Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

In the great dormitories, there may be witnessed each morning such a scene as that reproduced in the illustration, the prayer addressed to the image of the Virgin on the wall, decked out with faded artificial flowers and with tapers in front of her; following the example of the Sister, all stoop with more or less reverence before this symbol and utter with more or less sincerity from impure lips the prayer for a pure heart. This grand dormitory is a great hall containing more than eighty beds arranged in four rows. The red tile floor is of irreproachable cleanliness, the eighty beds, with their gray blankets and white bolsters, are arranged with military symmetry. But this cleanliness and this good order, it is claimed, count but for little in the amelioration of these unfortunates, gathering contamination from each other in this indiscriminate herding together.

According to the law, those merely accused, the prévenues, and those actually convicted, are kept apart from each other, but in each of these two classes no distinctions are made,—the homeless unfortunate, arrested for délit de vagabondage, is associated with the criminal guilty of infanticide or assassination. Even the little girls of ten and twelve years are kept together in the same promiscuousness, those already hardened in criminal ways corrupting the more innocent.

The prévenues enjoy certain privileges; they are not obliged to work, though it is but seldom that they refuse to take up some of the light sewing which occupies their leisure and brings them in small sums of money; they are not obliged, when they take their exercise, to walk round and round in a circle in the préau, forming in line only at the entrance and the exit. The formalities of search and interrogation, upon entering the prison, are the same for all, as are the general regulations and the discipline. All rise at five o'clock in summer, and at six or half-past six the rest of the year, and all go to bed at eight; all receive meat with their bouillon only on Sundays. The children are more favored in this respect, being furnished with eggs, roast meat, etc.

Everywhere are seen in these gloomy and unwholesome halls and corridors "the austere and consoling figures" of the Sisters of Marie-Joseph. They wear a dark robe, sometimes with a white apron, a white cornette under a black veil which has a blue lining, and they supervise all the details of the monotonous life of the prison. Rising in the dawn, a half-hour before any of the prisoners, they perform their devotions, and one of them rings the bell which summons all to leave their beds; they direct the workrooms in which the prisoners sew, a Sister sitting upright in a high chair, like a teacher presiding over her class, and they keep a watchful eye during the night on all the sleepers, in all the dormitories, great and little. Their hours of service as guards are from five or six o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock in the evening. After this hour, until the morning again, two Sisters remain on watch in the first section of the prison and one in the second. Their sole comfort and recompense is found in prayer and meditation in the mortuary chamber of Saint Vincent de Paul, now transformed into an oratory for their use. There is also a chapel for the use of the inmates, as well as a Protestant oratory and a synagogue.

The historical interest attaching to the buildings of this institution is very considerable. As far back as the time of Clovis, there was a hunting-lodge on this site; this was transformed, under the Carlovingians, into a debtors' prison. About the commencement of the twelfth century, this collection of ancient buildings was used as a hospital for lepers, under the appellation of Saint-Ladre [Saint Leper], standing near the road from Paris to Saint-Denis. In the year 1147, Louis VII, setting an example followed nearly a century later by Saint-Louis, visited this lazaretto, before setting out for the Crusades. "This was an action praiseworthy and very little imitated," says the chronicler. The hospital counted among its revenues the profits arising from an annual fair, known as that of Saint-Ladre; Philippe-Auguste, in 1183, annexed the proceeds of this fair to the royal revenues, and transferred it to the interior of Paris, where it became famous under the name of Saint-Laurent. In return, he provided the hospital with an annual revenue. Among the buildings attached to the hospital was one known as the Logis du Roi, where the sovereigns were in the habit of halting to receive the oath of fidelity from their good citizens of Paris before making their solemn entry into the capital. This was also the principal halting-place for the royal funeral cortèges on their way from Paris to Saint-Denis; and as late as 1793, when it was demolished by the all-demolishing Revolution, a Gothic tower standing here perpetuated the first rest made by Philippe le Hardi in his pious transportation on his shoulders of his father's coffin to its final resting-place.

