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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

Anarchism and Licentiousness

Anarchism and Licentiousness.

This change in Ferrer's fortunes took place at the end of last century. He had become a man of wealth—by base means, it is true—and the portals of Freemasonry are open only for the well-to-do. In 1901 page 7 being by this time affiliated to the Grand Orient in Paris, and having acquired a high position among the illuminated of that secret society, Ferrer returned to Barcelona, where he created those "Modern Schools" which speedily became, and were meant to become, hotbeds of Anarchism and Atheism.

With a zeal and enthusiasm worthy of a better cause, he devoted himself to the task of corrupting the minds and hearts of the young of both sexes. In this evil work he was aided by sundry characters of no enviable repute. One of his assistants was Morral, the Anarchist desperado who threw a bomb at the King and Queen of Spain, thereby causing the death of several spectators. Another was Madame Jaquinet, a notorious Atheist, Anarchist, and Materialist, who once conducted a similar school in Egypt, until she was expelled by the British authorities.

During this period Ferrer gambled with success upon the Stock Exchange, greatly increased his wealth, and consistently applied what could be spared from the private consumption of his new mistress and himself to a well-organised anti-Christian propaganda. He was in constant correspondence with the most dangerous and desperate of Continental Anarchists—with such men as the French Anarchists, Naquet, Reclus, and Grave; the Russian Anarchist or Nihilist, Kropotkin; the Italian Anarchists, Malato and Malatesta; and the Spanish Anarchists, Nakens, Letran, and Odo de Buen, not to mention other revolutionary plotters in France, Belgium, and Italy.

The dastardly attempt to assassinate the King and Queen of Spain again brought Ferrer into trouble. His connection with Morral, the bomb-thrower, was well known. Morral had been Ferrer's assistant for a considerable time, and fully shared his murderous principles. Moreover, he was Ferrer's rival for the favours of a woman whom the latter desired to make his mistress. This was Soledad Villafranca, one of the women who taught in Ferrer's schools. Morral committed suicide after murdering the policeman who had arrested him, and Ferrer was released from prison.

page 8

The coast was now clear. Ferrer's rival had removed himself from this mortal scene.. In June, 1908, therefore, the Anarchist leader, together with Soledad Villafranca, went to Paris. They took a house in the French capital, where the two openly lived a life of criminal intimacy. Almost daily visitors to their home were such notorious Anarchists as Malato, Letran, and others. At the same time, Ferrer's real wife and one of her daughters were living in want in another part of Paris.

In the spring of 1909 Ferrer went to London, and remained in Bloomsbury, visiting his English friends, in company with the ex-schoolmistress, Senorita Villafranca. His English supporters were mainly Dissenters—a sober, bigoted, middle-class set of men, whose profound ignorance of Spain was equalled only by their unreasoning prejudice against Catholicism.