Hospice de la Salpêtriere, ParisHospital 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.
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 theunfortunate.” “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, hadthree 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 convictsentenced 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 toget 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 methodsin 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 thechauffeurs, 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 themost 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 hislogical 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 wereafraid 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 strongin 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 satisfactorylines. 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 thehaute voléeof 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 variousmaisons 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 yearsof 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 percentageof 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 asociété paternelle,—a farm school in fact, to receive young criminals and if possible amend them. His motto was “the moralisation ofthe 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 spentsome 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. Hencethe 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. Theparloir, 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 andgilding chairs; but he is visited constantly by thecontremaîtreor 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 standingalone 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.
Fresnes—Final stage in the criminal career—The last chosen site for the guillotine—History of the guillotine—Earlier models of the instrument—The Italian “mannaia”—The “Maiden” used in Edinburgh and some cities in Yorkshire—Opinions on capital punishment—The alternative—Condition of eighty murderers who escaped the death sentence, when seen at Ghent ten years later—La Grande Roquette—Its inmates—The condemned cell—The march to the scaffold—Principal executions in late years—Verger murders the Archbishop of Paris in 1857—Avinain and other cruel murderers—Campi and Marchandon who took life boldly in the best parts of Paris—Execution of the hostages during the Commune—The site still preserved and honored—Passing of La Roquette—New and imposing prison of Fresnes on the outskirts of Paris—Opened in 1898—Closing considerations.
France, in building the prison of Fresnes, may be said to have given to the world a model penitentiary. It is the perfection of penal architecture and structural fitness for the purpose intended. Before proceeding to its consideration, however, let us take up the story of La Grande Roquette and the later annals of criminality with which it is identified.
Immediately opposite La Petite Roquette is the great prison of the same name. As I have already suggested, it is the final stage in the criminal careerwhich began in some minor offence, punished by a few days’ detention in the boys’ prison, and here ends at the scaffold upon the Place de la Roquette. It is more by administrative design than definite design that these two extremes, the criminal cradle and the place of final doom, are thus brought into close juxtaposition. Various sites in Paris have been used from time to time for the dread performance of “law’s finisher” commonly styled in stilted legal language the “executeur des hautes œuvres,” the official instrument for completing capital punishment. He was the agent of High Justice and might hold his head above his fellows who feared and hated him because he was the vindicator of the law. The office was not exactly honorable, but it was lucrative, and its holder enjoyed many privileges. He was entitled to levy taxes on food, upon all the corn brought into the market, and on fruit, grapes, nuts, hay, eggs and wool. He collected a toll on all who passed the Petit Pont (the bridge near the Châtelet). Every leper paid him a fee, and he acquired, by right of office, all the clothes of which his victims died possessed. But he carried a badge of shame, a ladder embroidered on the breast of his coat and a ladder on the back. His office was hereditary; son succeeded father, and if the next in succession was of tender years a substitute was appointed, but the rightful executioner, sometimes no more than seven or eight, stood by the headsman as if to sanction his proceedings.The Sansons filled the awful post for seven generations, nearly two hundred years. They were for the most part in good repute and highly esteemed by their royal masters. Louis XI indeed made a chosen companion of his executioner, Tristan L’Hamitte, whom he ennobled.
The ceremony of inflicting death was performed anywhere in early days, often from choice in the theatre of the crime. For a century or more the Place de la Grève was the favored spot, and was used until the revolution of 1830, but the scaffold was sometimes erected at the Halles (the central markets) or the Croix du Trahoir or in almost any wide street or square. The Barrier of Saint Jacques was substituted for the Place de la Grève in 1832. It was a convenient distance from the Conciergerie, in which prison the condemned found their last resting-place. The execution was fixed always for the afternoon, and the drive through the crowded streets was considered a scandal, so that a further change was decreed.
The prison of La Grande Roquette had spare accommodation available. This place had been in existence some years under the name of Little Bicêtre, and had been used as adépôt des condamnés, in which were lodged all sentenced totravaux forcéswhile awaiting further removal to the seaportbagnesor the great central prisons. The concentration of so many desperate characters under one roof led them to feel their strength andmeasure it against authority in a serious outbreak in 1886, in which the Director would have lost his life, but for the courageous intervention of a veteran chief warder. From that time forth the worst criminals were no longer sent to La Grande Roquette, but retained in the central prisons after sentence, from which when condemned to transportation they were collected by agents and taken on to St. Martin de Ré to take ship for the Antipodes. Thebagneswere abolished some time before those of Brest and Rochefort in 1850, and Toulon in 1872.
