Juvenile depravity has unhappily long been prevalent in France, and is strongly marked. This is largely due to a faulty system, mistaken methods of treatment in the various prisons and especially in La Petite Roquette. Intercommunication between its inmates, despite strict discipline, is easy and frequent, and the most depraved exert a baneful influence over the whole. Most youthful crimes have originated in La Roquette. “My parents ought not to have sent me here” (under the law which permits a parent to try imprisonment to mend incorrigible children), said one lad. “They thought to reform me; it has been altogether the reverse.” “My first offence,” said another, “was stealing fruit, and it brought me to La Roquette. When one comes once, one returns often.” “The cell does not keep us apart, and we go out far worse than when we enter,” said still another. Hence the prevalence of serious juvenile crime. “A French child,” writes an experienced magistrate, “organises a murder as he would a pleasure party.” One was so light-hearted on his way to commit a great crime that an accomplice rebuked him saying, “If you laugh too much our coup will fail.” Another, who had already committed murder, wrote on his cell wall: “When one’s pockets are empty it is easy to understand why there are criminals.”

This prison as it now stands covers much ground and has considerable architectural pretensions. It consists of six wings grouped round a central building, with which they are connected by light iron bridges. This central building is circular and three storied. The lowest, or basement, contains the kitchen. The parloir, or place where the prisoners see their friends, occupies the second. The chapel is on the top floor. The wings have also three stories, and the cells on each story open from a central passage, lighted at the end, while the whole interior is warmed very indifferently by stoves. The régime of the prison is based upon the principle of isolation; a system which might, if carried to any extreme of severity, prove cruelly harsh to prisoners of tender years. The solitude enforced is not unbroken, however. Each boy, whatever his age (and this varies from eight or nine to sixteen or seventeen), works in his cell, sorting flowers for immortelles, the staple product of the neighborhood; polishing brass work, manufacturing and gilding chairs; but he is visited constantly by the contremaître or contractor’s foreman, who teaches and superintends; by the brigadier and wardens of the wing, or by the Director—the governor and chief of the establishment, who is continually going his rounds. The present head of the boys’ prison is a kindly and sympathetic person, who tempers the rigors of discipline by the warm and lively interest he takes in his flock. It is almost touching to see how the eyes of the little waifs brighten as he enters their cells; how one greets him with a cheery “bon jour,” and another catches his hand and kisses it. They will prattle to him of their doings or the homes where they are probably unhappy and which they scarcely regret. They will lament their misdeeds, and make many promises to behave better another time.

After all, they are not badly off in La Petite Roquette. Ill-used, half-starved gutter children have been heard to speak in high praise of a place where they were well housed, well clothed, treated kindly and,—strange experience for them,—where they got something to eat every day of their lives. The confinement within four walls, at an age when life is full of spring and movement, is no doubt irksome to these little Arabs of the streets; but the Administration does its best to provide them with certain regulation amusements. In the exercising yards they may be seen behind the iron bars trundling hoops; and squads of them, each standing alone in his own separate compartment, are exercised in the “extension motions” by word of command—“un,” “deux,” “trois,” and so forth; words which they are obliged to repeat in a shrill treble, with the double idea of enforcing attention and, by tiring their voices, of removing all desire to chatter among themselves.

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.