THE CHAPEL-SCHOOL, LA PETITE ROQUETTE.
This last category, entirely isolated from the two others, is itself divided into three classes: the old, the mutinous, and the young. The old culprits are naturally the most resigned to their fate; some even prefer it to liberty. In 1830 a great many of them, forcibly ejected into a state of freedom, returned the same evening to Saint-Lazare. The mutinous ward is occupied by loose women who are refractory to all discipline. It is here that conspiracies are hatched against the prison regulations, and that language is used which no slang dictionary would dare to reproduce. The ward of the young contains those fallen women who are not yet hardened by a long course of vice. It is towards these that moralising influences are chiefly directed; though the attempts to reform them have not, on the whole, been highly successful. Against women of recognised immorality the state laws are notoriously severe. Slighter offences, such as appearing in the street at prohibited hours, venturing out of doors bareheaded, or with an air of solicitation, and drinking to excess, are punished with fifteen days’ to three months’ imprisonment. For graver offences, such as insulting the doctors attached to the administration, or making determined overtures to pedestrians, the minimum term of imprisonment is three months, the maximum close upon a year.
The female warders of the different sections are sisters of the order of Saint-Joseph. All the prisoners are employed at needlework, and[{144}] receive weekly a slender remuneration for so much as they have done. They labour together in vast workshops. The women under correction sleep isolated, in cells; the others sleep, four by four, in rooms or in large dormitories, where, a few years since, it was complained that they were strewn about pell-mell, and so crowded together that their beds frequently touched.
THE POLITICAL QUARTER, SAINTE-PÉLAGIE.
A very able writer, who has made a special study of the régime of different prisons, M. Maxime Ducamp, furnishes statistics showing that in one average year Saint-Lazare gave accommodation to 2,859 ordinary criminals; 232 young girls, of less than sixteen, under correction; and 4,831 unfortunates “administratively” detained, not to mention some 200 women who were infirm.
It is complained that notwithstanding all the divisions and subdivisions which have been made to prevent communication between the different sections of prisoners, the greatest promiscuity reigns at Saint-Lazare. Philanthropists and journalists have constantly raised their voice in the matter, and demanded that a special house should be instituted for young girls in which they would not get corrupted. “Every young girl who enters under correction at Saint-Lazare,” says M. Maxime Ducamp, “issues thence vicious and polluted to the depths of her heart. I have been turning over the leaves of two prayer-books found on a child of hardly sixteen, detained for three months, on the application of her father, in this accursed house, where the walls reek with vice. On the margins the little prisoner has written her thoughts; frequently the dates are indicated, and one can thus follow the progress of her ideas. The study is appalling.” The moral atmosphere of the place, that is to say, was one which the girl could scarcely breathe; though by degrees she became acclimatised, until her last reflections were an outrage against not only virtue, but nature itself.
We will conclude this chapter on the prisons of Paris with a few general observations.