Saint-Lazare Prison

“ A large proportion of the population of Saint-Lazare were essentially women of the people, girls fresh from the restraints and hard monotony of shop and warehouse. They were in prison perhaps for the first time, paying the penalty of some not very serious offence against the law. But they would leave the gaol with its taint upon them, and whither should they go? The young and pretty ones amongst them were flattered by the addresses and importunities of the harridans who were there to recruit for the maisons de tolérance, and who promised them silk gowns, fine company, and gold pieces. ”

“ It has been said that Saint Lazare will shortly be emptied and a new prison erected on more satisfactory 213 lines. Much greater care will be shown in classification, and the evils of promiscuous intercourse will be as far as possible removed. ”

“ In a listless attitude, almost unconscious, a young girl was seated at the end of a bench, quiet as a working woman who waits the price of her day’s labor. She wore the calico bonnet, and the sad costume of Saint-Lazare with an air of repose and of well-being, as though the prison régime were the best thing she had found in all her life. The guard, who sat beside her, seemed to find her much to his taste, and they laughed together softly. At the other end of the lobby, wholly in the shadow, was seated, handcuffs on wrists, the Desgrieux of this Manon. ”

“ A large proportion had lost both parents, or had been driven from home; many had left the provinces to seek work in Paris; some were widows who could find no other means of supporting their children; and others were daughters looking for bread for aged parents, or for younger sisters and brothers.
And now, standing on the threshold of their prison, we may ask what were the commoner causes which sent these unfortunates to Saint-Lazare. It has been made sufficiently clear that by the act of procuring their licences they sold their liberty to the police. ”

“ She was used to insults and vulgar language; they made me ill. She did not mind very much what she ate... nor did I, if only it were clean, but food was not, could not, be clean at Saint-Lazare, where elementary cleanliness and hygiene were quite unknown.
It would be difficult to conceive a prison more hopelessly dilapidated and insanitary than Saint-Lazare. The walls are cracked; the passages and staircases are evil-smelling; vermin abounds everywhere; light and air are worse than scant ”

“ The most severe, in extreme cases, was imprisonment in the cachot, or dungeon.
Saint-Lazare (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction) , on the Faubourg Saint-Denis, is at once a hospital, a police station, and a prison for women, and its methods and regulation have long been the object of earnest denunciation. As a prison for women, it is divided into two sections, for those accused, and for those condemned to less than two months' imprisonment; among the latter are women of the town, who have a special hospital. ”

“ Her whole attitude is one of resignation so pitiful that, unattractive woman though she is, a man’s heart fairly bleeds for her, and one feels a longing to try and comfort [Pg 56] and console her as one would console a child who has been beaten. Morally and mentally the prisoner in Saint Lazare is being beaten all the time that she is in prison. There is no physical punishment, there is no active cruelty, there is only the terrible deadweight of the prison system; but this is quite enough to unsettle and to dull the most active brain. There is no doubt that the active brains suffer the most. ”

“ 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;” ”

“ I can fancy some reader saying: "Pools of water in a cell, broken tiles, mice, cockroaches by the hundred!... She exaggerates.... She is describing a cell in some prison of another century...." I am not exaggerating; "Saint-Lazare" does not belong to another century. It is so old and tumble-down that, more than once, when looking into some dark room on my way to the parlour or the Director's office, I almost expected to see the heavy chains, the thumb-screws, the rack, the bilboes and other instruments of a torture-chamber! ”

“ During the Consulate and the Empire, she might be sent to prison as a femme publique; but after the Restoration it became the custom to punish her—on any conviction involving the conduct of her house—by suppression of her licence.
If, however, no attempt at classification was made by the prison director, certain distinctions of rank existed which were generally acknowledged by the prisoners themselves. The authors of Les Prisons de Paris mention a class of elegant adventuresses who were always apart in Saint-Lazare, and who stood as the shining examples of the aristocracy of vice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In hard weather the public women of the poorer class seem to have suffered keenly both from hunger and from cold. Untried, and presumably innocent (and many honest women were sent to Saint-Lazare on the vaguest accusations or suspicions of the police) , they were compelled to receive the visits of the doctors, which were not always of the most delicate character. Women awaiting trial sometimes offered money to escape this humiliation, and the case is recorded of a girl who preferred suicide to submission.
It was better, in respect of physical comfort, on the penal side of the prison. ”

“ Each affords ample provision for the different categories of prisoners to be lodged, prévenues or those waiting trial, short term prisoners and juveniles. The first design was to receive females at Fresnes, but Saint Lazare is eventually to be replaced by another especially constructed prison for their reception. The main entrance of this principal quarter is in the centre, with a gatekeeper’s lodge on one side and a military guard under an officer on the other. ”

