Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The Mazas prison, situated on the boulevard of the same name, dates from 1850. The official name is “The house of cellular arrest.” The administration abandoned in 1858 the original designation of Mazas prison, on the petition of the family of Colonel Mazas, who was killed at Austerlitz. But custom is more powerful than any administration; and to the public this gaol is to-day still known solely by the name of Mazas.

Its construction, commenced in 1845, was not terminated till five years later. The cost of so vast a prison was naturally enormous. It was intended in the first instance to replace the prison of La Force, then situated in the Rue Pavée-aux-Marais and the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. The ground on which the first constructions were raised had previously been occupied by market-gardeners and by a mill, which was demolished. The works progressed rapidly under the direction of the architects, Gilbert and Lecointe. Interrupted by the Revolution of 1848, they were resumed shortly afterwards, and on the 19th of May, 1850, took place the inauguration—if this word can be employed in so sinister a sense—of the new prison; the installation, that is to say, of the prisoners. Less than twelve hours sufficed to transfer eight hundred and forty-one convicts in cellular vans, to establish them in their new abode, and inscribe their names, and other particulars concerning them, in the books of the gaol.

ENTRANCE TO LA GRANDE ROQUETTE.

At this period the grave inconveniences which have by degrees asserted themselves in France as the result of the cellular system were not yet clearly recognised. Thus it was that the first poor wretches who, after their transfer from La Force, found themselves suddenly immured in the cells of Mazas, were seized with fits of fury and despair which soon took the proportions of a panic and a riot. The whole building resounded with incessant cries and shouts: the condemned, isolated from one another, and exasperated by their solitude, trying to converse by shouts with their old acquaintances lodged in distant cells. Some requested as a favour to be taken back to La Force. At length the administration felt it discreet to order an inquiry into the state of things, and the Academy of Medicine was consulted. M. de Pietra-Santa, an eminent member of that body, wrote, in a report which he laid before his colleagues: “The cellular system employed in prisons plays deadly havoc with the intellectual faculties. It develops scrofulous diseases, and urges its victims to suicide.” Statistics were quoted to show[{138}] what a formidable proportion of cell-confined prisoners either took or attempted their own lives. In the end the Academy of Medicine denounced the prison-cell in uncompromised terms; and, in consequence, the system of isolation ceased at the Mazas prison to be rigorously enforced. As, however, the edifice had been constructed on a particular plan which did not permit of its conversion into an ordinary prison, its original purposes were modified by the confinement within its walls only of prisoners under short sentences. “In these circumstances,” says a contemporary French writer, “solitary confinement, far from being an inconvenience, presents in general the advantage of not mixing prisoners arrested from very diverse causes, and the moral character of whose offences widely differs. Moreover, the individual who may perhaps be acquitted to-morrow has not to endure a regrettable contact, which is often dangerous.”

The Mazas prison is surrounded by a girdle wall which conceals it from the public gaze; though the curious can easily defeat this difficulty by mounting the viaduct of the railway of Vincennes, which traverses the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. From this elevation a bird’s-eye glance of the whole of the buildings may be obtained.

The sanitation of this prison leaves little to be desired. The cells are spacious, wholesome, and well ventilated. Their furniture consists of a hammock suspended from cramp-irons; of a wooden stool, a water-can, and one or two other articles the reverse of luxurious. The ventilation is managed on scientific principles by means of orifices at different altitudes; and so effectual is it that in an experiment which was once made, with three men smoking tobacco in them incessantly for three hours, it was found that the fumes disappeared as fast as they were produced, and that the atmosphere never once lost its transparency. This circumstance is a great consolation for the Mazas prisoners, who can beguile the time with their pipes.

As to the interior régime of the prison, the spacious courts which separate each gallery of cells are divided into promenades, in which the prisoners are free to exercise themselves for at least one hour a day. A part of these promenades is provided with a shelter in view of wet weather. The prisoners take exercise by turns, and always alone, the warders being able from certain points of observation to follow their movements incessantly. An infirmary is attached to the prison, as well as bath rooms, which are no less commodious than cleanly. Each prisoner is known at Mazas by the number of his cell, inscribed on a plate hung above the door, and which is turned over to indicate that the prisoner is away from his cell taking exercise or receiving instruction. Among the special punishments inflicted on the more serious offenders are: exclusion from outdoor exercise, a diet of bread and water, a bare plank bed, and a dark cell.

The administrative and subordinate staff of the Mazas consists of a director, four registration clerks, a brigadier, four sub-brigadiers, sixty-four warders, a laundress, three chaplains, a doctor, a chemist, a female searcher, two barbers, and four commissioners, not to mention some three dozen prisoners employed as assistants.