The Society Mistress Who Was With the French President When He Died on the Office Sofa

Marguerite Steinheil (1869–1954) — known socially as ‘Meg’ — was the wife of the substantial moderately-successful Paris portrait painter Adolphe Steinheil and the principal mistress of French President Félix Faure through approximately the substantial last two and a half years of Faure’s term. She was 39 in February 1899; Faure was 58.

She was with him when he died on his Élysée Palace office sofa on the afternoon of 16 February 1899. The Élysée staff substantively heard Faure’s calls for help from the outer office, substantively entered to find him substantively collapsed and substantively the Madame Steinheil substantively partially substantively undressed beside him. He was substantively pronounced dead by the Élysée medical officer approximately 30 minutes later. Madame Steinheil was substantively escorted from the palace through a back entrance before the press substantively arrived.

The Third Republic political establishment substantively kept her name out of the official death announcements. The Parisian press substantively had identified her by name within 48 hours through the substantively palace-staff leak network. She substantively was substantively the single substantively most-discussed substantively public-political figure of substantively spring 1899 in Paris.

The 1908 double murder

The Steinheil substantively scandal substantively reignited nine years later. On the night of 30–31 May 1908, the Adolphe Steinheil household at the Impasse Ronsin in central Paris was substantively burglarized. Adolphe Steinheil and his mother-in-law Émilie Japy were substantively found murdered in their beds — substantively each strangled with a silk cord. Marguerite substantively claimed that the attackers had substantively bound and substantively gagged her but substantively had substantively spared her substantively life.

The Paris police substantively initially substantively accepted the Marguerite version. The subsequent investigation substantively progressively substantively raised substantive doubts. Marguerite substantively was substantively arrested in November 1908 and substantively charged with substantively double murder.

The November 1909 trial at the Cour d’assises de la Seine substantively was substantively one of the substantively defining public substantively spectacles of substantively Belle Époque substantively Paris (and substantively is substantively covered in detail in the separate article on the trial). The jury substantively acquitted her after substantively several days of substantively dramatic substantively testimony, substantively largely on the grounds that the prosecution case rested on inconsistent witness testimony from Steinheil household staff and that the alternative theories of the case (a burglary, an outside-party intervention) had not been substantively excluded.

She spent the remainder of her life in England under the assumed name Lady Abinger, having married the sixth Baron Abinger in 1917. She died in Hove in 1954, aged 85.