“In the middle of La Cour Royale are eight dreadful dungeons down sixteen steps; each about thirteen feet by nine, with two strong doors; three chains fastened to the wall and a stone funnel, at one corner of each cell, for air. From the situation of these dreary caverns and the difficulty I found in procuring admittance, I conclude hardly any other stranger ever saw them. That is my reason, and I hope will be my apology, for mentioning the particulars.
“Prisoners make straw boxes, toothpicks, etc., and sell them to visitants. I viewed the men with some attention and observed in the looks of many a settled melancholy; many others looked very sickly. This prison seems not so well managed as those in the city; it is very dirty; no fireplace in any of the rooms, and in the severe cold last winter several hundred perished.”
The condition of Bicêtre during the Napoleonic epoch was almost inconceivably bad. It was very convenient for the officials of the Prefecture, who committed to it almost every one who came into their hands. Disastrous overcrowding was the natural result. When so many were herded together within its narrow limits, fevers and scurvy were epidemic; diseases were particularly engendered by the waters of the wells, which were charged with deleterious constituents. All classes were associated together pell-mell. Prisoners of State, of good character and cleanly life, lived constantly with the dregs of Paris society. The interior régime was regulated upon the same lines as those of the prisons already described. The same tyrannical treatment prevailed, the same extortion, the same lack of even the smallest physical comforts. It might well be styled the new sewer of Paris, and the word Bicêtre was rightly adopted into the current argot as a pseudonym for misery and misfortune.
In corroborative testimony of the horrors of Bicêtre I will quote here the description given of it by another witness, who had personal experience of the prison. We shall hear more of Vidocq on a later page, the well-known ex-convict who turned thief catcher and, in a measure, originated the French detective police system.
“The prison of the Bicêtre,” says Vidocq in his “Memoirs,” “is a neat quadrangular building, enclosing many other structures and many courts, which have each a different name. There is the grand cour (great court) where the prisoners walk; the cour de cuisine (or kitchen court); the cour des chiens (or dogs’ court); the cour de correction (or the court of punishment) and the cour des fers (or court of irons). In this last court is a new building five stories high. Each story contains forty cells, each capable of holding four prisoners. On the platform, which takes the place of a roof, was night and day a dog named Dragon, who for a time passed in the prison for the most watchful and incorruptible of its kind. Some prisoners managed, at a subsequent period, to corrupt him through the medium of a roasted leg of mutton, which he had the culpable weakness to accept; so true is it that there are no seductions more potent than those of gluttony, since they operate indifferently on all organised beings.
“Near by is the old building, arranged in nearly the same way. Under this were dungeons of safety, in which were enclosed the troublesome and condemned prisoners. It was in one of these dungeons that for forty-three years lived the accomplice of Cartouche, who betrayed him to procure this commutation. To obtain a moment’s sunshine he frequently counterfeited death, and so well did he do this that when he had actually breathed his last sigh, two days passed before they took off his iron collar. A third part of the building, called La Force, comprised various rooms, in which were placed prisoners who arrived from the provinces and were destined like ourselves to the chain.
“At this period the prison of Bicêtre, which is only strong from the strict guard kept up there, could accommodate twelve hundred prisoners; but they were piled on each other, and the conduct of the jailers in no way assuaged the discomforts of the place. A sullen air, a rough tone and brutal manners were exhibited to the prisoners, and keepers were in no way to be softened but through the medium of a bottle of wine or a pecuniary bribe. Besides, they never attempted to repress any excess or any crime; and provided that no one sought to escape, one might do whatever one pleased in the prison, without being restrained or prevented; whilst men, condemned for those crimes which modesty shrinks from naming, openly practised their detestable libertinism, and robbers exercised their industry inside the prison without any person attempting to check the crime or prevent the bestiality.
“If any man arrived from the country well clad and condemned for a first offence, who was not as yet initiated into the customs and usage of prisons, in a twinkling he was stripped of his clothes, which were sold in his presence to the highest bidder. If he had jewels or money, they were alike confiscated to the profit of the society, and if he were too long in taking out his earrings, they were snatched out without the sufferer daring to complain. He was previously warned that if he spoke of it, they would hang him in the night to the bars of his cell and afterwards say that he had committed suicide. If a prisoner, out of precaution when going to sleep, placed his clothes under his head, they waited until he was in his first sleep, and then tied to his foot a stone, which they balanced at the side of his bed. At the least motion the stone fell and, aroused by the noise, the sleeper jumped up; and before he could discover what had occurred, his packet, hoisted by a cord, went through the iron bars to the floor above. I have seen in the depths of winter these poor devils, having been deprived of their property in this way, remain in the court in their shirts until some one threw them some rags to cover their nakedness. As long as they remained at Bicêtre, by burying themselves, as we may say, in their straw, they could defy the rigor of the weather, but at the departure of the chain, when they had no other covering than frock and trousers made of packing cloth, they often sank exhausted and frozen before they reached the first halting place.”
The origin and early history of the Conciergerie has been given in a previous volume, but its records are not yet closed, for it still stands on the Island of the City in close proximity to the Palace of Justice. It has many painful memories associated with its later history, and is more particularly notable as having been the last place of durance of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. The cell she occupied is still preserved and is decorated nowadays with pictures and memorial inscriptions. Through all the changes that have come over the old prison, the cell in which the Queen of France awaited execution has always been kept religiously intact, although many right-thinking people are ashamed of this hideous relic of an atrocious national crime. The order for the Queen’s execution is still preserved in the archives and runs as follows:—“On the 25th day of the first month of the second year of the French Republic one and indivisible, the woman named Marie Antoinette, commonly called of Lorraine and Austria, wife of Louis Capet, has been removed from this house at the request of the public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribune and handed over to the executioner to be taken to the Place de la Revolution there to suffer death.” The fate that overtook her contrasts painfully with the good intentions of the mild and humane Louis XVI, who soon after his accession sought to improve the Conciergerie prison. “We have given all our care,” he announced in a decree in 1780, “to mend the prison, to build new and airy infirmaries and provide for the sick prisoners.” A separate quarter was provided for males and females, no one henceforth was consigned to the underground dungeons, the great central court was provided with a shelter from rain, the interior was heated. But these reforms were short-lived. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the worst horrors were revived. An account of the sufferings in this prison are given by Baron Riouffe in his “Memoirs”: “I was thrown,” says he, “into the deepest and foulest dungeon, entirely deprived of light, the atmosphere poisonous, and inconceivable dirtiness around. Seven of us were crowded in this small space, some of them robbers, one a convict condemned to death. We were inspected daily by stalwart warders accompanied by fierce dogs.” This description was confirmed by the author of the “Almanac of Prisons” during the period. The cells were never opened to be brushed out, but occasionally they changed the straw; yet an exorbitant sum was demanded for rent, and it was often said that the Conciergerie was the most profitable hotel in Paris having regard to its charges.
The Conciergerie