In 1515 the canons of Saint-Victor established themselves at Saint-Lazare, and for more than a century here maintained a rich abbey, flourishing at the expense of the hospital. By 1623 their abuses had become too flagrant, and the direction of the institution was confided to Vincent de Paul, already renowned for his virtue. After having re-established order and discipline, he here installed the headquarters of his congregation of the Missions, created in 1624, and which became more generally known as the Congrégation des Lazaristes. The authority of the Archbishop of Paris compelled the new possessors of Saint-Lazare to continue to receive the lepers of the city and its suburbs. To these were gradually added those ecclesiastics and laymen who here sought a voluntary retirement, and certain youth here confined unwillingly by their parents or guardians that they might recover from the effects of a life of dissipation. Ten years before the Revolution, before the expulsion of the Lazaristes in 1792, and the appropriation of their property by the Revolutionary government, the use of Saint-Lazare as a temporary prison had become well established; Beaumarchais was confined here for three days after the first representation of the Mariage de Figaro. On the 13th of July, 1789, the day before the taking of the Bastille, a band of pillagers invaded the enclosure of the buildings, destroyed the tomb of Saint Vincent de Paul, and nearly set fire to the whole quarter by the burning of one of the store-houses of the establishment. During the Terror, it was crowded with the victims destined in advance for the scaffold; and under the Consulate it became definitely a jail, prison civile, prison administrative et maison de correction, to which was added a special hospital, as if to preserve the souvenir of the lazaretto of former times.

Of the buildings still standing, the superstructures mostly date from the reign of Louis XIII. The remains of the church built by Saint Vincent de Paul, in which he was buried at the foot of the high altar, may still be distinguished. The very extensive grounds surrounding the establishment, divided up and sold during the Revolution as biens nationaux, have now disappeared under the buildings and streets of the quarter. The chapel constructed by Saint Vincent is now a store-room; the crypt, with its tombs of bishops, is a bath-house; the low apartment on the ground-floor was reproduced by the painter Charles Muller in his Appel des Condamnés, formerly so popular at the Luxembourg; in the Passage du Massacre, between two courts, the victims of the Terror, in 1793, found death when they had expected liberty; and the bells which sound the hours in the clock-tower are the same which rang under Louis XIII.

Saint-Lazare encloses also the general magazines, the store-houses of linen, and the central bakery, for all the prisons of the department of the Seine. It is here that is effected the panification for five thousand prisoners. In common with the general victualling of these penal establishments, this bakery is not managed by the State, but by private enterprise. In the prisons of the Seine, with the exception of Saint-Lazare, the food of a prisoner costs the administration daily 59.9 centimes, about twelve cents.

The Prison de la Santé (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction), in the Rue de la Santé, has been devoted to three classes of prisoners,—those condemned to periods of from one day to one year, prévenus whose sentences have been appealed, and convicts and prisoners condemned to solitary confinement. The régime cellulaire adopted is known as the système de Philadelphie; this absolute solitary confinement is reserved for convicts awaiting their departure for New Caledonia, for other grave offenders, and also for minor offenders serving short sentences. The prisoner thus isolated leaves his cell only for an hour's exercise in promenade cellulaire; he is allowed to see no one and to receive no communication from outside, but the ingenuity of the prisoners contrives to modify these regulations. There is also a section in which the inmates pass the day together, but sleep in solitary cells. This Quartier Commun is to disappear in the reorganized prison which is to take the place of Mazas, and which will be specially devoted to prévenus, to those whose cases have been appealed and to those condemned to death. Among the numerous light industries to which the short-sentence prisoners are compelled to devote their time, that of the manufacture of dolls is one of the most important; designers, painters, and carvers, of sufficient artistic excellence, are all found among the inmates.

