I do not exactly know what the French penitentiary colonies and reformatories for children may be, the opinions which I have heard being very contradictory. Thus I was told that in the colonies the children are treated not very badly, especially since im- provements have been introduced of late; 3 but I was told also, on the other side, that a few years ago, in a penitentiary colony in the environs of Clairvaux, the children were unscrupulously overworked by a person to whom they were intrusted, or rather rented by the State, and that they were abused. At any rate, we saw at Lyons numbers of boys— mostly runaways and " incorrigible ones " from the penitentiary colonies; and to see the education given to these poor boys was really awful. Brutalized as they are by the warders, and left without any honest and moralizing influence, they are foredoomed to * See Appendix D.
In French Prisons. 263 become permanent inmates of prisons, and to die in a central prison, or in New Caledonia. The warders and the priest of the St. Paul prison were unanimous in saying that the only desire which day and night haunts these young people is that of satisfying the most abject passions. In the dormitories, in the church, in the yards, they are always perpetrating the same shameful deeds. When we see the for- midable numbers of the attentats a la pudeur brought before the Courts every year, let us always remember that the State itself main- tains, at Lyons and in fact in all its prisons, special nurseries for preparing people for those crimes. I seriously invite, therefore, those who elaborate schemes for the legal extermina- tion of recondemned convicts in New Guinea, to hire, for a fortnight or so, a pistole at Lyons, and to re-examine there their foolish schemes. They would perceive that they begin their reforms from the wrong end, and that the real cause of. the rec-idive lies in the perversion due to such infection-nests as the Lyons prison is. As for myself, I suppose that to lock up hundreds of boys in such infection-nests is surely to commit a crime much worse than any of those committed by any of the convicts themselves.
264 In Russian and French Prisons.
On the whole, the prisons are not places for teaching much honesty, and the St. Paul prison makes no exception to the rule. The lessons in honesty given from above are not much better than those imparted from below, as will be seen from what follows. Two different systems are in use in French prisons for supplying the inmates with food, dress, and other necessaries. In some of them the State is the undertaker who supplies both food and dress, as also the few other things which the prisoner can purchase at the canteen with his own money (bread, cheese, some meat; wine and tobacco for those who are not yet condemned; prison- knives, combs, brushes, paper, and so on). In this case, it is the State which raises a certain percentage, varying from three to nine-tenths on the payment due to the prisoner for the work he has done in prison, either for the State, or for private undertakers; three-tenths of the wages are retained if the prisoner is under preventive incarceration; five-tenths if he is condemned for the first time; and six, seven, eight, or nine-tenths if he has had one, two, three, four, or more previous condemna- tions; one-tenth of the salary always remaining for the prisoner, whatever the number of con- In French Prisons. 265 demnations. In other prisons the whole is rented to a private undertaker, who is bound to supply everything due in accordance with regulations. The undertaker in this case raises the just-named tenths on the salaries of the prisoner, and he is paid, moreover, by the State a few centimes per day for each prisoner. As to those inmates who find it more advan- tageous to labour for the trade outside (skilled shoemakers, tailors, and scribes are often in this case), they are bound to pay to the under- taker a certain redemption money — mostly lOd. per day — and then they are dispensed from compulsory labour. Now, the St. Paul prison is established on the second system; everything is supplied by a private undertaker, and I must confess that everything is of the worst quality. The undertaker unscrupulously robs the prisoners. Of course the food is far from being as bad as it is in Russian prisons, but still it is very bad, especially if compared with what it is at Clairvaux. The bread is of a low quality, and the soup and ratin of boiled rice, or kidney-beans, are ofter execrable. As to the canteen, everything is dear and of the lowest kind; while the Clairvaux administra- tion supplied us for threepence a piece of good 2 66 In Russian and French Prisons.
steak with potatoes, we paid at Lyons sixpence for a slice of very bad boiled meat, and in the same proportion for everything.
How the works are conducted and paid at Lyons I cannot judge from my own experience, but the above account does not inspire much confidence in the honesty of the enterprise. As to the dress, it is of the worst kind, and also much inferior to what we saw at Clairvaux, where also it leaves very much to desire. When taking my daily walk in one of the yards at Lyons, I often saw the recently condemned people going to change their own dress for that of the prisoners, supplied by the under- takers. They were mostly workmen, poorly but still decently dressed — as French workmen, even the poorest, usually are. When they had, however, put on the uniform of the prison— the brown jacket, all covered with multicoloured rags roughly sewn to cover the holes, and the patched-up trousers six inches too short to reach the immense wooden shoes — they came out quite abashed with the ridiculous dress they had assumed. The very first step of the prisoner within the prison walls was thus to be wrapped up in a dress which is in itself a story of degradation.