But one quarter in La Grande Roquette was especially appropriated to convicts condemned to death, and they proceeded after a more or less lengthy detention direct from their cells to the guillotine. These were in all cases the most notable murderers only, for increasing reluctance to inflict the extreme penalty has been exhibited in France, and successive presidents of the Republic, from President Grévy on, have constantly commuted sentences to penal exile and spared lives that were clearly forfeited. For the last forty years all who were actually executed passed through La Grande Roquette, and a brief survey of the principal malefactors and the circumstances attending the last dread event will be given here.
A few words as to the guillotine; that instrument now invariably used for capital punishment in France. It has played so large a part in the modernFrench history that it will be interesting to trace its origin back to the days of its godfather and supposed inventor, a certain Doctor Guillotin, who in the Revolutionary times was very eager to improve the system of capital punishment, which he desired should be uniform for all; and he had fixed upon decapitation as the best and simplest process. But the headsman had always been an uncertain performer, a bungler often who could not command his nerves, and who often slashed and wounded his victim without dealing the death blow. Doctor Guillotin earnestly recommended in the Convention that every criminal should be decapitated by means of some mechanical contrivance. This passed into law, but before the contrivance had been settled upon, Guillotin, at his wits’ end, applied to Charles Sanson, at that time the official executioner, for guidance. In their joint researches, they came upon an old Italian wood cut giving a presentment of the “mannaia,” an ancient machine much used in Genoa and particularly for the execution of Guistranin and other conspirators. The picture might have served also for the Halifax “Maiden” of which more directly. In both, the axe was suspended between two uprights, the culprit knelt beneath it, and the executioner held the rope. It was also found that a French Marshal, De Montmorency, had been beheaded in 1631 by means of a sliding axe.
Difficulties of detail remained; chiefly, that ofretaining the person about to suffer in the proper position long enough for the descending blow to take fatal effect. Then a friend, one Schmidt, a manufacturer of musical instruments, brought Sanson a rough sketch which met all objections and was in fact the model for the real machine. It seems very closely to have followed the lines of the Halifax “Maiden.” It was immediately accepted by the Convention, not without laughter. Dr. Guillotin in describing his machine made use of some strange expressions. He assured his audience that with it he “could drop off their heads in a twinkling, and they would not suffer in the very least.” The only sensation might be that of a “slight freshness about the neck.” Before closing finally, the Assembly desired other opinions and applied, among others, to a Doctor Louis who was at that time physician to Louis XVI, still seated upon his tottering throne. The following curious incident is touched upon in the Sanson “Memoirs.”
While discussing the model, Doctor Guillotin and the executioner paid a visit one day to Doctor Louis. A stranger came into the room, who seemed greatly impressed with the invention, but disapproved of the shape of the axe, which was that of a crescent. He did not believe it would act properly upon all kinds of necks; “not on mine for instance,” said the objector, taking up pen and ink, and drawing an oblique edge instead of the half moon. Sanson, the expert, was consulted, and gave it as his opinionthat the question should be tested by actual experience. When the machine was completed, it was taken to Bicêtre and set up for trial on three corpses in the presence of a numerous company, including that of a number of prisoners, who looked out from the windows above. The oblique knife edge was found to be by far the more effective, and that model was adopted for all time.
The most curious part of the story is, that the stranger who suggested the improvement in the axe was King Louis XVI, himself, a skilled locksmith and mechanic, having learned a trade after the manner of all royal children. His own neck within a few months’ time was to be subjected to the supreme test, which succeeded perfectly. I have no wish to deprive Doctor Guillotin of any credit that may attach to this invention, of questionable utility, except in simplifying the act of killing and minimising the pain inflicted upon the victim; but he was certainly not the first inventor of the manslaying apparatus with which his name is for ever associated.
Two centuries before the Revolution, an instrument very similar to the guillotine was in use in Scotland, and known there as the “Maiden.” James Douglas, Earl of Morton, died by it in Edinburgh in 1587, thus adding to the long list of inventors who paid the penalty of death by their own contrivance. The “Maiden” had been often used in Yorkshire for the summary execution of thieves taken in the act, and the best account of it extantis found in “Holinshed’s Chronicles,” which describes the custom prevailing in Halifax and the machine in use. He records the law or custom, that whosoever commits a felony or steals to the value of fourteen pence or halfpenny shall be beheaded in the market. “The engine wherewith the execution is done is a square block of wood which does ride up and down in a slot between two pieces of timber that are framed and set upright, of five yards in height. In the nether end of the sliding block is an axe keyed or fastened with an iron into the wood, which being drawn up to the top of the frame is there fastened by a wooden pin, to the centre of which a long rope is attached, that cometh down among the people, so that when an offender hath made his confession and hath laid his head over the nethernmost block, every man seizeth the rope to show his willingness that judgment should be executed, and pulling out the pin the axe is released to fall with such violence that had the neck below been that of a bull the head would be dissevered and roll away to a great distance.” If the theft had been that of any fourfooted beast the rope was to be fastened to it, so that when driven away it would extract the pin.
