Modern French Prisons / Bicêtre; St. Pélagie; St. Lazare; La Force; The Conciergerie; La Grande and La Petite Roquettes; Mazas; La Santé

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Madame Roland Incarcerated in Sainte Pélagie From the painting by E. Carpentier
One of the innocent and most distinguished victims of the French Revolution, whose memoirs were written in prison, and who will be longest remembered by the exclamation, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” uttered with her dying breath when facing the guillotine.
Modern French Prisons BICÊTRE—ST. PÉLAGIE—ST. LAZARE LA FORCE—THE CONCIERGERIE LA GRANDE AND LA PETITE ROQUETTES MAZAS—LA SANTÉ by MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain Author of “ The Mysteries of Police and Crime ,” “ Fifty Years of Public Service ,” etc.
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
EDITION NATIONALE Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets. NUMBER 307
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.