VANISHED JAILS

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION SAINT-LAZARE WAS A PRISON

FOR THOSE WHO ANGERED THE POWERFUL  

It was much harsher than Bastille.There wealthy prisoners offered sumptuous dinners to their friends, while at Saint-Lazare the isolation was such that a curtain separated inmates at mass.

• Henri-Louis Loménie de Brienne's family used his disrespect for codes of behavior as a pretext for having him incarcerated there for 18 years (1674-1692):

Zoom

• "When my pages behave badly, I send them for a few months to Saint-Lazare; the boys are very good and docile when they leave it. They are whipped twice a day and more when they protest."

-- The Princess Palatine (Louis XIV's sister-in-law) 

to the Duchesse of Hanover, Versailles, February 12,  1702

*      *

During the Terror, a State prison  

Call of the Last Victims of the Terreur at the Prison of Saint Lazare le 7-9 Thermidor 1794 by Charles-Louis Müller / zoom

The condemned hear the names of those slated for the next cart-load to the guillotine. The artist is somewhere in the crowd. 

Seated at the center is the poet André Chénier, a forerunner of Romanticism. He read Sophocles while waiting his turn beneath the guillotine and when the executioner came to tie his hands, marked the page.

Robespierre was overthrown two days later. 

*     *

Then a women's prison 

The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, 1848

Women were jailed for abortion, prostitution, adultery or like Celeste Venard, for being homeless. They made up 15% of the incarcerated population, as opposed to 4% today.

The Parisian vestiges of  Saint-Lazatre, from the medieval leproserie to the women's prison, by Romane Fraysse in Paris ZigZag, 2023 / zoom

Communards at Saint-Lazare. The Visitng Room  / zoom

In 1871, after the repression of La Commune, political prisoners. Louise Michel wrote her memoires there.

*      *

In 1955 Saint-Lazare became a clinic, and in 1998 closed definitively. Today a day-care center, a social center, a gym, the second-largest media library in Paris and a park replace it.

"I love this little place!" 

I heard someone say as I was taking pictures.

End of this section.

*    *    *

The next section, 

2.3.7.

Immigrants energize tradition