Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 2

by William Walton

The foundations of the older portions of this immense edifice were laid by Louis XIII, who began here the construction of an arsenal; the name, Salpêtrière, is derived from a manufactory of saltpetre (salpêtre) either in the buildings or in the neighborhood. By a decree of 1648, the buildings of the Salpêtrière or the Petit-Arsenal, situated in the Faubourg Saint-Victor near the confluence of the Seine and the Bièvre, were assigned as a prison for filles et femmes débauchées; and in 1653 this establishment was placed under the direction of the administrators of the pauvres enfermez, under the supervision of Mazarin. In 1656, the whole establishment was presented by Louis XIV, then in his minority, to the administration of the Hôpital-Général; the greater part of the present buildings date from this period. At this time, says a contemporary report, the asylum consisted of "two main buildings and of fifteen grand dormitories of thirty or forty toises each, which are now occupied by six hundred and twenty-eight poor women of every quality that human misery could cause to conceive; one hundred and ninety-two children, from two to seven years of age, legitimate and bastards, exposed and abandoned to the care of Providence, and which are brought up by the poor women of the institution and shared among themselves as adopted, with the same affection as if they were their own, and twenty-seven officers and mistresses of the aforesaid dormitories, who are charged to watch over the conduct of the poor.

"Then there is a large new building which has been commenced for the reception of the married beggars...."

The chapel of the establishment was originally constructed of planks from demolished river-boats; in 1669, Louis XIV replaced it by a church more in keeping with the importance of the institution. In 1684, there was constructed a special quarter for "the debauched women," which was called the maison de force; the unfortunates confined here were subjected to the most rigorous regulations, their labor was made "as severe as possible," but was ameliorated if they showed signs of repentance; their food was restricted to bread, soup, and water, they were clothed in linsey-woolsey gowns and wore sabots, and they slept upon straw, with a thin coverlet. For lighter faults they were punished by withdrawal of the soup, imprisonment in the cachot, and the wearing of the carcan, or wooden collar; for graver offences they were locked up, for longer or shorter periods, in a dark and filthy dungeon which was called the Malaise, and which was much like the in pace of the Middle Ages. A regulation of this same year, 1684, applied the same system to the convicted prisoners and to the women imprisoned at the instance of their relatives or their husbands. The maison de force, placed in the centre of the Salpêtrière, became the prison de la Force. It included the commun, for the most dissolute and degraded women; the correction, in which were placed those who gave some hopes of reform; the prison, reserved for those detained by the king's orders, and the grande Force, for those condemned by the courts. The women and young girls destined to be sent to the colonies were kept in the Salpêtrière while waiting for their embarkation.

In 1780 were erected the infirmaries of the prison; these were destined for the reception of young girls enceinte, furious insane female patients, and the incurables of all kinds. Previous to this, all the inmates who became ill were sent to the Hôtel-Dieu. Eight years later, Tenon wrote that he had seen eighty thousand persons in the Salpêtrière; and La Rochefoucauld's description of the condition of this prison-hospital and its inmates is almost equally incredible: "The most horrible enclosure that could be presented to the eyes of those who have preserved some respect for humanity is that in which nearly two hundred women, young and old, attacked by the itch, scald-head, and scrofula, sleep four or five in a bed promiscuously, communicating to each other all those diseases which contagion can propagate. How many times, in traversing all these haunts of misery, does not one say to himself with horror that it would be almost less cruel to allow the human race to perish than to preserve it with so little care and consideration!" There were then imprisoned here a considerable number of female insane who were considered incurable, and whose condition was even more frightful,—they were "chained in small wooden cells, low and narrow, veritable dungeons, damp and infectious, receiving light and air only by the door, and they were treated with the utmost brutality. That which rendered their dwellings more deadly, frequently fatal, was that, in winter, during the inundations of the Seine, these cells, situated on a level with the drains, became not only much more insalubrious, but, moreover, a place of refuge for very large rats, which during the night attacked the wretches confined there and bit them on every exposed portion of their bodies."

"At the morning visit, these lunatics would be found with their feet, their hands, and their faces torn by bites, which were very often dangerous, and of which several of them died."

In a report of one of the administrateurs des hospices, M. Desportes, this fact is attested; and one of the first cares of the conseil général of the hospices was to order a general renovation and reform, a thorough cleansing out. On the 1st Germinal, year X, the population of the Salpêtrière was reduced to four thousand individuals,—three thousand and forty in good health, six hundred insane, and three hundred sick. In 1815, the large building devoted to the epileptics was completely restored, and three years later the basement cells were all closed; in 1823, the hospital took the name of Hospice de la Vieillesse-femmes. In 1834, 1835, and 1836, further improvements and additions were made, and in 1845 the great reservoir of water was constructed, fed by the canal de l'Ourcq.

By royal letters-patent accompanying the edict of April 27, 1656, the union, under the direction of the Hôpital-Général, of the Salpêtrière, the hospital Saint-Jacques, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and other houses, revenues, and dependencies appertaining to the Confrérie de la Passion, was declared; but the Hôpital Saint-Jacques never came into this union. To the Bicêtre were sent all the poor, men, sick and well; the Pitié was devoted in part to boys and youths, and at the maison de Scipion were established the butchers and the bakers for all the inmates of these various establishments. All mendicants, sick and well, came under the jurisdiction of the Hôpital-Général; all were required to labor according to their strength, and fifty-two skilled workmen were designated by their corporations or guilds to direct the workrooms established in the different branches of these institutions. "Prison labor" was not then the bugaboo it has since become to "organized labor." The directors had the right to administer justice among all the inmates of their institutions; the punishments most in vogue were the whipping-post, the carcan, the prison, and the lower dungeons. The missionary priests of Saint-Lazare had charge of the spiritual instruction of the mendicants, under the authority and jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Paris.

All this being regulated, it was announced in all the pulpits of the different parishes of Paris that the Hôpital-Général would be opened the 7th of May, 1657, for all the poor who wished to enter it of their own free will, while all mendicants were forbidden, by the voice of the public crier, to ask alms anywhere in the city. On the 13th, a mass of the Saint-Esprit was celebrated in the church of the Pitié, and the next day it was announced that five thousand of the poor had been admitted to the hospitals. It was then proposed to expel from Paris all those who had not come to constitute themselves inmates, or to imprison them by force; but this was found to be difficult. A patrol was sent through the city to gather up all these refractory ones, but the populace rose to recapture all those who had been arrested,—lackeys, bourgeois, artisans, soldiers, and especially soldiers of the guards, excited by the women of the town, gave themselves up to thieving and pillaging in the vicinity of the Salpêtrière and the Bicêtre and the other establishments of the Hôpital-Général.