This prison was constructed to replace that of the Madelonnettes, destroyed by the opening of the Rue Turbigo. In the Protestant chapel attached to the institution, which serves also as a school for one hour a day, the prisoners accused of various offences appear each morning at ten o'clock—as in all the prisons of the Seine—in the "prætorium," the three judges of which, the director, the comptroller, and the inspector, sit under an immense open Bible displayed on the wall and surmounted by the somewhat incongruous text: "Man may not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Sainte-Pélagie (Maison de Correction), in the Rue du Puits-de-l'Ermite, though one of the smallest and worst-conditioned prisons in Paris, is one of the most celebrated, and the only one imprisonment in which is made a subject of jest. This singular reputation it owes to the numerous journalists and men of letters—Béranger, Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier, Balzac, Eugène Suë, J. Richepin, Henri Rochefort, among others—who have been sent here by a censorious government. These gentry have so exploited the Pavillon, the section of the prison devoted to the politiques, with its "great and little tomb," "little and great Siberia;" they have so ostentatiously received their friends every afternoon, from one to five, in their cells; they have so proudly worn their beards and their usual garments, as to diffuse a popular impression that imprisonment in this edifice is rather a joke than otherwise. Nevertheless, the Pavillon, says M. Paul Strauss, "is only one quarter of the ugliest, the most frightful prison in Paris; fortunately, it is devoted to speedy destruction, and it is by this one that the work of reformation of the penal institutions of the Seine will doubtless be inaugurated; there is no demolition more urgently demanded than this, in the unanimous opinion of all those who have visited it. The extent to which the buildings are falling to decay, the narrowness and lack of cleanliness in the workroom, corridors, and dormitories, are not less offensive than the promiscuousness of the life in common, daily and nightly. Nowhere is the defile of the prisoners at the sound of the workroom bell, or from the sinister court-yard to the chapel refectory, more lamentable; the gray or chestnut-colored garb of the prisoners is more forlorn in its worn shininess than anywhere else, and the canvas sack itself hangs more dismally at the prisoner's back. It is not the fault of the penitentiary administration and the government of the institution; the establishment itself is worthless, the life, moral and material, that is there led is intolerable."

The prisoners for debt (to the State) enjoy the same privileges as the politicians. The baser, or more unfortunate, inmates, serving sentences of from one day to one year, are obliged to work in one of the six ateliers and to submit to the usual prison regulations, rising at six o'clock and going to bed at half-past seven. Among the articles produced in the workroom are toy balloons, Venetian lanterns, and, in general, all those materials for the illuminations with which Paris amuses itself on nights of festival. The fine gentlemen in the first and second quarters of the prison, instead of partaking of the meagre prison fare, are nourished at the expense of the State by some restaurant designated by themselves. This prison was erected in 1635 by the Order of the Sœurs Repenties; it was a prison for debt till 1793; until the suppression of the Garde Nationale, it was known familiarly as Prison des Haricots [beans], because those refractory citizens who objected to serving in this corps were here confined on a strictly vegetable diet. In the chapel which serves as the refectory is preserved a relic of Sainte-Pélagie. Madame de Beauharnais, afterward the Empress Josephine, was here imprisoned in a chamber, which is still shown, on the second floor.

In the Grande-Roquette (Dépôt des Condamnés), in the Rue de la Roquette, are confined those condemned to death, or to deportation to some penal colony. As late as the first months of 1899, the executions were public, the guillotine being erected in front of the prison, in the space between it and the Rue de la Roquette; the locality was marked by five large oblong stone slabs in the pavement of the sidewalk. Hereafter the executions will take place in the Place Saint-Jacques; and the prisoners condemned to death will be confined in the Prison de la Santé. The three cells devoted to these unfortunates in the Grande-Roquette were larger than the others, and the condemned man enjoyed certain privileges. He was not compelled to work, he was given meat every day, he could smoke, read and write, and play cards with the two guards who kept him company day and night until the moment when Monsieur de Paris took possession of him. In the chapel, an upper lodge or box was provided for him, where, behind a grating, he could hear the mass without being seen by those below. The library which was at the disposal of these unfortunates, and which was their principal distraction, included some four thousand volumes. The books most read were novels and romances, and of these the works of Dumas père were the favorites. After these came those of Alphonse Karr, Mayne Reid, Eugène Suë, books of travels, and the Magasin pittoresque.

