The Forest Incident 

Lodgers, Liquor & Local Lore

The Forest Incident 

In the summer of 1887, the Neuettes boarding house—run by the ever-patient Mr. Jean Le Roy—was a modest but lively establishment nestled in Guernsey’s Forest parish. Its guests ranged from seasonal French workers to retired Continentals seeking bracing Channel air. Among them were Maturin Deloné and Auguste Delépine, two gentlemen of the “widely-traveled but questionably behaved” variety, and Louis Dubois, a lace merchant with a habit of correcting others’ grammar mid-sentence.

Tensions had been brewing for weeks. Deloné and Delépine had taken to post-dinner absinthe-fuelled debates about Napoleon III and eel recipes, while Dubois insisted on peace, pipe smoke, and punctual bedtime. Pollet, a sardonic fisherman and part-time poet, often quipped that the house would be quieter if it were haunted.

Things boiled over one Saturday evening when an argument erupted about whose turn it was to clean the communal stovetop. Reports claim Deloné struck Dubois with a rolled-up almanac, shouting that “dust is bourgeois,” while Delépine threatened to duel Baptiste Pollet “on the cliffs at moonrise.” By Sunday, even the neighbor’s goat refused to graze near the house.

Constables were summoned. Yves Enoff, the defense’s unlikely star, insisted the Sunday disturbances were “nothing beyond customary French banter,” drawing laughter and eye rolls from the magistrates. Still, H.M.’s Procureur ruled swiftly. Ten shillings apiece or four days’ jail, plus bail or exile

DISORDERLY CONDUCT. Maturin Deloné and Auguste Delépine, two middle-aged Frenchmen, were charged by the constables of the Forest with disorderly conduct at the house of Mr. Jean Le Roy, Neuettes, Forest, where they lodge, and with having struck Louis Dubois, another lodger, last Saturday evening, and threatened Baptiste Pollet and Le Roy. Several witnesses were heard in support and defence of the charge. The disorder was continued on Sunday, and the Constables were fetched. Yves Enoff, for the defence, said, in spite of the evidence given by the other witnesses with reference to the brawling, that everything was only ordinary on Sunday (laughter). H.M.’s Procureur thought the case clearly proved, and asked for a fine against each prisoner of 10s. or four days’ imprisonment, and that each find bail in £5 or quit the island. Sentence accordingly.