The History and Romance of Crime 25

The History and Romance of Crime 25

In many respects, the establishment is a model one; and it does, in

fact, serve as such for those who conduct juvenile reformatories in all

civilised quarters of the globe.

 

Saint Lazare, indeed, is still in use; and only in December, 1905,

after having been repeatedly condemned, could it be said that its

days were numbered. A General Council of the Department of the Seine

at that time voted a sum for the erection of an entirely new prison.

The authorities were urged to begin at once the demolition and

ex-propriation of the establishment. No doubt the cost of the new site

and new buildings will be sensibly assisted by the sale of the present

premises, situated in the heart of Paris and on very valuable property.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER X

 

A MODEL PENITENTIARY

 

Fresnes--Final stage in the criminal career--The last chosen

site for the guillotine--History of the guillotine--Earlier

models of the instrument--The Italian “mannaia”--The “Maiden”

used in Edinburgh and some cities in Yorkshire--Opinions on

capital punishment--The alternative--Condition of eighty

murderers who escaped the death sentence, when seen at Ghent

ten years later--La Grande Roquette--Its inmates--The condemned

cell--The march to the scaffold--Principal executions in late

years--Verger murders the Archbishop of Paris in 1857--Avinain

and other cruel murderers--Campi and Marchandon who took

life boldly in the best parts of Paris--Execution of the

hostages during the Commune--The site still preserved and

honored--Passing of La Roquette--New and imposing prison of

Fresnes on the outskirts of Paris--Opened in 1898--Closing

considerations.

 

 

France, in building the prison of Fresnes, may be said to have given

to the world a model penitentiary. It is the perfection of penal

architecture and structural fitness for the purpose intended. Before

proceeding to its consideration, however, let us take up the story of

La Grande Roquette and the later annals of criminality with which it is

identified.

 

Immediately opposite La Petite Roquette is the great prison of the

same name. As I have already suggested, it is the final stage in the

criminal career which began in some minor offence, punished by a few

days’ detention in the boys’ prison, and here ends at the scaffold

upon the Place de la Roquette. It is more by administrative design

than definite design that these two extremes, the criminal cradle and

the place of final doom, are thus brought into close juxtaposition.

Various sites in Paris have been used from time to time for the dread

performance of “law’s finisher” commonly styled in stilted legal

language the “_executeur des hautes œuvres_,” the official instrument

for completing capital punishment. He was the agent of High Justice and

might hold his head above his fellows who feared and hated him because

he was the vindicator of the law. The office was not exactly honorable,

but it was lucrative, and its holder enjoyed many privileges. He was

entitled to levy taxes on food, upon all the corn brought into the

market, and on fruit, grapes, nuts, hay, eggs and wool. He collected a

toll on all who passed the Petit Pont (the bridge near the Châtelet).

Every leper paid him a fee, and he acquired, by right of office, all

the clothes of which his victims died possessed. But he carried a badge

of shame, a ladder embroidered on the breast of his coat and a ladder

on the back. His office was hereditary; son succeeded father, and if

the next in succession was of tender years a substitute was appointed,

but the rightful executioner, sometimes no more than seven or eight,

stood by the headsman as if to sanction his proceedings. The Sansons

filled the awful post for seven generations, nearly two hundred years.

They were for the most part in good repute and highly esteemed by

their royal masters. Louis XI indeed made a chosen companion of his

executioner, Tristan L’Hamitte, whom he ennobled.

 

The ceremony of inflicting death was performed anywhere in early days,

often from choice in the theatre of the crime. For a century or more

the Place de la Grève was the favored spot, and was used until the

revolution of 1830, but the scaffold was sometimes erected at the

Halles (the central markets) or the Croix du Trahoir or in almost any

wide street or square. The Barrier of Saint Jacques was substituted

for the Place de la Grève in 1832. It was a convenient distance from

the Conciergerie, in which prison the condemned found their last

resting-place. The execution was fixed always for the afternoon, and

the drive through the crowded streets was considered a scandal, so that

a further change was decreed.

 

The prison of La Grande Roquette had spare accommodation available.

This place had been in existence some years under the name of Little

Bicêtre, and had been used as a _dépôt des condamnés_, in which were

lodged all sentenced to _travaux forcés_ while awaiting further removal

to the seaport _bagnes_ or the great central prisons. The concentration

of so many desperate characters under one roof led them to feel their

strength and measure it against authority in a serious outbreak in

1886, in which the Director would have lost his life, but for the

courageous intervention of a veteran chief warder. From that time

forth the worst criminals were no longer sent to La Grande Roquette,

but retained in the central prisons after sentence, from which when

condemned to transportation they were collected by agents and taken on

to St. Martin de Ré to take ship for the Antipodes. The _bagnes_ were

abolished some time before those of Brest and Rochefort in 1850, and

Toulon in 1872.