For those condemned to lighter penalties, the regulations were more severe;—there was not space in the workroom for all, or there was not work for all, and the greater part of the unhappy prisoners wandered round and round all day in the dreary court-yard, in all the weariness of utter idleness. They were even obliged to eat in this court-yard, having no refectory. This prison, constructed in 1836, was taken possession of by the Commune in 1871, and in May was the scene of a series of massacres. The cell occupied by the most illustrious of these victims, the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Darboy, has not since been occupied by any inmate, and has been preserved in the condition in which he left it at half-past seven on the morning of the 24th of May.

Directly opposite the Grande-Roquette, facing on the same street, is the Prison des Jeunes Détenus, the Petite-Roquette, which was devoted to three classes of youthful offenders, those placed here en correction paternelle; youths of not less than sixteen, prévenus, and those condemned to various terms of imprisonment and from sixteen to twenty-one years of age. The first class, imprisoned in cells in a separate quarter, were known only by their numbers, their names and stations in life were carefully concealed, and the guards themselves were kept in ignorance concerning them. All the inmates of this prison were isolated in their cells; in them they worked alone, and were visited by the instructor; they took solitary exercise in the préau cellulaire; and in the chapel-school, which occupies the central rotunda, each was imprisoned in a high stall from which he could see and hear but was invisible to all his fellow-prisoners. As he shut himself in his stall, he opened the door of that of his neighbor, who followed him at a distance of twenty paces. In this school he passed two hours a day, and in his promenoir cellulaire, one hour. A modification of this system was recently introduced;—the good-behavior inmates, those who were soon to be liberated, were brought together in a common workroom where they were employed in the manufacture of artificial violets. A new annex was recently added to this establishment, the Infirmerie Centrale des Prisons de la Seine, formerly installed in the Prison de la Santé. This hospital included three wards which could receive each thirty patients, an operating-room, and extensive bathing-rooms. This portion of the institution was entirely separated from the rest of the prison.

The Petite-Roquette, no longer in its gloomy surroundings, now stands on the banks of the Seine, nearly opposite the Terrace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, from which it is visible, at the end of the road which leads from Montesson to the river. This happy removal marks an equally fortunate transformation in the character of the institution, for the stupefying and demoralizing system of solitary seclusion has been substituted the wholesomer labor in the open air of an agricultural and horticultural colony.

This important reform has been extended to the greater prisons of the capital: those of Mazas, Sainte-Pélagie, and the Grande-Roquette are all to be removed to the new penal institutions at Fresnes-lès-Rungis, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, inaugurated on the 18th of July, 1898. These were solemnly transferred by the Préfet of the Seine and the President of the Conseil Général to the administration pénitentiaire, and in the speeches which formed part of this ceremony the principles actuating this departure from ancient principles were duly set forth. M. Thuillier, Président du Conseil Général, after citing the transformation of the Petite-Roquette as the initiatory step in this great movement, declared that "from our profound compassion for the unfortunates who come under the hand of Justice sprang the desire to place the prisoner henceforth in surroundings in which might be born and strengthened the sentiments of self-respect, of bodily cleanliness, of propriety, which will frequently inculcate in him the noblest ideas of repentance and of moral regeneration. Hence those salubrious and almost comfortable arrangements which you have just seen.... Hence our desire to render the stay in the prison as little depressing as possible for the body and the conscience." "Without the récidive [the offender for the second time]," said M. Selves, Préfet de la Seine, "criminality in France would have diminished within the last twenty years. It is, then, the récidive, above all, who is responsible for the augmentation of criminality, and, as it is the prison which makes the récidive, it follows that the amelioration of the penitentiary system should have a greater influence for good than all other methods."

