Life
Born in Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne on Christmas Day 1889, Garnier worked as a butcher and baker at an early age. He took up theft at the age of thirteen and had served his first prison term by age seventeen. Garnier later wrote, "prison had made me even more rebellious."
Following his release from prison, Garnier dabbled in, and then became disillusioned with, both union syndicalism and revolutionary politics before turning to anarchism.
Following two additional stints in prison (one for assault), Garnier fled to Belgium in 1910 to avoid France's military draft. Abroad, he learned the art of burglary and counterfeiting from anarchist associates. In April 1911, Garnier and his partner Marie Vuillemin moved to Romainville to live with future gang members Raymond Callemin, Jean De Boe, and Edouard Carouy as well as Victor Kibalchich, then editor of l'Anarchie. Within this group, Garnier's political sympathies grew rapidly towards illegalism, a radical form of individualist anarchism that was heavily influenced by German philosopher Max Stirner.
Following an ideological split within l'Anarchie, Garnier and Vuillemin moved to Paris and he began work as a navvy, participating in strikes at Chars, Marin, and Cergy. Working as a burglar on the side to make ends meet, he was unhappy with his lot and dreamed of bigger heists. It was at this point that Garnier, in consultation with Callemin, began to plan the activities of an anarchist gang - a group that would be known in the press as first, "The Auto Bandits", and later, "The Bonnot Gang".
Read more about this topic: Octave Garnier
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“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
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“I have no scheme about it,—no designs on men at all; and, if I had, my mode would be to tempt them with the fruit, and not with the manure. To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives?—and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared, to live more worthily and profitably?”
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