Thursday, October 4, 2018

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):
  • "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  

The Call of the Terror's Last Victims at Saint Lazare Prison on 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.

Communardes at Saint-Lazare. The visiting room / zoom

In 1871, political prisoners. Louise Michel wrote her mémoires there.

# # #

In 1955 Saint-Lazare became a clinic, then 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.

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