TWO MODEL REFORMATORIES
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.
[Illustration: _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.