France was then anxious to make a change in the method of carrying out execution, if indeed capital punishment were to continue in force. But there is now a strong tendency to abolish it altogether, as is the rule already in Italy and Belgium,the substitute in both countries being prolonged solitary confinement, which is really synonymous with a death sentence of a lingering and painful kind. The life spared on the scaffold must be passed in solitary confinement with the inevitable fatal consequences of such treatment. I shall never forget the painful impression made upon me when I came across some seventy or eighty murderers collected in one apartment in the prison of Ghent, all of whom had spent ten years or more in the cells of another prison, that of Louvain. They were all either senile idiots or imbeciles prematurely aged. They had been kept alive in deference to ultra-humanitarian sentiment, but at the price of something worse than death. It does not seem probable that the death penalty will disappear from the French criminal code, but a strong feeling prevails that better arrangements should be made for carrying out the sentence. Many are strongly in favor of adopting the British practice of performing the execution in private, within the limits of the gaol, that is to say, and in the presence of only a few officials. The selection of these last presents some difficulty, although it has been overcome in England, and is after all no more than the justifiable demand on public servants to perform their duty, however trying. One suggestion has been, to make it incumbent upon the jury that convicted to be present; but the fear of grave consequences has put this aside. It has been thought, not without reason, thatjuries would hesitate to find a verdict of guilty if they were to be compelled to witness the dread consequences of their judgment. The desire for private execution has been emphasised in France by a scandalous incident that occurred at Dunkirk towards the end of 1905. A double murder of the most cruel and dastardly character had been committed, resulting in a double execution. A great mob had assembled, and, under the influence of strong excitement, stormed the scaffold when the second head fell, determined to carry off the decapitated corpses. The police were powerless to prevent the outrage. An extraordinary and probably unparalleled incident occurred at this execution. The victim had been a woman, and the widowed husband, thirsting to avenge her, had offered the authorities the sum of 10,000 francs, to be paid to the funds of any public charity, if they would allow him to act as executioner,—to the extent at least of touching the spring by which the knife of the guillotine was released. The strange request was refused; but as a particular favor a special place in the first row of spectators was secured for the aggrieved husband.
The prison of La Grande Roquette, when I visited it, struck me painfully from its gloomy and imposing architecture; and the effect was heightened as I passed into the inner yards, where behind a tall iron railing the bulk of the prison population were at exercise. As they patrolled it in couples, backwardsand forwards, their wooden sabots made a hideous clatter on the stone pavement, which did not, however, drown the hum of their voices as they gossiped idly with one another, smoking their pipes in pleasant company. They were a rough, evil-visaged lot, for this was at a date anterior to the disturbance of 1886, before mentioned, and they were mostly habitual criminals (récidivistes), who had been convicted again and again. They could only be ruled by a strong hand, and the director, M. Beauquesnes, a resolute and determined man, had been specially selected for this responsible post. Before his time murderous assaults by prisoners upon their officers were common enough. Many trades are carried on in the prison, and desperate ruffians bent on mischief always found tools and dangerous weapons of offence ready to their hand. Outrages of this kind are now unknown. “How did you get the better of them?” I asked M. Beauquesnes, almost anticipating his answer as I met his clear gray eyes. “By constant surveillance, by being always on the lookout for mischief, and crushing it before it could make head.” “Your warders are all armed, of course?” “Not in the least. It is better to depend upon moral than physical force.” It did not seem to me fair or safe to leave officers entirely defenceless among so many desperate and easily excited prisoners without even the protection of a baton or club, and the evil result was presently seen in the outbreak already mentioned.
From the yard I passed into the workshops,—long, low, dark rooms in which gas is never lighted, for labor begins and ends with daylight. The trades followed were of the prison class, such as shoemaking, tailoring and so forth. Industry and orderliness were generally observable, but I seemed to detect a certain unsettled air. The prisoners gazed furtively from under their peaked caps at a strange visitor and seemed continually on the lookout for something to happen. They were in fact constantly expecting the order to “move on,” and any day the van might arrive to take them elsewhere. It might be to the other end of the world.