“ No; in a prison, over-indulgence means chaos; present weakness means future severity. At Saint Lazare steady, unswerving vigilance is observed, and silence enforced among the prisoners. Discipline being maintained evenly, not spasmodically, the prisoners can be allowed privileges very important to them. {780} Visitors are admitted twice a week to converse with the women through two gratings, as at Newgate, a sister standing in the narrow passage between. Recreation in the yards is taken in common, instead of separately. ”

“ If a woman died in the prison, it was not unusual for the rest to club together to provide a substantial and costly funeral, and masses for the repose of her soul. Sometimes the affections of the whole prison, directed upon one weak girl, had the result of saving her from ruin and insanity.
In the early years of the Restoration, Marie M——, a pretty peasant girl, was sent to Saint-Lazare for stealing roses. ”

“ The tresses of the women, however, remain unshorn; though formerly female prisoners, to their own furious indignation, were deprived of this their chief adornment. According to one article of the prison regulations, a footbath must be furnished to each prisoner at least once in two months, and a large bath at least twice a year. It is to be hoped that the officials of the different prisons do not really limit those under their charge to such an atrociously infrequent application of necessary water.
THE COURTYARD, SAINT-LAZARE.
The infirmaries are very competently organised. ”

“ Then there are three “preventive” prisons—Mazas and La Santé for men and the Conciergerie for both sexes. One portion of Saint-Lazare is also set apart for the accommodation of the fair sex. Sainte-Pélagie and Saint-Lazare—the first for men and the second for women—are houses of correction for prisoners sentenced to one year or less. It is at Sainte-Pélagie that political prisoners are for the most part confined. In La Roquette are lodged prisoners under sentence of death and offenders condemned to more{132} than one year. ”

“ We shall now proceed to describe another mode of dealing with offenders against the fundamental order of society. In addition to convict establishments there exists throughout the United Kingdom a large number of places of confinement called Local Prisons. In England and Wales there are about sixty Local Prisons; in Scotland there are about twenty; in Ireland there are about eighteen. In Scotland and Ireland persons sentenced to a few days' imprisonment are often confined in police cells, in England all convicted offenders serve their sentence, however short, in a regular Local Prison. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One hundred and thirty convicts with terms ranging from 2 to 15 years, too busy with their day’s labor or their evening’s sports to think of evil, are building the new penitentiary or tilling the soil. Only nine hours a day, that time allotted for sleep, are the prisoners under lock and key. They go about their various duties under the direction of a guard or overseer, but the shotgun or rifle, usually accompanying such officer, is conspicuous by its absence.
The prison gives promise of being the ideal penal institution of the world.
The site is ideal for the work to be accomplished. ”

“ The justice which, for the sake of society, restrains the freedom of the offender, yields entirely to the mercy that turns to that offender’s temporal and eternal good. This infliction, that separates him from his associates in felony, frees society from apprehension of his crimes.
We speak here of the infliction of the Penitentiary. The case of a convict in the County prison has in it much less of severity, and is proportionately therewith of less benefit to him and less advantageous to society. ”

“ In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common during the daytime in small easily managed workshops, or better still, in the open air as at Portland Prison in England, is the penitentiary system which offers the fewest drawbacks. ”

“ It is now proposed to separate this class of prisoners from others; but is punishment operative on them at all? Is not their proper place an asylum?
In the third place, there is the discharge from prison; and truly, if the prevention of crime be a main object of society, it is just when a man is released from prison that, from a social point of view, there would seem most reason to send him there. For even if, whilst in prison, he has learned no dishonest means of livelihood, how shall he, when out of it, set about obtaining an honest one? ”

“ Lazare is a prison for women under indictment and those who have been sentenced to a term less than one year. One department of the prison, which is entirely separated from the rest, is devoted to prostitutes, and another distinct department is devoted to girls under sixteen years of age. Each department has its own infirmary, and a new plan has been adopted to stimulate the inmates to industry. They are allowed two-thirds pay for all the work they will perform in the prison. Every kind of manufacture is carried on in the prison—the preparation of cashmere yarn, hooks and eyes, etc. ”

“ A road encircles and isolates the whole. The buildings are four-storeyed, sufficiently well ventilated, and capable of accommodating twelve hundred offenders. The women immured at Saint-Lazare are divided into three categories. The first consists of women convicted of crimes or misdemeanours; the{143} second of girls under age condemned for indiscreet conduct to remain till their majority in a house of correction, as also of girls whose parents have incarcerated them on a judge’s order, and girls below sixteen, detained for vagabondage or prostitution. ”

“ Every prisoner now finds exactly the same treatment, according to his class and sentence, from Land's End to the Orkney Isles. Whether only an accused person, a debtor, misdemeanant, or condemned felon, he is kept strictly apart, occupying a cell to himself, the dimensions of which assure him a minimum air-content of 800 cubic feet, and which has been duly certified by one of the government prison inspectors as fit for his occupation, being lighted, heated, ventilated, and provided with bell communications, which are electric in some of the new prisons. ”