The History and Romance of Crime 1

The History and Romance of Crime 1

The History and Romance of Crime. Modern French Prisons

 

Author: Arthur Griffiths

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

The period in French prison practice treated in this volume is one of

transition between the end of the Old Régime and the beginning of the

New. It presents first a view of the prisons of the period immediately

following the Revolution, and concludes with the consideration of a

great model penitentiary, which may be said to be the “last word” in

the purely physical aspects of the whole question, while its very

perfection of structure and equipment gives rise to important moral

questions, which must dominate the future of prison conduct.

 

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the combat with

the great army of depredators was unceasingly waged by the champions

of law and order in France, to whom in the long run victory chiefly

inclined. As yet none of the new views held by prison reformers

in other countries had made any progress in France. No ideas of

combining coercion with persuasion, of going beyond deterrence by

attempting reformation by exhortation; of curing the wrong-doer and

weaning him from his evil practices, when once more sent out into the

world, obtained in French penology. At that earlier date all the old

methods, worked by the same machinery, still prevailed and were, as

ever, ineffective in checking crime. An active, and for the most part

intelligent police was indefatigable in the pursuit of offenders, who,

when caught and sentenced travelled the old beaten track, passing from

prison to prison, making long halts at the _bagnes_ and concluding

their persistent trespasses upon the guillotine, but that was all.

 

French prisons long lagged behind advanced practices abroad, not only

in respect of their structural fitness and physical condition, but also

in the measure in which the method of conducting them effected the

morals of those who passed through them. When the question was at last

presented, it was considered with the logical thoroughness and carried

out with the administrative efficiency characteristic of the French

government, when impressed with the necessity for action in any given

line.

 

The question for the French prison authorities--as indeed it is the

question of questions for the prison government of all nations--is now:

“What can be and shall be done for the reform of the convict rather

than for his mere repression and punishment?” The material aspects of

the French prison system have attained almost to perfection. These,

as well as the moral aspects of the subject, which that very physical

perfection inevitably presents, it is the purpose of this volume to

consider.

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

CHAPTER PAGE

 

INTRODUCTION 5

 

I. AFTER THE REVOLUTION 11

 

II. THE GREAT SEAPORT PRISONS 46

 

III. CELEBRATED FRENCH CONVICTS 69

 

IV. THE FIRST GREAT DETECTIVE 92

 

V. THE COMBAT WITH CRIME 112

 

VI. CELEBRATED CASES 131

 

VII. THE COURSE OF THE LAW 154

 

VIII. MAZAS AND LA SANTÉ 171

 

IX. TWO MODEL REFORMATORIES 197

 

X. A MODEL PENITENTIARY 222

 

 

 

 

List of Illustrations

 

 

MADAME ROLAND INCARCERATED IN SAINTE PÉLAGIE _Frontispiece_

 

THE CONCIERGERIE, PARIS _Page_ 28

 

HOSPICE DE LA BICÊTRE, PARIS “ 53

 

SAINTE PÉLAGIE “ 113

 

HOSPICE DE LA SALTPÊTRIÈRE, PARIS “ 200

 

 

 

 

MODERN FRENCH PRISONS

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

AFTER THE REVOLUTION

 

The Old and the New Régime divided by the Revolution--Changes

in prison system introduced by the Legislative

Assembly--Napoleon’s State prisons which replaced the

Bastile--Common gaols which still survived--Bicêtre--St.

Pélagie--Saint Lazare--The Conciergerie and La Force--Account

of La Force from contemporary records--Béranger

in La Force--Chenu--His experiences--St. Pélagie

described--Wallerand, the infamous governor--Origin of

Bicêtre--As John Howard saw it--Inconceivably bad under the

Empire--Vidocq’s account of Bicêtre--The Conciergerie--Marie

Antoinette--Political prisoners in the Conciergerie--Marshal

Ney and Le Comte de La Valette--His wonderful escape.

 

 

The Revolution may be considered the dividing line between the

ancient and modern régime in France. Many of the horrors of the first

period, however, survived far into the second, and although with a

more settled government the worst features of the Terror disappeared,

prisons remained in character much the same. The Convention no doubt

desired to avoid the evils of arbitrary imprisonment, so long the

custom with the long line of despotic rulers of France, and would

have established, had it survived, a regular punitive system by which

prisons should serve for more than mere detention and deprivation of

liberty, intending them for the infliction of penalties graduated to

the nature and extent of offences. It was decreed in 1791 that the

needs of justice should be supported by classifying all prisons in

four categories, namely: Houses of detention for accused but untried

prisoners; penal prisons for convicted prisoners; correctional prisons

for less heinous offenders; houses of correction for juveniles of fewer

than sixteen years, and for the detention of ill-conducted minors at

the request of their relatives and friends.

 

The scheme thus sketched out was excellent in theory, but it was not

adopted in practice until many years later. France again came into the

grip of a despotism more grinding than any in previous days. It was

choked and strangled by an autocrat of unlimited ambitions backed by

splendid genius and an unshakable will. Napoleon, even more than his

predecessors, needed prisons to support his authority, and he filled

them, in the good old-fashioned way, with all who dared to question his

judgment or attack his power. He threw hundreds of State prisoners into

the criminal gaols, where they languished side by side with the thieves

and depredators whose malpractices never slackened; and he created

or re-opened no less than eight civil prisons on the line of the

Bastile of infamous memory. These were the old castles of Saumur, Ham,

D’If, Landskrown, Pierrechâtel, Forestelle, Campiano and Vincennes.

Here conspirators, avowed or suspected, too outspoken journalists and

writers with independent opinions were lodged for indefinite periods

and often without process of law. It had been taken as an accepted

principle that the Emperor of his own motion with no show of right,

undeterred and unchallenged, could at any moment throw any one he

pleased into prison and detain them in custody as long as he pleased.

 

Such common gaols as still survived the shock of the Revolution

were pressed into service: Bicêtre, St. Pélagie, Saint Lazare, the

Conciergerie and La Force. The last named was of more recent date, and

really owed its existence to the mild-mannered and unfortunate Louis

XVI, who in 1780 desired to construct a prison to separate the purely

criminal prisoners from those detained simply for debt. A site was

found where the rue St. Antoine ends in the Marais. The ground had been

bought thirty years before for the erection of a military school, but

nothing had come of the project. New buildings were erected upon the

ground formerly occupied by the gardens of the Ducs de la Force, as

had been done in the case of the Hotel St. Pol which had belonged to

Charles of Naples, brother of the king known as St. Louis in French

history. The new prison of La Force was to be established under good

auspices. It was to include rooms for habitation, hospital, and yards

for the separate exercise of various classes of prisoners, the whole

to cover a space ten times as large as the For-l’Évêque and Petit

Châtelet combined. It was to be interiorly divided into five sections

(afterwards increased to eight), with names describing each section.