This kind of removal, still known at La Grande Roquette, is horrible, because it is final and irretrievable, and the journey is to that unknown bourne from which no traveller returns. The French system of dealing with condemned prisoners cannot be commended. It is cruel in the extreme, from the long uncertainty in which the individual is left as to his ultimate fate. He has made his last petition, the final appeal from the legal tribunal to the possibly more merciful Chief of the State, and he awaits the decision for weeks and weeks in the condemned cell. The delay is sometimes horribly prolonged. One man waited forty days, and was a prey the whole time to painful visions at night. He dreamed of the guillotine and saw his head rolling in the sawdust. He awoke with screams of terror and cried out perpetually, “The knife! Thescaffold! I see nothing else!” The agony of the delay is intensified from the well-known fact that the dénouement, when it comes, will be abrupt and with the briefest possible notice. Only on the very morning of execution is the prisoner roused, generally from profound slumber, and warned suddenly to prepare for immediate death. All this time, since his sentence and reception at La Roquette, he has occupied the condemned cell, one of three rather large chambers near the hospital at the back of the prison. He has never been left for one instant unattended. Two warders have been with him, and have watched him closely day and night. Time was when, to render assurance doubly sure, the convict was kept continually in a strait-jacket orcamisole de force. The priest of the prison has also been his constant companion. From the condemned cell the prisoner is taken by a rather long and circuitous route to the outer office, near the inner gate of the prison. Here the executioner and his assistants receive him and commence the “toilette of death.” The man is pinioned and bound by a variety of intricate straps. Thence, when he is ready, the procession passes across the courtyard to the outer prison gates. It is but a step. Once through them, the scaffold is immediately reached, the last act commences, is soon played, and the curtain promptly falls. Barely fourteen seconds elapse, it is said, from the time the convict steps on the scaffold to the momentwhen decapitation is effected. There is but a short fruition, therefore, for the sightseers whom morbid curiosity has attracted to the spot, even if they see anything at all, which is doubtful, as the guillotine is placed on the ground level, and is surrounded by a double line of mounted gensdarmes.
On the very night that the guillotine was being erected in the Place de la Roquette for the execution of the poisoner La Pommerais, a marvellous escape was effected by a child prisoner from the reformatory prison opposite, the little Roquette.
At nine o’clock in the evening a lad of barely thirteen years, by using his knife, cut away the metal covering of his window in which the ventilator worked, then climbing up on a chair placed on top of his bed he got his head through, and looked down into the courtyard; it was quite empty, the night was dark; the only sound within was the monotonous footstep of the night watchman. But beyond the wall, there was a movement as of a crowd collecting, and from time to time the sound of a hammer and other tools. The boy knew what was on foot, for the story of La Pommerais and his approaching execution was known within the reformatory, and it was also known that the dread event was fixed for next morning. “Everybody is busy,” said the fugitive, “no one will think of me.” So he worked his little body through the ventilator, and reached the cornice between the first and second floor. Resting hisfeet on this narrow ledge and holding to his window by one hand, he stretched the other towards the next window and caught it, creeping thus from window to window till he had passed six of them. He was every moment in the utmost danger, for he hung on merely by his fingers and the soles of his heavy shoes. He said long afterwards that he suffered agonies in the hour occupied in thus creeping along. A single slip would certainly have precipitated him into the yard below. He was almost at the end of his strength, his arms ached horribly, and his hands were torn and bleeding. He took courage, however, saying to himself: “If I fall I shall be killed, if I stop I shall be recaptured; I must certainly go on.”
Now the moon came through the clouds, and he knew that his shadow would be seen from below. At that moment he heard his name called, “Molutor, Molutor,” and he shivered, feeling sure he had been detected. But the voice was that of a fellow-prisoner, the occupant of the cell, the window of which he was passing, who had recognised him. But with true loyalty to his class he did not betray him. On the contrary he tried to help him, and after reconnoitring around encouraged him by saying there were no warders in sight. Stimulated by these encouraging words, the lad, who had already reached the fifth window, made a renewed effort, and passed on to the sixth, next the angle of the building, and there seized the water pipe.At this moment the clock struck midnight. Then followed strange noises. Looking down, he saw beneath him the open space of the Place de la Roquette, in which a crowd was slowly gathering, and some workmen were moving forward an oddly shaped machine, which he easily recognised. They were about to erect the scaffold. The machinery for the guillotine and its purpose were perfectly well known to the fugitive. At this moment it is said he shuddered, not so much at the pressing danger of his situation, and the near certainty of death if he slipped, but with inward despair at the life that lay before him. Surely it was useless to compass his escape, to risk so much to get away now, if some little time ahead he would inevitably arrive at the guillotine, led step by step, passing from court to court and judgment to judgment, until he mounted this same scaffold, and expiated his offences as this same La Pommerais was about to do. Not the less did he complete his escape. He slipped down to the ground on the other side, gained the outer wall, and climbed it. Then he waited until the square was thronged to get away. When the crowd was seized with horror at the sound of the falling knife and the thud of the severed head in the basket he would escape. At the supreme moment, when a shiver of horror affected the spectators, he alone kept his head, and, with sure, cautious step, slipped in amongst the people and passed unchecked to the boulevard Voltaire.
