Louis de Rougemont

Louis De Rougemont (12 November 1847 – 9 June 1921) was a Swiss explorer who claimed to have had adventures in Australasia.

Personal history

"De Rougemont" was born Henri Louis Grin in 1847 in Gressy, Vaud, Switzerland. He left home at the age of sixteen. He became a footman to the actress Fanny Kemble, servant to a Swiss banker de Mieville in 1870 and a butler for the Governor of Western Australia, Sir William Robinson. In the latter job he lasted less than a year.

He tried various ventures with very little success. He worked as a doctor, a "spirit photographer" and an inventor. He also married and abandoned a wife in Australia.

In 1898 he began to write about his invented adventures in the British periodical The Wide World Magazine under the name Louis De Rougemont. He described his alleged exploits in search of pearls and gold in New Guinea, and claimed to have spent thirty years living with Indigenous Australians in the outback. He claimed that the tribe with whom he had lived had worshipped him as a god. He also claimed to have encountered the Gibson expedition of 1874.

Various readers expressed disbelief in his tales from the start, for example, claiming that no one can actually ride a turtle. De Rougemont had also claimed to have seen flying wombats. The fact that he could not place his travels on a map aroused suspicion. Readers' arguments in the pages of the Daily Chronicle and other London newspapers continued for months.

Rougemont subjected himself to examination by the Royal Geographical Society. He claimed that he could not specify exactly where he had been because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement with a syndicate that wanted to exploit the gold he had found in the area. He also refused to talk about Aboriginal languages he had supposedly learned. Still his supporters continued to find precedents for his exploits.