In French Prisons. 267 I did not see much of the relations between the administration and the common-law prisoners at Lyons. But I saw enough, to perceive that the warders — mostly old police- soldiers — maintained all the well-known brutal features of the late Imperial police. As to the higher administration, it is pervaded with the hypocrisy which characterizes the ruling classes at Lyons. To quote but one example. The Director of the prison had reiterated to me on many occasions the formal promise of never sequestrating any of my letters, without letting me know that such letters had been confiscated. It was all I claimed. Notwithstanding that, several of my letters were confiscated, without any notice, and my wife, ill at that time, remained anxious without news from me. One of my letters, stolen in this way, was even transmitted to the Procureur Fabreguettes, who read it before the Court of Appeal. I might quote several other examples, but this one will do.
There is in our system of prisons a feature well worthy of notice, but completely lost sight of, and which I would earnestly commend to the attention of all interested in penal matters. The leading idea of our penal system is obviously 268 In Russian and French Prisons.
to punish those who have been recognized as "criminals;" while in reality the penalty of several years of imprisonment hurts much less the " criminal " than people quite innocent — that is, his wife and children. However hard the conditions of prison-life, man is so made that he finally accommodates himself to these conditions, and considers them as an unavoid- able evil, as soon as he cannot modify them. But there are people — the prisoner's wife and his children — who never can accommodate themselves to the imprisonment of the man who was their only support in life. The judges and lawyers who so freely pronounce sentences of two, three, and five years of imprisonment — have they ever reasoned about the fate they are preparing for the prisoner's wife? Do they know how few are the women who can earn more than six or seven shillings per week? And do they know that to live with a family on such a salary means sheer misery with all its dreadful consequences? Have they ever reflected also about the moral sufferings which they are inflicting on the prisoner's wife — the despising of her neighbours, the sufferings of the woman who naturally exaggerates those of her husband, the pre- In French Prisons. 269 occupations for the present and the future?...Who can measure all these sufferings, and count the tears shed by a prisoner's wife?
If the slightest attention were ever given to the sufferings of the prisoner's kinsfolk, surely the inventors of schemes of civilized prisons would not have invented the reception-halls of the modern dungeons. They would have said to themselves that the only consolation of the prisoner's wife is to see her husband, and they would not have inflicted on her new and quite useless sufferings, and planned those halls where everything has been taken into account — everything excepting the wife who comes once a week to cast a glance on her husband, and to exchange a few words with him.
Imagine a circular vaulted hall, miserably lighted from above. If you enter it at the reception-hours, you are literally stunned. A clamour of some hundred voices speaking, or rather crying all at once, rises from all parts of it towards the vault, which sends them back and mingles them into an infernal noise, to- gether with the piercing whistles of the warders, the grating of the locks, and the clashing of the keys. Your eyes must be first accustomed to the darkness before you recognize that tlit1 270 In Russian and French Prisons.
clamour of voices comes from six separate groups of women, children, and men crying all at once to be heard by those whom they address. Behind these groups, you perceive along the walls six other groups of human faces, hardly distinguishable in the darkness behind iron- wire networks and iron bars. You cannot divine at once what is going on in these groups. The fact is, that to have an interview with his kins- folk the prisoner is introduced, together with four other prisoners, into a small dark coop, the front of which is covered with a thick network and iron bars. His kinsfolk are introduced into another coop opposite, also covered with iron bars, and separated from the former by a passage three feet wide, where a warder is posted. Each coop receives at once five prisoners; while in the opposite coop some fifteen men, women, and children — the kinsfolk of the five prisoners — are squeezed. The inter- views hardly last for more than fifteen or twenty minutes; all speak at once, hasten to speak, and amidst the clamour of voices, each of which is raised louder and louder, one soon must cry with all his strength to be heard. After a few minutes of such exercise, my wife and myself were voiceless, and were compelled In French Prisons. 271 simply to look at each other without speaking, while I climbed on the iron bars of my coop to raise my face to the height of a small window which feebly lighted the coop from behind; and then my wife could perceive in the darkness my profile on the grey ground of the window. She used to leave the reception- hall saying that such a visit is a real torture.