A criminal drama which horrified all Paris in 1857 and had its suitable dénouement on the Place de la Roquette, was the murder of the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Sibour, a dignified ecclesiastic, who was universally loved and esteemed in his diocese. The Archbishop was on his way to put on his vestments for the mass in the church of St. Etienne du Mont. The procession was on the point of entering the sacristy when a man, dressed in black, rushed in behind the Archbishop, who was carrying aloft the Episcopal Cross, and with his left hand caught hold of him and twisted him sharply round, while with his right he struck him in the ribs with a knife. The wound was mortal, and the Archbishop almost immediately fell dead, while his murderer was seized and roughly handled by the indignant crowd. The police proceeded at once to interrogate him and soon learned who he was. In appearance short and thin, with a not unpleasing countenance, carefully dressed in black, he proved to be one Louis Verger, an unfrocked priest. He confessed that the murder was premeditated, and that he had come to the church with the set intention of committing it. He had no animus against the Archbishop, but desired to aim a blow at the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Thence his outcry when he struck the fatal blow, “No more goddesses!” “Down with the goddesses!” He was quite calm and self-possessed afterward, and the suggestion that he wasinsane quite fell to the ground. When he was received at Mazas his mental condition was inquired into, but there was no symptom of derangement. His first demand was for food, for he had eaten nothing that morning, fearing to interfere with the steadiness of his nerves. When questioned as to the motives of his crime, his answers were clear and logical, except that he was fanatically hostile to certain doctrines, and especially to that of the celibacy of the clergy. In his parish he was constantly at difference with his parishioners, with whom he had many quarrels, and he was at length removed to another parish. He went to London to work under Cardinal Wiseman, the new Archbishop of Westminster, and on his return to Paris obtained fresh preferment at Saint Germain L’Auxerrois. He was still turbulent and constantly a thorn in the side of the Archbishop. His state of mind was held to be doubtful, but the doctors declared him more dangerous than mad. He preached the most violent diatribes against ecclesiastical authority, and richly deserved the sentence of suspension that was decreed against him within a week of his murderous attack upon the Archbishop.
No doubt excessive vanity and the desire to pose as a public character were strong temptations to the crime he committed. He was always greatly pleased when people came to see him and he gloried in his crime as a newcause célèbrewhich long would be the talk of the town. He maintained thisattitude all through his trial, and at times behaved scandalously by insulting the judge and ridiculing the procedure. The audience was furiously incensed with him, and more than once it was necessary to suspend the proceedings. Public feeling was entirely on the side of the murdered Archbishop. At the same time there can be very little doubt that he was an irresponsible being, a maniac suffering from exaltation, eager always to “show off;” and it would have been a bitter disappointment to him if he had been put away in an asylum.
His conviction came as a matter of course, but he did not accept it without protest, exclaiming contemptuously, “What justice! What justice!” He cried out that he would appeal to the Emperor (Napoleon III), and he assured his father, when the old man visited him, that he would not abide by the sentence. Nevertheless he was removed from the Conciergerie to La Roquette, and here in his last abode he tried to play the hero, and with much satisfaction frequently repeated the details of his crime. He denied that he felt any remorse for having struck down “ce pauvre Monseigneur,” but was not glad that he had done it. “My work was over,” he would say, “and I dropped my arms to my side like the workman who has finished his task.” The appeal made for reprieve was very ably maintained by his advocate, but was quite fruitless. There could be no doubt as to his guilt, and no pity for the criminal in the Emperor. Again andagain the condemned man prayed to be permitted to write to the head of the state, and was very indignant when the privilege was denied him. Still he had access to friends outside, and hoped for some reversal of sentence through their good offices. He could hardly believe his ears when they came to him on the morning of execution to make the last dread announcement, which was conveyed by the Abbé Hugon, who was acting asaumonier, and who was accompanied as usual by the Chief of the Police, the director of the prison and other officials. “It is useless,” he repeated, “I know you all; you are not speaking the truth and have only come to see what effect the bad news would have on me. I do not, I cannot believe it. I know the Emperor, and feel sure he will not abandon me.”