It was accordingly resolved to endeavor to better the condition of the prisoners while at the same time preventing as much as possible their corruption by indiscriminate herding together. As far back as 1849, M. Dufaure advocated the keeping apart of prévenus and of those condemned for minor offences. But it was not till 1875 that a law was passed decreeing the separation of those serving sentences of imprisonment of less than a year. The department of the Seine endeavored to carry out the requirements of this law on as large and complete a scale as possible, and accordingly laid the foundations of these two large penal establishments outside the walls of the city. Those at Fresnes may be considered as model prisons; it has even been suggested that the comfort of the inmates has been almost too closely considered, and that, with the exception of the guards and the jailers, these buildings suggest the model cheap lodgings of modern practical philanthropy. The architect had taken the greatest care to assure the well-being of his involuntary clients, their health and personal cleanliness; their cells—more spacious than usual—have hardwood floors, the walls are painted and varnished, as are the table, the chair, and the iron bedstead provided with softer bedding; the latest mechanical and electrical appliances are to be found in these very modern dungeons. The extent of the mental and moral amelioration of the Parisian criminals that will follow the introduction of this new régime will doubtless be profitable to contemplate.

In addition to its various prisons, the department of the Seine maintains two very large establishments for beggars, paupers, vagabonds, and the wretched of every description, whether they have or have not records approved by the police. The largest of these Dépôts de Mendicité, that at Nanterre, is at once a prison and a hospital; it contains three thousand inmates of both sexes, and cost some twelve millions of francs. Of the five sections into which it is divided, the first, reserved for voluntary mendicants, is the only one which contains prisoners, properly speaking, men in one quarter and women in another. The other sections, each divided likewise into male and female quarters, are devoted, the second, to voluntary patients whose antecedents are known; the third, to those whose antecedents are doubtful or unknown; the fourth, to the impotent, infirm, paralytic, and septuagenarians; the fifth is the hospital proper. The inhabitants of these different sections are distinguished from each other, the men by the color of their woollen caps, and the women by the little trimming of imitation lace in theirs. The Dépôt de Villers-Cotterets, which occupies the buildings and dependencies of the celebrated château built by François I, on an admirable site, was at first a prison, devoted to vagabonds and beggars of all ages and conditions; since 1889 it has been a Maison de Retraite, an asylum to which are admitted only the aged and infirm indigent whose past has been without reproach. The number of these peaceable inmates is about a thousand men and half as many women.

All this imposing judicial edifice of Dépôts, prisons, magistrates, and high courts of justice is, of course, fed and maintained by the much humbler, almost unknown, and much more troubled service of searching out the criminal and laying hands upon him when found. Without the aid of the "simple police," serjents de ville, gendarmes, brigadiers, and agents de la sûreté, there could be no ermined judges and no maîtres des hautes-œuvres. The general methods employed in this obscure but indispensable preliminary work are much like those made use of elsewhere in civilized countries, but there are many details, not generally published, which are interesting, and we are indebted to a spirited newspaper article, by M. Guy Tomel, for some information concerning the ways and means of the French police in these matters. He begins by putting in a plea for these very useful employés of justice: "Have you ever thought of the very material difficulties which the agents de la sûreté have to encounter in arresting malefactors? These modest defenders of society risk their lives daily that you may sleep in peace, Madame, and earn less at this perilous trade than your coachman or your valet de chambre. For their moral recompense, they have the prospect of being treated as 'mouchards' [police spies], not by the thieves and the assassins, who call them the 'flics,' but by the respectable tax-payers who are indebted to them for the minimum of security which we possess.

"If, by chance, some of the chiefs of this force, as Houillier, Jaume, and Rossignol, succeed, by dint of acts of bravery, in causing their names to be known to the general public, the private soldiers of this army of real salvation live and die in the most perfect incognito, fortunate if they succeed in attaining the age of retirement without being crippled by some malicious stroke! Remember that they are obliged to carry out their task without arms, without any brutality. A bandit injured in a hand-to-hand struggle assumes very quickly the character of an interesting victim, and there are always to be found sensational newspapers that will exploit his woes under flaming head-lines: 'Another Police Outrage!' 'A Brutal Police Agent!' etc.

"The problem that presents itself is, therefore, this one: 'To get in your power, in exposing yourself as little as possible, and without doing him any injury, a blackguard who is armed and who is capable of anything.'"

