Long survival of two ancient prisons, St. PÉlagie and Saint Lazare—Both now doomed—The former used for debtors and political prisoners—Saint Lazare principal prison for the female criminal—A detestable place—Originally a convent—Warders are nuns—Piety of inmates—Prayer before trial—Devout inscriptions—Convict marriages with brides from Saint Lazare—Female criminality in proportion to male—Crimes of passion and greed most numerous—Stealing in shops and large stores—The better side of the female in custody—Maternal affection—Universal love of children within the walls—The two Roquettes—Alpha and Omega of crime—Juveniles in La Petite Roquette—Reformed rÉgime—Separate cells replace associated rooms—First agricultural colony—Juvenile depravity largely due to La Petite Roquette.
Among the prisons of Paris two long survived which were really a standing disgrace to France. These were St. PÉlagie and Saint Lazare. They were types of a bygone age. Both were ancient edifices, centuries old, planted in the very heart of crowded localities. They were radically vicious in construction and very backward in the system of discipline in force. In both, continuous association and unrestrained intercourse were permitted among prisoners, so that contamination and deterioration were the inevitable results.
St. PÉlagie received only males—those sentenced correctionally to terms of thirteen months and less, and with them were incarcerated offenders against the adulteration laws, fraudulent bankrupts for small sums, and traders who used short weights. All were herded together indiscriminately, the only exception being made in favor of journalists sentenced for contravention of press laws, all of whom came to it, where they were subjected to a special and entirely different rÉgime from the ordinary prisoners.
St. PÉlagie stood in a quiet and retired part of Paris behind the HÔpital de la PitiÉ and the labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes. It was essentially a prison on the associated plan and found no favor in the sight of French prison administrators who are warm adherents of the principle of cellular separation.
Nothing much can be done with a building not originally intended for the uses to which it is applied. It dates from the seventeenth century, and the charity of a good lady, Marie Bonneau, widow of Beauharnais de Miramion, who created it as a refuge for her unfortunate sisterhood, and gave it as patron the dancer who turned saint,—with whom Charles Kingsley made us acquainted in his novel of “Hypatia.” It was also appropriated for debtors and later for political prisoners, more especially those who offended by their too critical pens. A block known as the “Pavilion” was given over to them exclusively, to which no strangers were admitted; but these litterateurs might be seen all over the prison at any time and beyond their own quarters, commonly called “greater” or “lesser Siberia;” the “big” or “little Tomb.” Their confinement was not irksome, and we are told that they often obtained permission to leave the prison and visit the theatre at night, even to sleep out, always on their solemn promise to return honorably. The famous Proudhon was allowed to take an afternoon walk unattended, beyond the walls. Some of the inmates amused themselves by playing blind man’s buff in the dark passages, and once a mock trial was organised at a sham revolutionary tribunal. By and by the play was repeated in grim earnest. During the Commune there was another trial within St. PÉlagie, ordered by Raoul Rigault, the Communist Prefect of Police, on a prisoner who was promptly sentenced to death and shot.
A good deal of work was done at St. PÉlagie. Prisoners were very industrious and produced good results. One form of trade was the manufacture of paper lamp-shades. Another was that of chignons when this particular style was in fashion. The raw material came from all quarters; the hair merchants bought it from living heads and the chiffoniers picked it up out of the streets. Possibly had the origin of these adornments been better understood, ladies would have been a little loath to wear them. St. PÉlagie has now disappeared and cannot be greatly regretted.
Saint Lazare was long the principal prison for females in Paris. Within its vast enceinte, which includes gardens, fountains and trees, and which is now doomed to early abolition, were collected women of all categories,—those awaiting trial; those sentenced for short terms, and those doomed to go beyond the seas; young girls, some of them quite children, committed to prison at the instance of their parents, “for correction;” and last of all, the unhappy, “filles publiques,” who whether “soumises” or “insoumises,” whether officially inscribed on the police rolls or independently practising their profession, have offended against one or other of the stringent enactments by which the fallen sisterhood are controlled in Paris. The various classes, it is true, are kept as far as possible, even scrupulously apart; but all are practically under one and the same roof and really do intermingle rather freely. The system cannot but be demoralising in the extreme. It is strongly condemned by all earnest, thoughtful Frenchmen, who characterise Saint Lazare as a detestable place, which should forthwith cease to be a prison. “Every young girl,” says Du Camp, “who enters Saint Lazare for correction, leaves it corrupt and rotten to the core.... She is lost unless a miracle intervenes, and the day of miracles is past.” While such association continues, all efforts, and they are many, to protect the still pure or win back the fallen to virtuous ways, cannot but be made in vain.
