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Home / Literature and art / A 1953 newspaper said a chimney sweep blocked Émile Zola's flue in 1902, and the Panthéon…
Case file s1848 · Literature and art · 1902
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1902
Émile Zola: Nadar (atelier de) - Emile Zola, 13-556535
Émile Zola. Nadar. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
29 September 1902
Place
Paris, France
Field
novelist ("J'Accuse") · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
French civil law · Civil law
Historical event
The Dreyfus Affair
Religion
Émile Zola: Atheist and agnostic (recorded as atheism on Wikidata)
Literature and artBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeFrance

A 1953 newspaper said a chimney sweep blocked Émile Zola's flue in 1902, and the Panthéon ceremony for his remains ended with a gunman wounding Dreyfus

Émile Zola died in his Paris apartment on 29 September 1902, aged 62, of carbon monoxide from a chimney that was not drawing. The death was ruled accidental. Zola had published "J'Accuse" in 1898 and had been attacked by enemies of Alfred Dreyfus. In 1953 the paper Libération, in an article by Jean Bedel, said a roofer named Henri Buronfosse had blocked the flue on purpose. The account passed through a Normandy pharmacist, Pierre Hacquin, who said Buronfosse told him. Historian Alain Pagès calls it likely true. Biographer Frederick Brown writes that it may be true but cannot be confirmed. No physical evidence exists†. Zola had two children, Denise (born 1889) and Jacques (born 1891), with Jeanne Rozerot, a seamstress his wife Alexandrine had hired. After his death the children received his surname. His body lay in Montmartre cemetery until 4 June 1908, when it was moved to the Panthéon. At that ceremony Louis Grégori shot Dreyfus in the arm. A court acquitted Grégori. In 2026 Zola's remains are in the Panthéon.

What the law took from it

Children born outside marriage have no claim to a name or estate unless the family or a court grants it.

Sources
  1. historytoday.comPress
  2. letemps.chPress
  3. francetoday.comPress
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “A 1953 newspaper said a chimney sweep blocked Émile Zola's flue in 1902, and the Panthéon ceremony for his remains ended with a gunman wounding Dreyfus,” story s1848, https://www.celebrity.estate/zola-1902, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeCivil lawFrance