At last the dread reality forced itself on him, and his demeanor completely changed. His air of nonchalant bravado suddenly disappeared, and a fierce passion for self-preservation seized him. He grew livid with fury, and with a wild gesture of repulsion he waved them away. “Be off, I want no priests, no relics, no cross,” he cried. “Do not think that I will go quietly to the scaffold. I’ll have no scaffold. You will have to carry me there in pieces,” and he set himself to resist vigorously, clinging to his bed, rolling himself in his blankets, struggling with the warders, shouting, roaring, swearing and blaspheming. Then the director ofLa Petite Roquette thought of calling in the executioner, although by law he is not permitted to enter the condemned cell. M. Heinderich came when summoned, an embodiment of superior force, a perfect Colossus, six feet in height, with broad shoulders, clear-eyed and full of resolution, the picture of a self-reliant veteran. “Come, Verger,” he said quietly, “you will not come of your own accord? we must take you then by force!” The prisoner was conquered, and without more ado allowed himself to be secured. Then he was led like a lamb to the outer office where his “toilette of death” was quickly performed. At length he broke down, and cried with bitter tears, “How terrible it is to die without relations or friends.” He listened with gratitude to the consoling words of the priest, confessed, received absolution, and almost immediately was a dead man.
A notability of the guillotine was Avinain, executed in 1867 for a series of murders, all having similar features. Several corpses were picked up, all of which had been very carefully dismembered by some hand practised in dissection. In all, the head and limbs had been skilfully removed from the trunk; but death had first been inflicted by strangulation or many terrible wounds. The remains had generally been found in the neighborhood of the Seine, and suspicion at length attached to a certain Jean Charles, otherwise Charles Alfonse, who had lived in four different houses onthe riverside. The police now discovered that there were stables and sheds forming part of these several dwellings. In one building they picked up a saw, a hammer and an axe, which evidently had been used for the purpose of dismembering the bodies. These, according to French custom, had been exhibited at the Morgue, and one of the articles was recognised by a young man as having belonged to his father, who had recently disappeared. The deceased was a forage merchant. He had come to Paris to sell a cartload of hay, and had met Charles, with whom he agreed on a price. The purchaser very civilly offered him the accommodation of his stables for the night and a bed at his house, so that the purchase might be completed next morning. It appeared in the trial that before this another person had sold forage and had accepted hospitality for the night, but when the host came, insisting that the light should be extinguished for fear of setting fire to the barn, he carried in his hand a hammer; and the guest, a little suspicious, declared that he always slept with a light burning, and in a very significant fashion took out his knife as though to use it in self-defence. There was little doubt that this man with the hammer was the same Charles already indicated, and the police proceeded to inquire into his identity. He proved to be one Charles Avinain, a butcher by trade, who had recently been a convict in Cayenne. Since his return from transportationhe had frequently been in trouble, and was now easily traced and arrested by means of clues furnished by his wife and daughter. He still lived at the riverside, and nearly made his escape from the police by means of a trap door in the floor of the basement which opened on to a passage. Several murders were brought home to him, committed either with hammer or knife. His victims were mostly forage merchants, and he had dealt with the bodies in the same barbarous fashion. It is recorded of him that he never exhibited the slightest remorse, until the very last moment, and then it was under the influence of overwhelming terror as he trod the steps of the scaffold. He had always repulsed the chaplain, but in the end accepted his ministrations, confessed, and received absolution.
Moreux, who had murdered a girl to rob her and give a present to his beloved, put down his pipe quietly, when he received the news, saying, “I did not think it would be before next Wednesday,” ascended the scaffold quickly, and remarked to the chief warder in bidding him good-bye, “You see what comes of evil behavior.” Toly, who tried to kill a warder when first locked up, took his sentence very calmly, and faced death with great self-possession. He spent his last night at cards, but received the chaplain with great emotion and deep sentiments of repentance. Coutalier had murdered his wife with one blow of a hatchet, and bore upwell until he saw the guillotine, when he threw himself back violently, but soon regained his impassiveness. Many were at great pains to proclaim their innocence. It was so with Boudas, an ex-priest, whose consuming desire was to become rich. He poisoned two wives in succession, so as to secure their inheritances. It was clearly proved against him, but he reiterated as he knelt and laid his head on the block: “Let every one know that I am not guilty.” Gervais sacrificed an aged companion, a well-to-do dealer in antiques, because he wanted means to marry. His awakening on the last morning was a frightful scene. “I can’t, I won’t believe it. It is impossible. The law is about to commit a terrible crime.” He fought the executioner so hard that he had to be led twice to the block. But he died smiling with that curious, artificial grin that relaxes the muscles of the face at moments of great nervous derangement, and has no connection with real laughter. Billoir hated his wife for her extravagance and slovenliness, murdered her, and threw the body into the Seine. He was an old soldier of good character and distinguished service, but Marshal MacMahon, the President, positively refused to pardon him. He was quite overwhelmed with the shock when told the fatal news, but speedily recovered himself, and, crossing his hands on his breast, respectfully saluted the chaplain.