Hospice de la SalpÊtriere, Paris
Hospital or almshouse for helpless and insane women. Formerly it was a house of detention as well as a hospital, and the treatment was extremely brutal. As many as ten thousand persons have lived within the walls at one time.
Saint Lazare was originally a convent, and with its spacious interior, great dormitories and wide refectories was well suited for a religious house, but it was quite unfit to serve as a prison. The hideous herding together of so many classes, of innocent and guilty, of the absolutely bad and vicious with the young and still unspoilt, is a disgrace to civilisation. Yet great attention is paid to discipline, and ghostly ministrations abound at Lazare. Priests and chaplains there are many to preach and confess; philanthropic ladies come from outside to exhort and expound, and the whole establishment is under the watchful control of a religious sisterhood, that of Marie Joseph, an order which has continuously charged itself with prison labors, and whose devotion and self-sacrifice are beyond all praise. A religious atmosphere prevails. These poor women exhibit often a remarkable piety, very touching in such a place. When a party of prisoners is on the point of starting for the Palace of Justice, every woman expecting sentence kneels before a sacred image and prays for mercy from her earthly judge. This sentiment is further exhibited by the writings on the walls, which are not strictly forbidden as in most gaols. One familiar with them has collected some of the most striking, such as: “God is good, He will have pity on the unfortunate.” “Holy Virgin, I give you my heart; deign to take me under your protection and do not visit my early sins too hardly upon me.” It has well been remarked that the moral effect of Saint Lazare and its surroundings works wonderfully in aid of conversion and reformation. The spectacle of the sisterhood, brought there by a high sense of duty and not merely to earn a living, has an excellent influence upon the fallen and misguided creatures who are under their charge, to whom they devote their unstinting efforts. Another note, that of hungry, unsatisfied affection, can also be read in these inscriptions: “Whoever comes into this cell, your sufferings will never be so acute as when you are separated from the person you love;” again, “My love languishes in this cell, and far from thee whom I adore I constantly groan and grieve.” Sometimes the very opposite feeling finds voice: “Henriette loved her man more than any one, but to-day she hates him.” “I am dying to see him, and if I find he is unfaithful when I come out I will have his neck broken. It is through him that I am here, but I love him all the same with all my heart.” “I cannot forget my dead love which has lodged me here; when I am released my lover may expect to meet me armed with a revolver.” Some are buoyed up by inexhaustible hope: “This is the first day of my instruction (interrogation); the judgment of God is everything, that of man nothing.” “Let us endure our tribulations without murmuring; if they are undeserved our sins will expiate.”
Too often the male sex exhibit a very different spirit. With them it is an ardent passion for vengeance, inditing hatred for a treacherous companion, misplaced pride in their evil deeds. It is “Death to the judge!” “We will avenge our sufferings!” “Vive anarchy!” “Vive the revolution!” “Some day we will blow up all the prisons!” Innumerable phrases like the following are to be met with: “I will kill you when I get out;” “Death to the spy Fernand, who got me here; I will cut him open.” “I should have been acquitted, but my wife betrayed my real name; let her look out!” “B—— the victim missed his vengeance on his miserable brother, but it will come yet,” and so on. The rÉgime of isolation apparently does not stimulate very edifying thoughts.
