The History and Romance of Crime 7
Several couples of convicts were once at work unloading a cargo of
wood. Some sorted out the wood, while others levelled a mound of earth
and piled up the barrows, which were dragged away. One of a chained
couple suddenly struck work, declaring that he could hardly stand,
from fever and weakness. “You shall go to hospital to-morrow,” replied
his officer. “Go on working now. I will give you a dose of medicine
to help,” and with that he applied his stick to the poor creature’s
back. His comrade thereupon charged himself with the whole labor, and
drew the barrow alone, while the sick man staggered along, becoming
worse and worse every moment, and unable even to carry the weight
of the chain. Then his companion lifted him in his arms on to the
barrow, and proceeded to drag it along. The guardian, resenting this
act as defiance of his will, applied his stick to the back of the good
Samaritan, calling forth redoubled effort, which ended in the upset
of the barrow, which dragged over the sick man, who died then and
there. This story is vouched for by an eye-witness of the atrocity. He
rewarded the kindly convict, and would have reported the guardian, but
was afterwards unable to recognise him.
The régime, as we have seen, was tyrannical, but it must often have
been lax, to judge by the frequency of the escapes at the _bagnes_.
The regulations were stringent. Notice of an escape was immediately
proclaimed by three guns, and flags were run up at all commanding
points. At the same time the personal description of the fugitive
was circulated through the neighborhood, and brigades of gensdarmes
were sent in pursuit. Handsome rewards were offered for recapture;
twenty-five francs (five dollars) if it was effected within the
port, double that amount if within the town and one hundred francs
(twenty dollars) for apprehension beyond the walls. In spite of all,
the determination to break prison, a fixed idea with all animals in
captivity, was always present with the inmates of the _bagne_. It has
well been said that the prisoner, in his endeavors to escape, displays
skill and energy enough to win him inevitable success in any reputable
line of life. The stories of the results achieved at the _bagnes_,
the conquest of many difficulties, the triumph over all surveillance,
imperfect, perhaps, but systematic and generally alert, read like a
fairy tale.
One undefeated convict, by name Petit, escaped continually. He was
always getting the better of his gaolers. He took a pride in stating
precisely the hour at which he would arrive at Toulon and the day
upon which he would leave it a free man. The event always came off
exactly. Petit, at one time, when recaptured, after escaping from
Brest, was lodged in the prison at Abbeville. He at once warned the
prison officials that he could not stay in such an unsatisfactory
prison. On the next day he had disappeared. He had broken into a room
where the linen was kept, climbed several high walls, fell at length
into the garden and got out and away, although his two feet were
chained together. He got rid of his irons outside the walls, and had
the audacity to return and sell them openly in the market place of
Abbeville.
Opportunity and good luck usually favored escape. Hautdebont was a
convict tailor employed in the workshops where the guardians’ uniforms
were made up. He caught sight of a new suit hanging on a peg, which he
calculated would fit him, and at a moment when the master-tailor’s eye
was withdrawn, Hautdebont took down the uniform, put it on and walked
out. Unhappily for the fugitive the suit was immediately missed. The
foreman tailor raised an alarm, and Hautdebont was quickly caught and
sentenced, among other penalties, to lose his place in the tailor’s
shop. Excessive bad luck was the portion of the convict who had exactly
calculated that, by surmounting the boundary wall at a particular
point, he would reach a certain retired and solitary street. All went
well till, having surmounted the wall, he lowered himself on the far
side to fall straight into a cart, where a guardian was taking his
mid-day rest. He awoke and snapped greedily at the hundred francs’
reward which had fallen straight into his hands.
Convicts have often to thank their own quick-wittedness and
self-possession for succeeding in attempted escape. One convict at
Brest, helped by a free workman, who had promised him shelter and a
suit of plain clothes, reached the outskirts of the town, where he made
up as a laborer, concealed his closely cropped hair under an old hat,
borrowed a barrow and a pick and started off for Orleans as if he were
in search of a job. His leisurely gait and frequent halts betrayed
no feverish desire to get away. The people gave him _bon jour_ as he
passed, and the gensdarmes whom he met accepted a pinch of snuff; and
he went on his way without interference. He marched thus for a couple
of hundred miles, taking by-roads, still wheeling his barrow before
him, resting by night in the woods, and at last reaching Orleans in
the heart of France, where he found friends, who helped him out of the
country.
Ingenuity and boldness of plan of escape were often equalled by the
limitless patience with which it was pursued. More than once a long
passage was tunnelled underground, leading to liberty beyond the
Arsenal walls, and this in spite of surveillance and the galling
inconvenience of carrying chains. In one case a space had been
contrived at the end, large enough to contain the disguises, into which
the fugitives were to change when the moment arrived, and to store the
food saved up for the journey. The paving stones were taken up, and
places of concealment contrived beneath to hide the intending fugitive
until pursuit had passed on. Once a man got within a heap of stones,
and presently more stones were brought outside to add to the heap. He
narrowly escaped being built in alive. By desperate efforts he broke
through and gained the boundary wall, which he escaladed, and fell into
the arms of a couple of fishermen on the far side, who seized him and
took him back to the _bagne_. The promised reward was generally too
strong a temptation to working men to let a fugitive go free.
There were convicts with no sense of loyalty to their comrades, always
ready to betray an intended escape, eager to gain the reward. Others,
again, had invented a strange business, that of giving assistance to a
comrade, resolved to attempt an escape, by helping him in the work of
excavation, or of standing sentinel to prevent surprise by the guard.