Welker, one of the worst and most inhuman ofhis class, who had murdered a pretty child of eight, showed the most abject cowardice. It was necessary to carry him bodily to the scaffold, and place him in position under the knife. A corpse was really guillotined, for he was already dead with fright, and had pardon come at the eleventh hour it could not have benefitted him. Menesclon has left a name more execrable than Welker, for his victim was an infant of four, whom he was believed to hold in strong affection, lavishing gifts upon her constantly. One day she went into his room, and the child was never seen again. After many denials that he knew anything about her, a neighbor was drawn to his room by the nauseating smell of burning flesh, and on forcing his door he was found stirring up a blazing fire in his stove. Menesclon was barely saved from the fury of the people when the story became known. He was interrogated, and gave his own account of the affair. He had invited the child into his room to give her some flowers. But she irritated him by crying, and, being unable to quiet her, he suddenly seized her by the throat and choked her. When she was dead he thrust the body between his two mattresses, and slept the whole night through. Early next morning he set himself to get rid of the horrible evidence of his crime in the manner already described. This miserable creature was one of the lowest type of his class. He had been graduated in the lowest schools of vice, beginning as a child at La PetiteRoquette, to which he had been committed at the instance of his parents as perfectly unmanageable at home. He passed thence into the navy, after having been the despair of many workshops in which he had been employed, at last having assaulted and robbed his father. He had developed into an undersized weak creature with a hideous, pimpled face, low forehead, furtive manner and foxy eyes. He was quite indifferent at his trial, showed no remorse for his crime, and rarely answered the questions put to him, which threw into strong relief the enormity of his conduct. Service in Senegal had left him with an incurable deafness, which heightened his stupidity. He gazed without flinching at thepièces de convictionlying on the table before him. Close by was a copy-book filled with verses, for he had poetical aspirations and was a bit of an artist. His cold-blooded unconcern culminated in his last answer to the question why he had committed the crime. “I can’t tell you,” he replied, “but you are at liberty to do the same to me.” Menesclon exhibited the same impassibility at the last hour. He heard his fate with his hand to his ear, the better to catch the words, and merely said, “Ah, bon!” when he understood; and then walked quietly to the scaffold.
One or two later cases possessing some of the same features may be included here,—those of Michel Campi and of Marchandon,—which throwup into strong relief the insecurity of life, even in the most crowded parts of a large city. In the first instance a peaceable old gentleman and his sister were murdered at three o’clock in the afternoon in the rue du Regard, not far from the avenue de Clichy. In the other a lady of good position and ample means was done to death in the middle of the night by her own man-servant, whom she had only engaged the day before.
The case of Campi is as follows: On the afternoon of a tenth of August, a man rang at the door of an apartment in the rue du Regard where resided Du Cros de Sixt with his sister. They were both old people. He was well to do and secretary to a religious society. Their residence was in a pavilion apart from the principal building. Mlle. du Cros answered the door in the absence of their maid, and Campi at once struck down the old lady with a succession of violent blows with a hammer. Mlle. du Cros fell screaming and her brother rushing out was treated in the same manner. Then the miscreant, opening a large knife, cut the poor woman’s throat and next wounded M. du Cros mortally. Now the concierge came to the rescue, found the two bodies lying in a pool of blood, and hurriedly called in the police. When they arrived they found the murderer in one of the rooms hunting for plunder. He was forthwith arrested, and without difficulty, although he later explained this to the instructing judge by saying that had he notbroken the handle of his hammer, he would have taken other lives. Robbery was judged to be the motive of the crime, but Campi’s advocate wished to suggest an idea of vengeance, although no proof of this was ever forthcoming. There was some mystery about the man and his relations with M. du Cros which never came out. Campi was certainly acquainted with M. du Cros and his sister, who survived for a couple of days. When questioned, she begged piteously not to be forced to reveal the secret of the man’s identity. Campi was perfectly well known to the police as a criminal, who had been in prison frequently, but his secret antecedents were never brought to light. He was said to have served in the Carlist ranks in Catalonia. He belonged originally to Marseilles, and his connection with the Spanish insurgents was attested by Carlist officers who recognised him. The mystery about him was never definitely cleared up, and it served only to increase the interest attached to him at the time of his trial. The account given of his last appearance differed little from those of other executions, but he was most anxious to show no weakness, declined all assistance, and cried: “I would rather walk alone. I am not in the least afraid.” When he saw the guillotine, he exclaimed contemptuously, “Is that all!” The exact truth as to his identity will never be known, but those who knew him maintained to the last that he was not a thief; that he was essentiallyan honest man, who would not stoop to murder for mere gain; and that some family scandal would have been revealed if the whole story of the crime had been laid bare.
