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.
[Illustration: GARDES MUNICIPAUX: ARREST OF A DESERTER. After a drawing
by I. Marchetti.]
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.
The liberality of Mazarin, of the king, and of some of the wealthier
citizens provided the administration of this great institution with its
principal resources; the cardinal gave it at one time a hundred thousand
livres, and left it sixty thousand francs in his will. It was exempted
from numerous taxes and imposts, it was entitled to a third of all the
confiscations awarded the king; to those fines imposed in the city, the
faubourgs, and the jurisdiction of the _prévôt_ of Paris which were not
otherwise applied, to the duty on wine entering the city, to five sous
on each _minot_ [three bushels] of salt sold in the granaries of Paris,
to a quarter of the fines from the departments of streams and forests,
to a tax on the admissions to theatres, etc. Later, the Hôpital-Général
was authorized to open the first _mont-de-piété_, or pawnbroking
establishment, in France.
In addition to all their other functions, the Bicêtre and the
Salpêtrière were created, by the regulation of April 20, 1684, _maisons
de correction_ for children of good families, of both sexes. The bureau
of the Hôpital-Général ordered the arrest of idle, disobedient, or
dissipated children, at the request of fathers or mothers, tutors or
guardians, or of the nearest relatives, and even, in case of the death
of the parents, on the complaint of the curés of their parishes.
"Although originally created principally as a philanthropic institution,
the Hôpital-Général was assuming more and more a penitentiary character;
the regulation of 1680 had already added to the list of its criminals
'vagabond individuals, whom idleness leads to an infinite number of
irregularities,' and had directed its officers to imprison them in a
special prison, either for a determinate period or for life; there, they
were to be given only the amount of food actually necessary to sustain
life, and were employed at the hardest labor that their strength would
permit. It does not appear that this frightful severity produced any
result, for, from year to year, new edicts were constantly appearing,
redoubling these rigorous measures against the mendicants."
[Illustration: IN THE GALLERIES OF THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE: A CONFERENCE
OF "AVOCATS."