 

But one quarter in La Grande Roquette was especially appropriated to

convicts condemned to death, and they proceeded after a more or less

lengthy detention direct from their cells to the guillotine. These

were in all cases the most notable murderers only, for increasing

reluctance to inflict the extreme penalty has been exhibited in France,

and successive presidents of the Republic, from President Grévy on,

have constantly commuted sentences to penal exile and spared lives that

were clearly forfeited. For the last forty years all who were actually

executed passed through La Grande Roquette, and a brief survey of the

principal malefactors and the circumstances attending the last dread

event will be given here.

 

A few words as to the guillotine; that instrument now invariably used

for capital punishment in France. It has played so large a part in

the modern French history that it will be interesting to trace its

origin back to the days of its godfather and supposed inventor, a

certain Doctor Guillotin, who in the Revolutionary times was very eager

to improve the system of capital punishment, which he desired should

be uniform for all; and he had fixed upon decapitation as the best

and simplest process. But the headsman had always been an uncertain

performer, a bungler often who could not command his nerves, and who

often slashed and wounded his victim without dealing the death blow.

Doctor Guillotin earnestly recommended in the Convention that every

criminal should be decapitated by means of some mechanical contrivance.

This passed into law, but before the contrivance had been settled upon,

Guillotin, at his wits’ end, applied to Charles Sanson, at that time

the official executioner, for guidance. In their joint researches,

they came upon an old Italian wood cut giving a presentment of the

“mannaia,” an ancient machine much used in Genoa and particularly for

the execution of Guistranin and other conspirators. The picture might

have served also for the Halifax “Maiden” of which more directly. In

both, the axe was suspended between two uprights, the culprit knelt

beneath it, and the executioner held the rope. It was also found that a

French Marshal, De Montmorency, had been beheaded in 1631 by means of a

sliding axe.

 

Difficulties of detail remained; chiefly, that of retaining the person

about to suffer in the proper position long enough for the descending

blow to take fatal effect. Then a friend, one Schmidt, a manufacturer

of musical instruments, brought Sanson a rough sketch which met all

objections and was in fact the model for the real machine. It seems

very closely to have followed the lines of the Halifax “Maiden.” It

was immediately accepted by the Convention, not without laughter.

Dr. Guillotin in describing his machine made use of some strange

__EXPRESSION__s. He assured his audience that with it he “could drop off

their heads in a twinkling, and they would not suffer in the very

least.” The only sensation might be that of a “slight freshness about

the neck.” Before closing finally, the Assembly desired other opinions

and applied, among others, to a Doctor Louis who was at that time

physician to Louis XVI, still seated upon his tottering throne. The

following curious incident is touched upon in the Sanson “Memoirs.”

 

While discussing the model, Doctor Guillotin and the executioner paid

a visit one day to Doctor Louis. A stranger came into the room, who

seemed greatly impressed with the invention, but disapproved of the

shape of the axe, which was that of a crescent. He did not believe it

would act properly upon all kinds of necks; “not on mine for instance,”

said the objector, taking up pen and ink, and drawing an oblique edge

instead of the half moon. Sanson, the expert, was consulted, and

gave it as his opinion that the question should be tested by actual

experience. When the machine was completed, it was taken to Bicêtre

and set up for trial on three corpses in the presence of a numerous

company, including that of a number of prisoners, who looked out from

the windows above. The oblique knife edge was found to be by far the

more effective, and that model was adopted for all time.

 

The most curious part of the story is, that the stranger who suggested

the improvement in the axe was King Louis XVI, himself, a skilled

locksmith and mechanic, having learned a trade after the manner of

all royal children. His own neck within a few months’ time was to be

subjected to the supreme test, which succeeded perfectly. I have no

wish to deprive Doctor Guillotin of any credit that may attach to this

invention, of questionable utility, except in simplifying the act of

killing and minimising the pain inflicted upon the victim; but he was

certainly not the first inventor of the manslaying apparatus with which

his name is for ever associated.

 

Two centuries before the Revolution, an instrument very similar to the

guillotine was in use in Scotland, and known there as the “Maiden.”

James Douglas, Earl of Morton, died by it in Edinburgh in 1587, thus

adding to the long list of inventors who paid the penalty of death by

their own contrivance. The “Maiden” had been often used in Yorkshire

for the summary execution of thieves taken in the act, and the best

account of it extant is found in “Holinshed’s Chronicles,” which

describes the custom prevailing in Halifax and the machine in use. He

records the law or custom, that whosoever commits a felony or steals

to the value of fourteen pence or halfpenny shall be beheaded in the

market. “The engine wherewith the execution is done is a square block

of wood which does ride up and down in a slot between two pieces of

timber that are framed and set upright, of five yards in height. In

the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with

an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is

there fastened by a wooden pin, to the centre of which a long rope is

attached, that cometh down among the people, so that when an offender

hath made his confession and hath laid his head over the nethernmost

block, every man seizeth the rope to show his willingness that judgment

should be executed, and pulling out the pin the axe is released to fall

with such violence that had the neck below been that of a bull the head

would be dissevered and roll away to a great distance.” If the theft

had been that of any fourfooted beast the rope was to be fastened to it, so that when driven away it would extract the pin.