Reference has been made in another volume of this series to the marriages of convicts under the sentimental idea of regenerating society in New Caledonia. A matrimonial agency was set up in the office of the Marine and Colonies. It was the rule to send a call for the names of female prisoners selected by governors as suitable to be sent out as wives. As might have been expected, no great success attended this scheme. The marriages were never idyllic and seldom even happy. Here are a few of the brides and their antecedents: Catherine P., twenty-four years of age, a bad character, had three natural children, strangled the last with the strings of her apron; Angelique F., hopelessly bad, had two children, last crime, scaled the wall surrounding the house of an aged woman of eighty, robbed her, and on leaving, set fire to the house, not only burning her victim to death, but causing the destruction of three neighboring houses; Julie Marie Robertine C., twenty, a hopeless drunkard, stole a child and buried it alive. Nevertheless applications were made by convicts on the eve of embarkation to be supplied with a wife from Saint Lazare. One wrote, “I am under sentence of eight years for forgery and daily expect to embark for New Caledonia. My family have cast me off, but I am in great hopes that if they thought I was on the way to rehabilitate myself they might be willing to help me. The only way I can see of recovering my position is to marry before I start for the Antipodes. I can have no hope that any respectable person would accept me, and I must have recourse to some one who like myself has come within the grip of the law. Will M. Laumonier (this letter was addressed to the chaplain of La Grande Roquette) put my proposal of marriage before any inmate of Saint Lazare, who might be disposed to accept it?” Unfortunately orders for removal came before any matrimonial alliance could be arranged, but it was by no means an isolated case.
Another letter was received by the chaplain (l’AbbÉ Crozes) much to the same effect. A convict sentenced to six years’ hard labor and ten years’ supervision was equally anxious to marry before his departure, and had already made his choice, but he appealed to the chaplain to assist him in arranging the preliminaries. He is described as a horrible looking ruffian, pale faced and weakly, who pretended to be very much in love; but he would make no admissions as to where he had met the girl who was barely sixteen years old. The chaplain interviewed her and found that the girl had obtained the consent of her parents, and the convict was greatly rejoiced. But next day a letter came from the father directed to l’AbbÉ Crozes, to the effect that his daughter had been deceived, and that he could not consent to her marriage with a convict under sentence of six years. The chaplain then sent for the man to communicate this refusal. But it was evidently no great disappointment. “You are not upset?” he asked. “Not the least in the world,” replied the philosophical bridegroom. As the abbÉ left the prison he saw his friend sitting at the bar of the canteen with three companions merrily employed on a substantial repast.
One more story of a proposed convict marriage. A cunning plot underlay this. The convict’s scheme was that when taken to the church and afterwards to the mayor’s office, he proposed to escape. His intention was to call a halt at a wine-shop and ply his escort, two police inspectors, with drink, and when he had succeeded in making them drunk to get away. But his escort shrewdly penetrated the design, which failed entirely, and the wedding party ended in the return of the bridegroom to his gaol.
The whole question of French female criminality centres within this prison of Saint Lazare. It is a remarkable fact that fewer crimes are committed by females than males in France, and the rule obtains the world over. The proportion varies, according to the statistics presented at the Prison Congress in Stockholm some few years ago. It is more than three per cent. in every hundred of both sexes combined, in some parts of America, North and South, in Japan and India, but it rises to ten per cent. in the United States, to twenty per cent. in China, and throughout Europe it ranges from ten to twenty-one per cent., the latter being the rule in Switzerland. The proportionate number of women accused of crimes in France is between fourteen and fifteen as against eighty-five and eighty-six men. A very intelligible explanation is offered. There are many crimes which women are not tempted to commit, for which they miss the opportunity, or lack facilities and strength. For example, they are seldom convicted of peculation and embezzlement, forgeries and robberies with violence and resistance to authority. Their crimes are mostly inspired by passion and greed. This last named motive reached its climax in the case of the woman concerned in a singularly atrocious murder, who, when asked why she had been a party to the crime, coolly answered, “I wanted a new bonnet very badly.” There is one crime, however, that specially recommends itself to the woman criminal,—that of poisoning,—a fact attested by criminal records in every country and notably in France. It is hardly necessary to quote the numerous instances in which women of all classes have taken advantage of facilities so freely offered to those constantly concerned in domestic affairs. The mistress of a house; the cook in her kitchen; the nurse by the bedside; each of these has it in her power to administer noxious drugs without interference and not seldom without detection. For centuries the crimes of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, a Frenchwoman, have shocked the world and rivalled the wholesale misdeeds of Lucrezia Borgia. The mystery of Madame Lafarge has already been referred to in these pages. The most determined poisoner ever known was the French woman Helene Jegardo, who dealt death to all around her with a white powder which was always kept by her for use in preparing food in her kitchen.