I ought to say a few words about the Palais de Justice at Lyons, where we were kept for ten days during our trial. But I should be com- pelled to enter into such disgusting details that I prefer to go on to another subject. Suffice it to say that I have seen rooms where the arrested people were awaiting their turn to be called before the examining magistrate, amidst ponds of the most disgusting liquids; and that there are within this "Palace" several dark cells which have alternately a double destination: some- times they are literally covered with human excretions; and a few days later, after a hasty sweep, they are resorted to for locking up newly arrested people. Never in my life had I seen anything so dirty as this Palace, which will always remain in my recollections as a palace of filth of all descriptions. It was with a real feeling of relief that I returned from thence to 272 lu Russian and French Prisons.
iny pistole, where I remained for two months more, while most of my comrades addressed the Court of Appeal. This last confirmed, of course, the sentences pronounced by order of Government in the Police Correctionnelle Court; and a few days later, on March 17, 1883, we were brought in the night, in great secrecy, and with a ridiculous display of police force, to the railway-station. There we were packed up in cellular waggons to be transported to the " Maison Centrale " of Clairvaux.
• It is remarkable how so many improvements in the penitentiary system, although made with excellent intentions of doing away with some evils, always create, in their turn, new evils, and become a new source of pain for the prisoners. Such were the reflections which I made when locked up in a cell of the cellular waggon which was slowly moving towards Clairvaux. A French cellular waggon is an ordinary empty waggon, in the interior of which a light frame-work consisting of two rows of cells, with a passage between, has been constructed. But I am afraid of conveying a false and exaggerated impression to my readers when I write "two rows of cells." " Two rows of cupboards " would be more correct, for the cells are just the In French Prisons. 273 size of small cupboards, where one may sit down on a narrow bench, touching the door with his knees and the sides with his elbows. One need not be very fat to find it difficult to move within this narrow space; and he need not be too much accustomed to the fresh breezes of the sea-side to find difficulties in breathing therein. A small window protected by iron bars, which is cut through the door of the cupboard, would admit enough air; but to prevent the prisoners from seeing one another and talking, there is an additional little instrument of torture in the shape of a Venetian blind, which the warders close as soon as they have locked up somebody in the cupboard. Another instrument of torture is an iron stove, especially when it runs at full speed to boil the potatoes and roast the meat for the warders' dinner. My fellow-prisoners, all workmen of a great city, accustomed to the want of fresh air in their small workshops, did not actually suffocate, but two of us were prevented from fainting only by being allowed to step out of our respective cupboards and to breathe some air in the passage between. Happily enough, our journey lasted only fifteen hours; but I have Russian friends, who were expelled from France, and who have spent more T T 274 IH Russian and French Prisons.
than forty-eight hours in a cellular waggon on their way from Paris to the Swiss frontier, the waggon being left in the night at some station, while the warders called at the Macon and other prisons.
The worst is, however, that the prisoners are completely given up to the mercy of the two warders; if the warders like, they put the cuffs on the hands of the prisoners already locked up in the cupboards, and they do that without any reason whatever; and if they like better, they, moreover, chain the prisoners' feet by means of irons riveted to the floor of the cupboards. All depends upon the good or bad humour of the warders, and the depth of their psychological deductions. On the whole, the fifteen hours which we spent in the cellular waggon remain among the worst reminiscences of all my com- rades, and we were quite happy to enter at last the cells at Clairvaux.
The central prison of Clairvaux occupies the site of what formerly was the Abbey of St. Bernard. The great monk of the twelfth century, whose statue, carved in stone, still rises on a neighbouring hill, stretching its arms towards the prison, had well chosen his residence at the mouth of a fine little dale supplied with In French Prisons. 275 excellent water from a fountain, and at the entrance to a wide and fertile plain watered by the Aube. Wide forests cover still the gentle slopes of the hills, whose flanks supply good building-stone. Several lime-kilns and forges are scattered round about, and the Paris and Belfort railway runs now within a mile from the prison.
During the great Kevolution the abbey was confiscated by the State, and its then extensive arid solid buildings became, in the earlier years of our century, a Depot de Mendicite. Later on, their destination was changed, and now the former abbey is a " Maison de Detention et de Correction," which shelters about 1400 and occasionally 2000 in- mates. It is one of the largest in France; its outer wall — the mur d'enceinte — a formidable masonry some twenty feet high, incloses, besides the prison proper, a wide area occupied by the buildings of the administration, barracks of the soldiers, orchards, and even corn-fields, and has an aggregate length of nearly three miles. The buildings of the prison proper, with its nume- rous workshops, cover a square about 400 yards wide, inclosed by another still higher wall — the 'ftiur de ronde.
