3 teenage girls pulled their shores over their heads as they scurried along the muddy village

lane, rain pelted down in angry bursts and thunder crackled from the brooding sky above.

The Normandy region of northern France, where the girls lived, had been experiencing tempestuous

weather for eight straight days, a series of intense recurring storms of thunder and lightning

that seemed like they would never end. Locals were later reported as saying that the atmosphere

seemed to be continuously charged with electricity. It was the evening of January 15, 1846,

in Boveney, a village in the former commune of La Perrier, today part of Belpharese

on Pâche in northwest France. The three girls in Shulves were on their way to the home of their

14-year-old friend, Angelique, who lived with her widowed aunt in a small cottage on the edge of the

village. Angelique Coutar, like many older children in large families at that time, had been sent

by her parents to live with a relative where she was expected to start earning her keep.

Like most other teenage girls in the area, this involved several hours a day at a lace-making

loom, weaving lace for her aunt, Madame Loisner, to sell. The loom was a large wooden structure that

could hold over a hundred threads at a time through which the weaver could then weave perpendicular

threads in and out of. With the thunder finally starting to subside on that peculiar January

evening, Angelique's three friends eventually arrived at Madame Loisner's home to start their

own shifts at the loom. Shaking the rain from their shores and long skirts, they announced themselves

at the door and went inside, where they found Angelique already sat at the heavy oak table on which

the loom was mounted. It was a humble cottage with earth and floors and only the flicker of candlelight

to illuminate the space, made all the darker by those thick grey clouds outside.

The three girls chattered as they set up a few more candles to light the place, then joined

Angelique at the loom and got to work, making silk-neck gloves.

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