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.
There was the “Milk Walk,” for those who had failed to pay for the children they put out to nurse; the “Debtors’ Side,” in the centre of the prison, where non-criminals were lodged; the “Lions’ Pit,” described by a contemporary as the most horrible place conceivable, where the worst classes of criminals were herded together. Next came the “Sainte Madeleine,” then the “Quarter of the Niômes,” after that the “Court of Fowls,” again the “Court of Sainte Anne,” for old men and worn-out vagabonds, and lastly, the “Court of Sainte Marie of the Egyptians,” a hateful place, being a deep well between high, damp walls which the sun’s rays never reached, and in which were thrown prisoners whom it was desired to isolate entirely. This prison of La Force, from the first a very ruinous place, was in use down to the middle of the nineteenth century and received in its turn a large proportion of French criminality, criminal convicts being confined with political offenders and persons at variance with the government of the hour. On the same register might be read the names of Papavoine, the child slayer, and the poet, Béranger; Lacenaire, notorious for his bloodthirsty murders, and Paul-Louis Courier, the socialist.
An interesting contemporary account of La Force and other prisons of Paris in Napoleonic days has been preserved. M. Paul Corneille, Mayor of Gournay-en-Bray, has published in the Revue Penitentiaire the journal of his grandfather, who was an involuntary guest of La Force. The régime in the prison was abominable. Discipline was all a matter of money. Such comfort as the prison afforded was reserved for those only who could pay for it. There were thirty-seven rooms in all. Thirty-four were occupied by those who could pay the rent. The remaining three were for the impecunious. In one case forty-two individuals were crowded into nineteen beds, and in another nineteen persons used eleven beds. The ordinary bedding issued consisted of a mattress, a woollen blanket and a counterpane. A second mattress and sheets might be had for nine francs a month. Prisoners on the “simple pistole” were lodged in the back premises and excluded from the first court. Prisoners on the “double pistole” were somewhat better lodged and served. The “pistole” was the name given to the mode of prison life the prisoner was able to ensure himself by his means, and was so called from the coin of that name. Special small rooms were provided at exorbitant rates; and the gaolers’ fees were considerable from all sources, and, when the prison was full, enormous—each prisoner being good for at least a dozen francs the month.
The prison rations were of the most meagre character. A daily loaf of a pound and half of ammunition bread and a spoonful of unpalatable soup would barely have saved the prisoners from starvation, had they not been permitted to buy extra articles at the canteen. The insufficient nourishment and the unsanitary conditions produced many deaths from disease. An abbé, Binet by name, who had been imprisoned for four years as a refractory priest, succumbed, and another was driven by misery to poison himself, which he did by soaking copper covered with verdigris in a liquid, to which he added some mercurial ointment, and then swallowed this disgusting mixture. Prisoners were entirely at the mercy of the gaolers, who had the monopoly of supplies and charged exorbitant prices. Nothing could be sold except at their shops, where a small fowl cost five francs, three eggs, twelve sous, five small potatoes, fifteen sous. It was the same with drink, the prices of which were excessive and the fluid bad. Many small devices were in force to increase the gains of the gaolers, prisoners being allowed to pay twenty sous for the privilege of sitting up two or three hours later than the regular hour of closing. With all this, the police were constantly in the prisons, seeking information against suspected persons or working up proofs to support a new trial. The most rigorous rules existed as to letter writing; prisoners were allowed to write complaints to the ministers and even to the Emperor himself, but their correspondence passed through the gaoler’s hands to the Prefecture of Police, where it was generally lost.
The worst feature of La Force was that children of tender years, often no more than seven years of age, were committed to it for the most trifling misdeeds. They were cruelly ill-used by the gaolers, whip in hand, and they passed their time in idleness, associating with the worst criminals with the result that they grew up thoroughly corrupt.