T 2 276 In Russian and French Prisons.
With its lofty chimneys, which day and night send their smoke towards a mostly cloudy sky, and the rhythmical throbbing of its machinery, which is heard late in the night, it has the aspect of a little manu- facturing town. In fact, there are within its walls more manufactures than in many small towns. There are a big manufacture of iron beds and iron furniture, lighted by electricity, and employing more than 400 men; workshops for weaving velvet, cloth, and linen; for making frames to pictures, looking-glasses, and meters; for cutting glass and fabricating all kinds of ladies' attire in pearl-shell; yards for cutting stone; flour-mills, and a variety of smaller workshops; all dress for the inmates is made by the men themselves. The whole machinery is set in motion by four powerful steam-engines and one turbine. An immense orchard and a corn-field, as also small orchards allotted to each warder and employe, are also comprised within the outer wall and cultivated by the prisoners.
Without seeing it, one could hardly imagine what an immense fitting up and expenditure are necessary for lodging and giving occupa- tion to some 1400 prisoners. Surely the State In French Prisons. 277 never would have undertaken this immense expenditure, had it not found at Clairvaux, St. Michel, and elsewhere, ready-made buildings of old abbeys. And it never would have organized so wide a system of productive work, had it not attracted private undertakers by renting to them the prisoners' labour at a very low price, to the disadvantage of free private industry. And still, the current ex- penses of the State for keeping up the Clair- vaux prison and the like must be very heavy. A numerous and costly administration, seventy warders, nourished, lodged, and paid from 461. to 56/. per year, and a company of soldiers which are kept at Clairvaux, bear hard on the budget — not to speak of the expenses of the central administration, the transport of prisoners, the infirmary, and so on. It is ob- vious that the above-mentioned percentage, raised on the salaries of the prisoners, which does not exceed an average of 6d. per day and per head of employed men, falls very short of defraying all these heavy expenses.
Leaving aside the political prisoners who are occasionally sent thither, there are at Clair- vaux two different categories of inmates. The great number are common-law prisoners 278 In Russian and French Prisons.
condemned to more than one year of imprison- ment but not to hard labour (these last being transported to New Caledonia); and there are, besides, a few dozen of soldiers condemned by martial courts — the so-called detentionnaires. These last are a sad product of our system of militarism. A soldier who has assaulted his corporal, or officer, is usually condemned to death; but if he has been provoked — which is mostly the case — the penalty is commuted into a twenty years' imprisonment, and he is sent to Clairvaux. I cannot explain how it happens, but there are detentionnaires who have to undergo two or three like condemnations— probably for assaults committed during their imprisonment. There was much talk, during our stay at Clairvaux, of a man, about forty years old, who had cumulated an aggregate penalty reaching sixty-five years of imprison- ment; he could fulfil his sentence only if he could prolong his life beyond his hundredth year. On the 14th of July, twenty-five years of his term were taken off by a decree of the Presi- dent of the Republic; but still the man had some forty years more to remain imprisoned. It may seem incredible, but it is true.
Everybody recognizes the absurdity of such In French Prisons; 279 condemnations, and therefore the detention* naires are not submitted to the usual regimen of the common-law prisoners. They are not constrained to compulsory labour, and they enter a workshop only if they like. They wear a better grey dress than other prisoners, and are permitted to take wine at the canteen. Those who do not go to the workshops occupy a separate quarter, and spend years and years in doing absolutely nothing. It is easy to con- ceive what some thirty soldiers, who have spent several years in barracks, may do when they are locked up for twenty years or so in a prison, and have no occupation of any kind, either intellectual or physical. Their quarter has so bad a reputation that the rains of brim- stone which destroyed the two Biblical towns are invoked upon it by the administration.
As to the common-law prisoners, they are submitted to a regimen of compulsory labour, and of absolute silence. This last, however, is so adverse to human nature that it has in fact been given up. It is simply impossible to prevent people from speaking when at work in the workshops; and, without trebling the number of warders and resorting to ferocious punishments, it is not easy to prevent prisoners 280 In Russian and French Prisons.
from exchanging words during the hours of rest, or from chattering in dormitories. During our stay at Clairvaux we saw the system abandoned more and more, and I sup- pose that the watchword is now merely to pro- hibit loud speaking and quarrels.