And he proceeds to explain the very simple tricks and tools by means of which this somewhat difficult task is accomplished. In the first place, he states a curious psychological fact,—that, generally, any criminal, no matter how dangerous or brutal, if suddenly arrested by surprise, is for the moment so stupefied that he does not think of resistance, and in this moment may be secured, by the handcuffs or otherwise. This brief paralysis is apt to be succeeded by a furious outbreak, but in the majority of cases it is then too late. Were it not for this temporary catalepsy, how would it be possible, asks M. Tomel, to effect the arrest of such desperate fellows, dynamiters and anarchists, with no more bloodshed and fracas than if they were girls of the town! This little peculiarity of their clients is well known to the police agents, and they but very seldom fail to take advantage of it.

In the second place, the most dangerous offenders are not, as might be supposed, the hardened criminals, those who have repeatedly fallen into the hands of Justice. For them, a long experience has convinced them that, once caught, there is no escape. Neither are the assassins the most to be feared,—the sudden collaring by the iron hand of the law reduces them to temporary imbecility. Those whose arrest is usually attended with the greatest difficulty are young rascals in their first offence, and those who are accustomed to being rescued by a band of their companions. Bankrupts and ruined financiers are also apt to give trouble,—they take to their revolvers with "deplorable facility, quite ready to lodge the last bullet in their own heads if the others have not cleared the field for them."

It is, therefore, not without a certain amount of information concerning the irascibility and the bodily prowess of their quarry that the agents set out in his pursuit. Usually, they hunt in couples; if the game is reputed unusually dangerous, in larger numbers. For weapons, they carry each two pieces of stout cord,—a small one, fastened to the middle of a wooden handle at each end, this is the cabriolet; and a large one, the ligote, about two mètres and a half in length. These simple methods of correction have replaced—except in the country districts and where the prisoner has to be conducted a considerable distance—the old-fashioned poucettes, or handcuffs. Thus provided, the pursuers endeavor to surprise their prey as it issues from a house or an inn,—they wear no uniform, and they in nowise begin by summoning their victim in the name of the law, so that it is strongly advisable for them to be very sure of his identity ere they fall upon him from behind, exactly in the manner of the highwaymen themselves. With one hand they grasp the collar of his coat, a little below the nape of his neck, and with the other, not his arm, but the sleeve of his coat. An individual thus collared on each side is helpless; if he wish to strike with his fists or his feet, he is obliged to lash out sidewise or obliquely, his arms are held securely; and the coup de pied de vache, which he may endeavor to give with his feet, though "it will break a tibia like glass," is easily avoided. Moreover, while he has one foot in the air, his equilibrium is in danger, and he is promptly brought to earth and secured. Usually, however, the cabriolet is round his wrist, and he is bouclé before he can say "Jack Robinson!"

These cord handcuffs are replaced by chain ones in the hands of the Gardes Municipaux in the service of the Palais de Justice, and the method of their application is the same,—once around the wrist of the victim, they can be tightened at pleasure by a simple turn of the handles in the grasp of the captor, and the pain speedily becomes intolerable. Even a slight pressure soon produces a numbness in the muscles of the arm. This simple apparatus—which can be replaced, as in Tunis, by a noose made in a silk handkerchief—is a somewhat brutal one, but it has the advantage of securing the victim absolutely for the time being. For a longer journey, and to avoid the constant personal attention which the cabriolet requires, the ligote is brought into action;—this is arranged in a double running noose in which is enclosed one of the prisoner's wrists, the cord then goes round his waist, passes under the flap of his pantaloons, and returns to be knotted on the opposite side. If the captured offender is not likely to give trouble, one arm is left free, but it is then necessary to watch him;—if both wrists are secured, he is helpless, and could be confided to the care of an invalid. So long as he keeps his hands quiet, carrying them in his pockets, for example, his cord is scarcely felt, but the moment he begins to agitate them with violent movements, it cuts into his flesh much like the cabriolet. He cannot rid himself of it, and, as he cannot swing his arms, he cannot run,—at the end of a hundred yards he is sure to come to the ground. It is related that a disciple of the Davenport brothers recently giving an exhibition of his skill in the Salle des Capucines was brought to confusion by a "flic" who happened to be in the audience and who asked permission to ligoter the magician ere he was enclosed in his cabinet. On this occasion, the spirits were quite unable to liberate him.