As regards crime in general it is universally agreed that a woman’s influence for evil is often exercised over others. “Cherchez la femme” is constantly quoted by French officers of justice, and it is asserted that the woman plays a commanding part in all associations of criminals so commonly encountered among the Latin races. The organised “band” is very characteristic of the criminal methods in France. It is recruited from all classes and all categories; the lowest classes, habitual thieves and depredators, have no monopoly. There have been bands like that of the “Habits Noir,” the well-dressed people who ravaged Parisian society for some time, and who were directed and assisted by ladies in good position. This band worked very systematically. It had its own agents and men of business, bankers and money lenders and a whole army of blackmailers. A long list might be drawn up of the organisations that have flourished in France. We need not go back to the chauffeurs, the product of the general unrest after the French Revolution, when provincial France was at the mercy of the most active and determined gangs of robbers. The females of these bands rendered the most valuable assistance in seeking outlets for the exercise of their evil practices. After them there was the “Thiebert” band, the largest ever known, numbering some eight hundred members and admirably organised with an effective subdivision of labor. Again, the “Graft” band, a corporative society not unlike the well known firm of English notoriety and addicted mostly to commercial frauds. The Lemaire band was peculiar, not only in its extensive depredations, but because it was mainly composed of the members of two families, a curious instance of the effect of heredity toward the criminal bias.
The organised band still exists, and some of the most baneful have flourished in modern times. That of Vrignault and Chevalier was broken up in 1786 in a trial in which a hundred and fifty culprits were charged. Chevalier with a certain Keippe, a devoted friend, were the moving spirits, and they were well served by women who had passed through Saint Lazare. Two of the women, Piat and Conturier, are said to have surrendered and allowed themselves to be condemned, although really innocent, in order that they might also be transported to New Caledonia—an act of devotion which, according to the director of Saint Lazare and the Parisian police, was by no means rare. Abadie, who subsequently suffered on the guillotine with his confederate Gilles for murdering a woman at Montreuil, desired to revive this method and re-organised the broken up band of Chevalier in a systematic fashion. He was a lad (no more) of extraordinary intelligence and possessed the keenest criminal tendency. It is said of him that he had been educated on criminal fiction and studied his business in the well-known novels of Ponson du Terrail. He had a mania for writing, and, having been reprieved, it was thought that he might assist in the conviction of accused persons by becoming an official informer. He spent his time in addressing letters to the instructing judge, full of false confessions and unsupported charges. In forming his band he adopted the code established by Chevalier, which has been preserved. It is a curious document, showing his logical mind and his practical methods. He formed his society of fourteen, twelve men and two women, and he strictly forbade any of the members to enter into close relations with others. No one was permitted to commit a crime without the express consent of his chief. They were armed with revolvers, hunting knives, loaded canes and knuckle-dusters. They were obliged to possess a certain number of disguises; among others, a workman’s blue blouse, and they were ordered to work when not at their business. They were fined if found drunk in a wine-shop. A daily wage of six francs was accorded to them with an additional ten francs out of the day’s thieving. The women were to act as spies, and to take places as servants in the neighborhood in houses marked for plunder. Those who joined the society were not at liberty to leave it under pain of death. Other regulations of the same tenor laid down strict rules of conduct, and there is little doubt that had the society lasted it would have added greatly to contemporary crime; but it was broken up by the discovery of two murders committed within the first year. Abadie had many imitators, such as the band of the “Bois de Boulogne,” organised by Houillon and Leclerc. In all these it was abundantly proved that the females were the moving spirits. They seldom acted themselves where violence was necessary, but they advised, indicated and encouraged the crimes. They were obeyed readily by their confederates, who were afraid of them, knowing that if dissatisfied or distrustful they would pitilessly betray any one. They were often impelled by jealousy, that powerful incentive in the female character which has led to the invention by French women of that cowardly method of obtaining revenge, the throwing of vitriol in the face of those who offend them.