In the case of Marchandon, his intention to murder his new mistress without loss of time was shown by the fact that he only hired for a single day the clothes in which he presented himself in the rue de Sèze. He had secured employment in many houses by means of a forged certificate of character, which was so unsatisfactory that it roused the suspicions of the Princess Poniatowski, who had engaged him, but would not allow him to enter her house. She had gone at once to the registry office to warn them, but found that Marchandon had already been placed elsewhere, in fact, with Madame Cornet, his future victim. He proceeded promptly to carry out his crime. Having secured a livery coat as already described, he waited at table, and, after receiving his orders for next day, he went up to bed in the garret. About one in the morning he went down again and entered Madame Cornet’s apartment by means of a key which he had secured, and hid himself between the salon and the bedroom. When Madame Cornet had undressed and gone to bed, Marchandon attacked her. Her piercing screams disturbed the concierge who slept above. He got up to call the chambermaid, believing that Madame Cornet was taken ill. The two came down-stairs together and knocked at thedoor, but received no reply. They listened at the door for a time, and then left, thinking all must be right, as she was moving about. It was the murderer whom they heard, busied in getting rid of his blood-stained clothes, and hunting for valuables.
The first clue to the detection of the crime was the discovery of the hired livery coat, which was recognised by its owner when he was found. With it came the identification of the man-servant. He had a snug little home of his own in Compiègne, where he lived with his wife very comfortably. When arrested in the course of the day, he was just sitting down to a little dinner of croutons and roast fowl. The establishment was run with the means Marchandon acquired in Paris and brought down to his wife, the proceeds, no doubt, of his thefts. At one time he was in the service of the well-known M. Worth, the dressmaker of the rue de la Paix, but always managed to get down to Compiègne in the evening for dinner, bringing with him fish or fruit, or some other delicacy. He was a man of simple tastes, very popular in his own neighborhood. The raising of poultry was his favorite amusement, and he delighted in growing flowers. He was not without a certain sense of grim humor; and a witness deposed in court to his having exclaimed, when reading his newspaper the day after the murder of Madame Cornet, “Why are people so careless as to engage their servants without proper characters!”
The two Roquettes, small and great, were much mixed up with the painful drama of the Paris Commune. The junior prison was for some time appropriated to military prisoners. Paris, as the insurrection grew, became more and more crowded with troops, and some penal establishment was much needed. When the Commune was in full swing, La Petite Roquette contained about four hundred soldiers of all branches of the service, who in their turn gave place to the juveniles brought back from other prisons. These, to the number of 127, were retained until the end of May, when they were released and sent out armed to take part in the defence of the barricades. They soon returned clamorous for shelter. Later, La Petite Roquette was utilised as a place of safe custody for all regular soldiers found in Paris who had refused to ally themselves with the Commune. Some twelve hundred of these more than filled the prison.
A darker shadow lies upon La Grande Roquette, for it was made the place of detention for the so-called hostages of the Commune. Many persons of rank and authority were arrested by the Communal authorities as a means of imposing respect upon the government of Versailles, now moving its troops forward to recover Paris and re-establish law and order. Some idea of the savage and bloodthirsty spirit that possessed the insurgents had already been seen in the murder of the two generals,Clément Thomas and Lecomte, who had been arrested and mercilessly shot at Montmartre. Early in April it was decided to arrest Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris. It is said that the same priest, Abbé Lagard, Archdeacon of St. Genevieve, who had warned Archbishop Sibour that Verger had threatened to take his life, now desired to put M. Darboy on his guard. The trustful prelate could not believe that anyone wished him evil, but the very next day after the fight at Châtillon, an order was issued to two Communist captains to secure the persons of the Archbishop and some of his clerics, and convey them to the Conciergerie, where they were arraigned before three members of the Committee of Public Safety, Rigault, Ferré, Dacosta. “My children,” began the Monseigneur, “I am here to render you any satisfaction.” “We are not your children, but your judges,” replied Rigault. “For eighteen centuries you and men like you have been locking up humanity; it is now your turn.” Sentence of death was then and there passed upon them. “These are not men, but wild beasts,” protested the Archbishop, who was forthwith removed with his secretary to the depot of the Prefecture, whence they were transferred to Mazas. The possession of these and other hostages inspired the Communists to open negotiations with Versailles, backed by the threat that they would kill their prisoners unless their terms were conceded. But indeed, this politicalmurder had been resolved upon the first moment of their arrest, and on the morning of the twenty-fourth of May, 1871, they were all brought from Mazas to La Grande Roquette, where the Governor gave a receipt for their bodies worded as follows: “Received forty priests and magistrates.”