We have a glimpse of La Force from the record of the imprisonment of the poet, Béranger. The French governments after the Restoration continued to be very sensitive, and frequently prosecuted their critics, even versifiers of such genius as Béranger. They desired to make people good, religious and submissive by law, and invoked it pitilessly against the poet who dared to encourage free-thinking in politics and religion. They were resolved to put down what they deemed the abuse of letters, and to punish not only the preaching of sedition but the open expression of impiety. So, as the persecuted said at the time, poetry was brought into court, and songs, gay and light-hearted, written to amuse and interest, were held to be mischievous, and their writers were sent to prison. Béranger was tried at the assizes in 1822 for having exercised a pernicious influence upon the people, and he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment which he endured at St. Pélagie. He was again arraigned in 1829 on charges akin to the first, and now found himself sentenced to La Force for nine months, and to pay a fine of 10,000 francs, greatly to the indignation of the general public. It was considered a shameful perversion of the law to send the joyous singer to herd with criminals, and he was visited by crowds of right-thinking people from outside, eager to show their sympathy. While in La Force, Béranger devoted himself to exposing some of the worst evils of the régime, especially the improper treatment of the juvenile offenders. On the day of his arrival, when the gate was opened to admit him, he heard a childish voice exclaim, “Look at the street; how beautiful!” The view within must have been dreary enough to force the contrast with that without—the muddy, dirty side-street with its poor shop-fronts and ugly, commonplace passers-by. He was still more disgusted when they brought the daily rations for these poor little ones: a coarse vegetable soup in great tin cans, which was distributed in rations to each child to be eaten anyhow, without knife, fork or spoon, very much like dogs from a trough. The poet made a vigorous protest to the governor, adding that he wondered these human beings were not obliged to walk like beasts on all fours. The answer he got was that it would cost money to supply utensils; whereupon Béranger took all the expense on himself. He was in fact continually employed in charitable deeds. While in prison he visited all parts of it: the various courts, the “Milk Walk” the “Debtors’ Side” and the “Lions’ Pit,” distributing food and small luxuries, wine, tobacco and bread to the inmates. He listened patiently to all complaints, the injustice of their punishment being, as ever with prisoners, the chief burden of their song. “I see how it is,” he once replied, “the only guilty one here is myself.” But he was always overwhelmed with grateful thanks, and one inmate of the prison composed a poem in his honor. When Béranger received it, he was eager to ascertain the name of his brother songster. He learned that it was the work of Lacenaire, the murderer, then awaiting sentence for his many atrocious crimes.
Another literary prisoner was thrown into La Force about the same time. This was A. Chenu, who afterward published his experiences in a small book entitled “Malefactors.” The first sight that met his eyes on arrival, according to Coquers, was the words, written large upon the wall, “Death to tell-tales.” He was at once approached by the provost, the prisoner who wielded supreme power in the room and whose business it was to collect the sums demanded from new arrivals, who promised protection and help. The provost provided writing materials and arranged the secret conveyance of letters for prisoners, and when one of their frequent quarrels broke out he settled the preliminaries of the duel, which was the only possible end. They were strange fights, as often as not conducted with one knife, the only weapon to be obtained, which the combatants used in turn, after drawing lots for the first stab. Numerous wounds were frequently inflicted on each side with fatal result before honor was satisfied.
St. Pélagie was used as a prison pure and simple during the revolutionary epoch and afterwards, like La Force, received debtors, convicted prisoners and prisoners of State. It was notorious in the Napoleonic régime for having as governor one Wallerand, who deserved to have been dismissed fifty times over, and was finally proceeded against at law. He had powerful protectors, having married into the family of the Prefect of Police, and was greatly feared for his vindictive temper, which never spared any one who dared to protest against or to complain of their treatment. This governor practised all the exactions already described as prevailing at La Force, and raised the charges of the “pistole” till the prisoners were completely fleeced and ruined.
Instances of Wallerand’s barbarous treatment may be quoted. A prisoner named Thomas was employed by him as a groom, and escaped through an unbarred window in the stable, but was recaptured. Wallerand, furiously angry, threw him into a cell, and ordered that he should be flogged three times a day. Death would probably have been his portion, had not two other prisoners informed an inspector of police, who was visiting the prison and who saved the victim from his keeper’s rage. Wallerand avenged himself by lodging the two informers in the cell just vacated. An ancient priest, after much cruel suffering, fell ill and begged hard that he might be attended by another doctor than the medical attendant of the prison. Wallerand obstinately refused to give his consent, and the old man died. He got into trouble once by entertaining a great party of some hundred and fifty friends in the prison on his fête day. The largest hall in the prison was splendidly decorated and lighted by five hundred candles. The entertainment consisted of the performance of an opera and a grand display of fireworks in the prison court, a great ball and a splendid supper. The police authorities, although well disposed to Wallerand, could not tolerate this impudence, and he was suspended for a time, but received no other punishment.
Among the many foul prisons of the Capital Bicêtre was quite the worst of all, and it was said of it that nowhere else could such horrors be witnessed. At once a prison, a madhouse and refuge for paupers, wretchedness and insanity existed along with vice and crime. John Howard, the English philanthropist, who visited it in 1775, draws a terrible picture of it, which will best be realised by transcribing his own words: “Bicêtre is upon a small eminence about two miles from Paris; if it were only a prison, I should call it an enormous one. But this for men, like the ‘Hopital General’ for women, is indeed a kind of general hospital. Of about four thousand men within its walls, not one-half are prisoners. The majority are the poor, who wear a coarse brown uniform, and seem as miserable as the poor in some of our own country workhouses; the insane; and men that have foul diseases. Each sort is in a court and apartments totally separate from the other and from criminals. These last are confined, some in little rooms about eight feet square, windows three and one-half feet by two, with a grate, but not many glazed. By counting the windows on one side of the house I reckoned there must be five hundred of those rooms. There is but one prisoner in each. These pay two hundred livres a year for their board. There are others in two large rooms called La Force, on the other side of the courtyard, La Cour Royale, which are crowded with prisoners. Over these two rooms is a general infirmary; and over that an infirmary for the scurvy, a distemper very common and fatal among them.