Of the minor crimes committed by the feminine offender, that of theft is the most common, abundant opportunities for practising it being afforded them, especially in the great shops of Paris. In many cases prevention is preferred to prosecution. A very close supervision is exercised by private police agents disguised as floor-walkers and salesmen, who watch the counters and promptly lay hands upon the light-fingered, who are haled at once to ransom, obliged to surrender the goods or pay for them and fined in proportion to the value of the article stolen. It has been calculated that out of a hundred shop-lifters taken red-handed, quite one quarter are professional thieves, another quarter are impelled by dire necessity, and the remaining half are believed to be kleptomaniacs.
The worst side of the female criminal has now been indicated. She is not all bad, and will exhibit pleasanter traits. She is full of sympathetic kindliness for the unhappy sisters she meets, and is especially affectionate towards the small children and the babies in arms, who are plentiful enough in this abode of misery. The maternal instinct is strong in Saint Lazare, and there are to be seen within its walls many evidences of the deep natural affection a mother has for her offspring. It is pretty to see the pride of the most degraded when one takes notice of her child and praises its looks. How she bursts into jealous rage if her neighbor’s child gets more attention! The strongest help to discipline is exercised through the child, and a woman otherwise incorrigible, whose evil temper no punishment can bring into subjection, will yield abjectly and display exemplary conduct if threatened that she shall be separated from her child. One wretched woman who had been sentenced to a long term bore it quite unconcernedly until her child died, and then, in despair, sought to take her own life. Another woman fiercely refused to part with her dying child. She covered it constantly with kisses, and said more than once in heart-broken tones: “Forgive thy mother, sweet, for having brought thee to die in a prison.” In Saint Lazare as elsewhere, the humanising influence of the child is greatly felt; the prison nursery, the babies’ yard, are bright spots of the dark picture. Everybody wants to pet them, the wildest and most intractable creature has been known to control herself and mend her ways by being entrusted with the care of a child, not necessarily her own, and even to lavish extravagant affection upon it.
It has been said that Saint Lazare will shortly be emptied and a new prison erected on more satisfactory lines. Much greater care will be shown in classification, and the evils of promiscuous intercourse will be as far as possible removed. The wholly abandoned will no longer be able to corrupt the youthful offender who enters prison for the first time. At the same time, prolonged cellular confinement will be inflicted with such judgment as to avoid the dangers that might affect the mental balance of easily impressionable women.
The stranger in Paris, who, whether impelled by morbid fancy or the desire to pay a tribute of respect to the illustrious dead, proposes to visit the great cemetery of PÈre la Chaise, must approach it by the street of La Roquette. The street runs straight from the Place de la Bastile, and through a great portion of its length is a narrow, mournful thoroughfare, bordered by tumble-down tenements and small shops, devoted mostly to the sale of white, yellow or lilac immortelles and to the preparation of tombstones and other gloomy adjuncts of the undertaker’s trade. But within a stone’s throw of the gates of the cemetery, where the street widens a little, stand two imposing edifices, face to face, one of which is the Prison des Jeunes Detenus, the other the Depot des CondamnÉs. Both take their names from the street of La Roquette. It was chance, perhaps, which thus planted these criminal resting-places upon the very threshold of death’s domains, but there is bitter irony in it. Still more bitter is the administrative accident, if such it be, which has decided the separate uses of the two establishments. They are the Alpha and Omega of crime. One, La Petite Roquette, as it is called, receives the embryos, or first beginners, the little gamins of Paris, children with inherited tendencies, perhaps, towards vice, but who are as yet only on its brink; the other, styled La Grande Roquette, was long confined to the haute volÉe of Parisian crime, to the old stagers in this nefarious profession, whose misdeeds had earned for them either lengthened imprisonment, transportation beyond the seas, or the extreme penalty of the law, for La Grande Roquette was “the antechamber to the guillotine.” The first-named owes its origin to the philanthropic desire of the authorities after the Bourbon restoration to improve the prisons of France, which were in deplorably bad order. The food was insufficient and unwholesome, the inmates when sick in the hospital slept three and four in a bed. Especially did the prisons for juvenile offenders need betterment. A so-called Prison Society was created to work to that end. A first measure was to give the young a quarter in the various maisons centrales. The prisons were better ventilated and kept cleaner; regular rations were issued, and employment found. The moral side alone was neglected. There was no separation, no distinction between classes, and the young and untainted associated freely with old and hardened offenders. In July, 1831, lads under sixteen years of age were collected in a wing of St. PÉlagie and afterwards in the Magdelonettes. At the same time the Government authorised a society for the protection of young criminals, to place them out with employers where they might complete their sentence.
