The functions of the Châtelet—cette justice royale ordinaire à Paris—were great and various. It was charged in effect, says Desmaze,[[11]] with the maintenance of public safety in the capital, with the settlement of divers causes, with the repression of popular agitations, with the ordering of corporations and trades, with the verification of weights and measures. It punished commercial frauds, defended "minors and married women," and kept in check the turbulent scholars of the University. Its magistrates were fifty-six in number; it had its four King's Counsel and its King's Procurator; its clerk-in-chief and his host of subordinates; its receivers, bailiffs, and ushers; its gaolers and its sworn tormentor; its "sixty special experts"; its surgeon and his assistants, including a sage-femme or mid-wife; and its two hundred and twenty sergents à cheval.
[11]. Le Châtelet de Paris.
All in all, the Châtelet was one of the most formidable powers in Paris. The court of the Châtelet comprised four divisions, administered by councillors who sat in rotation. The four sections were distinguished as the parc civil, the présidial, the chambre du conseil, and the chambre criminelle.
But the Prison of the Châtelet is our principal concern. Although, says Desmaze, the prison was instituted for the safe-keeping and not for the maltreatment of the accused, the law's design was too often eluded or ignored. Much the same might be said in respect of any other prison in Europe at that epoch. Antique papers cited by Desmaze show, nevertheless, that Parliaments of Paris sought by successive decrees to modify the rigour of the prisoner's lot, to restrain the cupidity of his gaolers, and to maintain decent order within the prison. There were provisions against gambling with dice, rules for the distribution of alms amongst the prisoners, and penalties for those who absented themselves from chapel. In 1425, a new ordonnance fixed the scale of fees (geôlage) which prisoners were to pay to the governor or head gaoler on reception. (This ironic jest of compelling persons to pay for the privilege of going to prison obtained for centuries in Newgate.) A count or countess was charged ten livres, a knight banneret (chevalier banneret) passed in for ten sols, a Jew or a Jewess for half that sum; and so on to the end of the scale. There were particular injunctions as to the registering of prisoners, and as to the mode of keeping the prison books. The bread served out was ordered to be de bonne qualitè, and not less than a pound and a half a day for each prisoner: in 1739, the baker who supplied the Châtelet was condemned to a fine of 2000 livres for adulterating the prisoners' bread. A special ration of bread and meat was distributed at the Châtelet on the day of the annual feast of the confraternity of drapers, and the goldsmiths of Paris gave a dinner on Easter Day to such of the prisoners as would accept their bounty.
The deputies of the Procureur Général were instructed to visit the prison once a week, to examine and receive in private the requests and complaints of the prisoners, and to see that the doctors did their duty by the sick. The first Presidents of the Paris Parliament seem to have visited the Châtelet frequently from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century.
But there was one circumstance which, in Mediæval Paris and in the Paris of a much later date, must have gone far to nullify all good intentions and humane precautions of kings and parliaments alike. Under an ordonnance of July, 1319, Philippe le Long decreed that the governorships of gaols should be sold at auction. The purchasers were, of course, to be "respectable persons" (bonnes gens), who should pledge their word to deal humanely by (de bien traiter) the prisoners; but of what use were such provisos? In no circumstances, indeed, could a saving clause of any description ensure the proper administration of a prison the governor of which had bought the right to make private gain out of his prisoners. For this was what the selling of gaolerships came to. Having paid for his office (having bought it, moreover, over the heads of other bidders), the governor recouped himself by fleecing his wealthy prisoners and by stinting or starving his poorer ones. It was no worse in France than elsewhere; until Howard demanded reform, prisoners in Newgate were plundered right and left under a similar system, and those who could not pay the illegal fees of the governor and his subordinates were lodged in stinking holds, and fed themselves as they could.
We shall see what the prisons of the Châtelet and the Fort-l'Évêque were like amid the luxuries and refinements which surrounded them in the eighteenth century. An ordonnance of 1670 had enjoined that the prisons should be kept in a wholesome state, and so administered that the prisoners should suffer nothing in their health. Never, says Desmaze, was a decree so miserably neglected.
What are the facts? He quotes from an "anonymous eighteenth-century manuscript" ("by a magistrate") entitled: Projet concernant l'établissement de nouvelles Prisons dans la Capitale. The Fort-l'Évêque and the Châtelet are turned inside out for such an inspection as Howard would have made with a gust.
In the court or principal yard of Fort-l'Évêque, thirty feet long by eighteen wide, from four to five hundred prisoners were confined. The prison walls were so high that no air could circulate in the yard; the prisoners were "choked by their own miasma." The cells "were more like holes than lodgings"; and there were some under the steps of the staircase, six feet square, into which five prisoners were thrust. Other cells, in which it was barely possible to stand upright, received no light but from the general yard. The cells in which certain prisoners were kept at their private charge were scarcely better. Worst of all were the dens belowground. These were on a level with the river, water filtered in through the arches the whole year round, and even in the height of summer the sole means of ventilation was a slit above the door three inches in width. Passing before one of the subterranean cells, it was as though one were smitten by fire (on est frappé comme d'un coup de feu). They gave only on to the dark and narrow galleries which surrounded them. The whole prison was in a state of dilapidation, threatening an immediate ruin.