On the arrival of any convict, known to be well furnished with funds,
he was approached by these friends with proposals. Sometimes the kindly
convict made a double coup,--for when he had started to escape he
betrayed the plot and was paid the authorised reward by the other side.
The guards sometimes encouraged an attempt to escape, and then turned
on the would-be fugitive after he had gone so far from the prison to be
worth the full sum of a hundred francs.
Great cleverness in preparing, and promptitude in assuming, a disguise
was frequently shown. One convict manufactured the whole of an
officer’s uniform out of paper, which he painted and completed so as to
escape detection. Petit, who has been mentioned already, whose escapes
were almost miraculous, got away once from the court at Amiens, after
being recaptured, by entering the dressing-room of the advocates, where
he stole a robe and wig, in which he walked out into the street. A
convict named Fichon, at Toulon, disappeared so effectually that it was
concluded he had left for good. But he was still on hand, although the
most minute searches were fruitless. He had hidden under water in the
great basin of the dockyard, and had arranged a leather duct to bring
him air from the surface. At night he emerged from his moist asylum,
landed, ate his food, placed for him by his friends, and at daybreak
took to the water again.
Long brooding on the impossibilities of regaining freedom has been
known to produce mania. An Italian, named Gravioly, at the _bagne_ of
Rochefort, was driven mad by his failures to escape. He was sentenced
for life after three brutal attempts to murder. The hopelessness of his
condition led him to secrete a knife, with which he suddenly wounded
the adjutant of the day, broke his chain and ran amuck through the
prison, brandishing his weapon and attacking all who tried to stop him.
Another adjutant fell before him, and the guard at the gate he killed.
Another murderer, of exemplary prison character, after years of good
behavior in the maritime hospital, struck one of the nursing sisters
a fatal blow, which severed her head. It was supposed that she had
discovered his intention to escape, and he was unable to persuade her
to hold her tongue. In these days we should call this man a homicidal
maniac, but he was executed; and, on mounting the scaffold, smiled
pleasantly at the guillotine.
The disciplinary methods at the _bagnes_ were brutal enough, but the
severity of the system was softened by privileges and concessions,
that would not be tolerated in any modern prison. It was much the same
as in Australia in the early days and at this moment in the Spanish
penal colony at Ceuta. The freedom given to some convicts in service
naturally favored escape, and in one case a high official was robbed of
his full uniform by a convict employé, who, having changed his costume,
mounted his master’s horse and rode off through the principal gate,
after having received the compliments of the sentries and guards at
the grand entrance. When the reins were tightened and these improper
privileges were forbidden, others of a minor and mitigating character
still survived. There were situations in the service of the prison,
as sweepers, barbers, cooks and lamplighters. Some became gardeners,
others coopers, more were nurses and bedmakers in the hospital, and
a few were permitted to act as hucksters in the sale of food and
condiments within the prison buildings. A post of great profit was that
of _payole_ or prison scribe, which was given to an educated convict
who was allowed to write the letters of his comrades. The _payole_
became the confidant of every one, and knew all their most precious
secrets. Often enough he abused his position, and, after eloquently
stating the case to a prisoner’s family, would misappropriate the funds
forwarded by soft-hearted relations. The _payole_ was constantly the
author of the so-called “Jerusalem letters,” the equivalent of the
begging letter or veiled attempts at blackmail, which often issued in
large numbers from the _bagnes_.
Reference has been made already to the ingenious manufacture of
articles for sale, but a less honorable, although more profitable,
trade was that of usury, which long flourished in the _bagnes_. The
business was started by an ex-banker named Wanglen, who was condemned
to _travaux forcés_ in the time of the Empire. He brought with him to
the _bagne_ a certain amount of capital, carefully concealed, and with
the skill acquired in his business he trafficked in usury, and made
advances, like any pawnbroker, upon the goods and valuables secretly
possessed by his fellows as well as upon the _pécule_ or monthly
pittance accorded as wages to the convicts. He had so large a trade
that he created a paper currency to take the place of the specie so
generally short in the prison. But his business suffered seriously
from the competition that might have been expected in such a place;
for after a time his notes were cleverly imitated by forgers, and he
had no redress but to return to cash payments. This man Wanglen is
said to have made a great deal of money by the time he retired from
business, and to have had many successors. When a borrower could offer
no tangible security the good word of a convict reputed to be a man of
substance was accepted instead; and such men were to be found in the
_bagnes_.
A notable one was the celebrated Collet, whose criminal career will
be detailed further on. Collet, strange to say, was always in funds.
According to M. Sers, who wrote at some length on the _bagnes_, from
facts under his own observation, Collet, during the twenty years of
his imprisonment, was never known to hold a single centime more, in
the hands of the official paymaster, than the regulation allowance,
yet he lived luxuriously the whole of these twenty years. He always
wore respectable clothing and the finest underlinen, very different
from that supplied by the prison; he lived on the fat of the land,
despising the mess of pottage, the horrible haricot of beans, that
made up the daily ration. He was supplied always with abundant and
succulent repasts from the best hotel in the town. The source of his
wealth and the means used to bring it to his hand were secrets never
divulged during his long term of imprisonment, although inquiries were
constantly made, and every effort tried to unravel the mystery. The
secret died with him; and even after death nine pieces of gold were found sewn into his waistcoat pocket.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기