A distinguished publicist, Gabriel Delessert, now came in office as prefect of police in Paris, and was so deeply impressed with the existing evils of the children’s prison of La Roquette that he entirely reconstructed it and revised its discipline. This prison of La Roquette had been built in 1825 for females, and had served as such until 1836, when it was adopted as a receptacle for ill conducted and weakly boys, broken by poverty and precocious vice. Here they consorted with others of their class, steadily deteriorating, so that those who entered bad were discharged much worse, and soon fell into fresh and more serious crime. M. Delessert made a strenuous attempt to save them, and decided to seek their amendment at some reformatory establishment in which they could be kept aloof from evil surroundings, isolated and carefully educated by a system of useful labor and good advice from teachers of unquestioned moral character. The interior of La Petite Roquette was completely transformed. Separate cells took the place of the large associated rooms, a marked improvement was seen in the young prisoners, both in demeanor and conduct, with an immediate diminution in the percentage of reconvictions. He was greatly assisted in these most creditable reforms by a worthy priest, the same AbbÉ Crozes, chaplain of the Grand Roquette, whose name and deeds already have been frequently mentioned. Strict separation was the leading principle of treatment. These children were for the most part kept alone, living in single cells, working in seclusion and seldom meeting their fellows, even for exercise or play, until the AbbÉ Crozes introduced the method of exercising singly, and fenced off portions of a yard and the separation at chapel into individual boxes, shutting off the sight of neighbors and concentrating attention in front.
This was the time when prison reformers were crazy about preventing personal contamination, and the rÉgime as applicable to those of tender years did not please all. M. De Metz, the founder of Mettray, that famous agricultural colony for French juveniles, was a magistrate of advanced ideas, who had been sent by his Government to examine and report upon the cellular rÉgime as recently established in the United States. He came back satisfied that it was wholly unsuited for youthful offenders. He much preferred the associated life for them as it obtained in Holland and Belgium, and he strongly advised its adoption. In 1839 he planned a sociÉtÉ paternelle,—a farm school in fact, to receive young criminals and if possible amend them. His motto was “the moralisation of the man by the cultivation of the soil,” and he set himself to collect friends to put his ideas into effect. With another philanthropist, who was a landed proprietor, he secured and endowed the institution known as Mettray on an estate near Tours. Good progress was made, and in 1840 a first house was built, in which forty juveniles were received as into a private family, the head of which was the “father” or master, who was always with his boys, exercising parental control. He knew them by heart; their character and disposition. Each family (there are now twenty houses) is distinct, and has no connection with any other except during work, recreation or divine service. The houses stand in their own ground; they are three stories, divided into living rooms, studies and dormitories.
Mettray was planned on a sound basis, and attained such excellent results that it has been made a model for general imitation, especially in France, where many such agricultural colonies are now to be found, all on the family principle, with numerous houses and extensive well-managed farms. The results obtained at Mettray have been highly satisfactory. Fully half of those who have passed through it have taken to honest labor, as artisans or in the fields. Many have entered the army and the Government service, earning decorations and promotion. A large percentage have married and become respectable citizens. Some hostile critics—notably the Russian Prince Kropotkine, who spent some time in various prisons—speak ill of the Mettray system as cruel in its discipline, but general opinion in France does not condemn it, and admits a great debt of gratitude to M. De Metz, in which indeed the whole world joins. Mettray was the starting point in the movement towards child rescue and the systematic efforts for the protection and reclamation of the juvenile with a natural bias towards crime, so often encouraged to evil deeds by the misfortune of birth and heredity, the evil influence of home surroundings, or worse still the absence of good example or moral training.
