hypnotist can compel his subject to commit crime. Like all hypnotic subjects he is anxious to win applause — to create astonishment. In short, he knows that he is the central figure in a comedy or farce which is about to be played in the interests of "science", and he feels that he is the "scientist". The inevitable consequence is that he resolves to carry out every suggestion of the hypnotist, knowing that no harm can possibly result." — Thomson Jay Hudson, LL.D., Ph.D., (1895, emphasis in original)
Liégeois' investigations culminated in his (1889a) magnum opus, "On suggestion and somnambulism in their relation to jurisprudence and legal medicine" — based upon the experience and observations he had accumulated since his earlier, five full-session presentation to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in April and May 1884 (Liégeois, 1884) — which concentrated in great detail upon the legal implications of hypnotism, hypnotic phenomena, and hypnotic suggestion, arguing that, in cases of hypnotic crime, only the person who gave the suggestions was guilty and must be prosecuted and punished, whilst the (irresponsible) hypnotised person should be acquitted on the grounds that they were nothing more than "a simple instrument", just like the pistol that contains a bullet, or a vase that contains poison: however, as Laurence & Perry (1988) observe, it must be stressed that those within the Nancy School "did not believe that everyone could fall victim of criminal suggestion", and held the view that "only deeply hypnotizable subjects ... were generally at risk".

== Gabrielle Bompard ==

"There can be no crime, or delict, where the accused was in a state of madness, at the time of the action; or when he has been constrained by a force which he had not the power to resist." — Article 64: French Penal Code of 1810.
In December 1890, Michel Eyraud, aged 47, and Gabrielle Bompard, aged 21, were jointly tried in Paris for the (July 1899) murder of Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé — "the prosecution's case was that Bompard, in association with her middle-aged lover Michel Eyraud, had willingly allowed herself to be used as a sexual bait to lure Alexandre-Toussaint Gouffé to a flat in the 8th arrondissement, where the two then hanged and robbed their victim" (Harris, 1985, p. 477). The sensational trial was of international interest. The Times, for instance, published an extensive and detailed account of each of the trial's five sessions for its English readers, with coverage from Dalziel's News Agency, along with additional comments by "Our own correspondent", as well as a strongly critical editorial commentary at the trial's completion.
Eyraud's guilt had soon been established (by his own admission); and, so, the remainder of the trial was entirely concerned with the part played by Bompard.  Maitre Henri-Robert, Bompard's advocate, argued that she had been hypnotized by Eyraud, her co-accused; and therefore, as Eyraud's involuntary accomplice, she could not be held responsible for Gouffé’s murder:

"The chief point at issue, however, was the degree of responsibility of Bompard, and whether there were sufficient grounds for believing that the series of complicated acts involved in the crime could be performed under hypnotic suggestion." — The Lancet, 3 January 1891.