This prison was built between 1845 and 1850 by the architects Gilbert
and Lecointe, on the general plans of the English prisons of the same
nature, and was considered at the time a model institution. It succeeded
the Prison de la Force, in the Rue Pavée-au-Marais, immortalized in a
chapter of _Les Misérables_; the new prison was known officially as the
Nouvelle-Force. Popular usage, however, gave it the name which it
retained, from the Place Mazas, at the end of the Pont d'Austerlitz,--the
name of the colonel of the Fourteenth Regiment of the line, killed at
Austerlitz. His family protested strongly against this usage, and in
1858 the administration of prisons abandoned the popular term and
recognized the institution only under the formula: _Maison d'arrêt
cellulaire_. All in vain, even though, in 1879, the Boulevard Mazas
became the Boulevard Diderot.
This prison was the first in France in which was adopted solitary
confinement. In a single night, that of the 19-20th of May, 1850, the
eight hundred and forty-one inmates of the Force were transferred to
Mazas,--a much more expeditious operation than that of the
transportation of the prisoners of Mazas to the Santé, in May, 1898,
which took ten days, at the rate of eighty men a day. It appears that
the prisoners from the Force objected strongly to this system of
solitary confinement in their cells; they gave way to such excesses of
fury and despair that the Académie de Médecine was moved in their
behalf, and protested against the _système cellulaire_ as conducive to
suicide and insanity. The new prison--as any one might see from the top
of the viaduct of the Vincennes railway--was built in the form of a
great wheel, the spokes represented by six long galleries, eighty mètres
in length and twelve and a half in height. The hub of this wheel was a
two-story rotunda, the ground-floor of which was occupied by the central
post of observation, and the upper story by the chapel, which could be
seen from any point in any of the six galleries. At the hour of the
celebration of the mass, on Sundays, the guards set the door of each
cell partly open, so that the prisoner might receive spiritual comfort
if he so pleased,--and if his distance were not too great. Each of the
six galleries was two stories in height, lit by a glass roof. All the
cells received light and air through a grated window, opening on one of
the outside galleries or on one of the interior courts, but placed too
high to afford the inmate any view outside. Each prisoner was entitled
to an hour's exercise in one of the twenty préaux into which the
interior courts were divided. This promenade was always a solitary one,
under the eye of the guardians in the rotunda, and to be deprived of it
was the lightest punishment inflicted. 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. The only _condamnées_ who remain for any length of
time within these walls are the sick, nursing women having a child less
than four years of age, and those enceinte. There is a special _crèche_
for the newly-born babies,--for there are no less than fifty or sixty
births annually. The nursing mothers, whether convicted or only
accused, have special dormitories, and there is a shady garden for
the wet-nurses. The prostitutes are provided with a special section.
These unfortunates have not passed before any court; they have been
condemned without appeal by a Chef de Bureau of the Préfecture de Police
to an imprisonment of from three days to two months. During the day, the
inmates are assembled in a workroom under the surveillance of one of the
Sisters of the Order of Marie-Joseph, to whom is confided a general
oversight of the workrooms and the dormitories. These prisoners take
their meals in common, take their exercise walking in a long file, and
at night sleep in a great chilly and crowded dormitory. Those who have
merited it by their conduct are given one of the cells of the
_ménagerie_, a double story of grated cells, furnished each with a bed,
a stool, a shelf, and an earthenware vessel. The menagerie was formerly
devoted to the service of the _correction maternelle_.
[Illustration: RECORD-OFFICE OF THE ROTUNDA OF THE DEPARTMENTAL PRISON
OF MAZAS. ABOVE IS THE PULPIT FROM WHICH MASS IS SAID EACH SUNDAY.