Juvenile depravity has unhappily long been prevalent in France, and is strongly marked. This is largely due to a faulty system, mistaken methods of treatment in the various prisons and especially in La Petite Roquette. Intercommunication between its inmates, despite strict discipline, is easy and frequent, and the most depraved exert a baneful influence over the whole. Most youthful crimes have originated in La Roquette. “My parents ought not to have sent me here” (under the law which permits a parent to try imprisonment to mend incorrigible children), said one lad. “They thought to reform me; it has been altogether the reverse.” “My first offence,” said another, “was stealing fruit, and it brought me to La Roquette. When one comes once, one returns often.” “The cell does not keep us apart, and we go out far worse than when we enter,” said still another. Hence the prevalence of serious juvenile crime. “A French child,” writes an experienced magistrate, “organises a murder as he would a pleasure party.” One was so light-hearted on his way to commit a great crime that an accomplice rebuked him saying, “If you laugh too much our coup will fail.” Another, who had already committed murder, wrote on his cell wall: “When one’s pockets are empty it is easy to understand why there are criminals.”
This prison as it now stands covers much ground and has considerable architectural pretensions. It consists of six wings grouped round a central building, with which they are connected by light iron bridges. This central building is circular and three storied. The lowest, or basement, contains the kitchen. The parloir, or place where the prisoners see their friends, occupies the second. The chapel is on the top floor. The wings have also three stories, and the cells on each story open from a central passage, lighted at the end, while the whole interior is warmed very indifferently by stoves. The rÉgime of the prison is based upon the principle of isolation; a system which might, if carried to any extreme of severity, prove cruelly harsh to prisoners of tender years. The solitude enforced is not unbroken, however. Each boy, whatever his age (and this varies from eight or nine to sixteen or seventeen), works in his cell, sorting flowers for immortelles, the staple product of the neighborhood; polishing brass work, manufacturing and gilding chairs; but he is visited constantly by the contremaÎtre or contractor’s foreman, who teaches and superintends; by the brigadier and wardens of the wing, or by the Director—the governor and chief of the establishment, who is continually going his rounds. The present head of the boys’ prison is a kindly and sympathetic person, who tempers the rigors of discipline by the warm and lively interest he takes in his flock. It is almost touching to see how the eyes of the little waifs brighten as he enters their cells; how one greets him with a cheery “bon jour,” and another catches his hand and kisses it. They will prattle to him of their doings or the homes where they are probably unhappy and which they scarcely regret. They will lament their misdeeds, and make many promises to behave better another time.
After all, they are not badly off in La Petite Roquette. Ill-used, half-starved gutter children have been heard to speak in high praise of a place where they were well housed, well clothed, treated kindly and,—strange experience for them,—where they got something to eat every day of their lives. The confinement within four walls, at an age when life is full of spring and movement, is no doubt irksome to these little Arabs of the streets; but the Administration does its best to provide them with certain regulation amusements. In the exercising yards they may be seen behind the iron bars trundling hoops; and squads of them, each standing alone in his own separate compartment, are exercised in the “extension motions” by word of command—“un,” “deux,” “trois,” and so forth; words which they are obliged to repeat in a shrill treble, with the double idea of enforcing attention and, by tiring their voices, of removing all desire to chatter among themselves.
In many respects, the establishment is a model one; and it does, in fact, serve as such for those who conduct juvenile reformatories in all civilised quarters of the globe.
Saint Lazare, indeed, is still in use; and only in December, 1905, after having been repeatedly condemned, could it be said that its days were numbered. A General Council of the Department of the Seine at that time voted a sum for the erection of an entirely new prison. The authorities were urged to begin at once the demolition and ex-propriation of the establishment. No doubt the cost of the new site and new buildings will be sensibly assisted by the sale of the present premises, situated in the heart of Paris and on very valuable property.