Early in the morning — at five in the summer, and at six in the winter — a bell rings. The prisoners must immediately rise, roll up their beds, and descend into the yards, where they stand in ranks, the men of each workshop separately under the command of a warder. On his order, they march in Indian file, at a slow pace, towards their respective workshops, the warder loudly crying out, un, deux! un, deux! and the heavy wooden shoes answering in cadence to the word of command. A few minutes later, the steam-engines sound their call, and the machines run at full speed. At nine (half-past eight in the summer) the work is stopped for an hour, and the prisoners are marched to the refectories. There they are seated on benches, all faces turned in one direc- tion, so as to see only the backs of the men on the next bench, and they take their breakfast. At ten they return to the workshops, and the work is interrupted only at twelve, for ten In French Prisons. 281 minutes, and afc half-past two, when all men less than thirty-five years old, and having re- ceived no instruction, are sent for an hour to the school.
At four the prisoners go to take their dinner; it lasts for half-an-hour, and a walk in the yards follows. The same Indian files are made up, and they slowly march in a circle, the warder always crying his cadenced, un, deux! They call ihatfaire la queue de saucissons. At five the work begins again and lasts until eight in the winter, and until nightfall during the other seasons.
As soon as the machinery is stopped — which is done at six, or even earlier in September or March — the prisoners are locked up in the dormitories. There they must lie in their beds from half-past six until six the next morning, and I suppose that these hours of enforced rest must be the most painful hours of the day. Certainly, they are permitted to read in their beds until nine, but the permission is effective only for those whose beds are close to the gas-burners. At nine the lights are diminished. During the night each dormitory remains under the supervision of prevots who are nominated from among the prisoners and 282 In Russian and French Prisons.
who have the more red lace on their sleeves, as they are the more assiduous in spying and denouncing their comrades.
On Sundays the work is suspended. The prisoners spend the day in the yards, if the weather permits, or in the workshops, where they may read, or talk — but not too loud — or in the school-rooms, where they write letters. A band composed of some thirty prisoners plays in the yard, and for half-an-hour goes out of the interior walls to play in the cour d'honneur — a yard occupied by the lodgings of the administration — while the fire-brigade takes some exercise. At six all must be in their beds.
Besides the men who are at work in the workshops, there is also a brigade exterieure, the men of which do various work outside the prison proper, but still within its outer wall- such as repairs, painting, sawing wood, and so on. They also cultivate the orchards of the house and those of the warders, for salaries reaching but a few pence per day. Some of them are also sent to the forest for cutting wood, cleaning a canal, and so on. No escape is to be feared, because only such men are admitted to the exterior brigade as have In French Prisons. 283 but one or two months more to remain at Clairvaux.
Such is the regular life oi: the prison; a life running for years without the least modifica- tion, and which acts depressingly on man by its monotony and its want of impressions; a life which a man can endure for years, but which he cannot endure — if he has no aim beyond this life itself — without being depressed and reduced to the state of a machine which obeys, but has no will of its own; a life which results in an atrophy of the best qualities of man and a development of the worst of them, and, if much prolonged, renders him quite unfit to live afterwards in a society of free fellow-creatures.
As to us, the " politicals," we had a special regimen — namely, that of prisoners submitted to preventive incarceration. We kept our own dress; we were not compelled to be shaved, and we could smoke. We occupied three spacious rooms, with a separate small room for myself, and had a little garden, some fifty yards long and ten yards wide, where we did some gardening on a narrow strip of earth along the wall, and could appreciate, from our own experience, the benefits of an " intensive culture." One would suspect me of exagge- 284 In Russian and French Prisons.
ration if I enumerated all crops of vegetables we made in our kitchen-garden, less than fifty square yards. No compulsory work was im- posed upon us; and my comrades — all work- men who had left at home their families without support — never could obtain any regular employment. They tried to sew ladies' stays for an undertaker of Olairvaux, but soon abandoned the work, seeing that with the deduction of three-tenths of their salaries for the State they could not earn more than from three to four pence a day. They gladly accepted the work in pearl-shell, although it was paid but a little better than the former, but the orders came only occasionally, for a few days. Over-production had occasioned stagnation in this trade, and other work could not be done in our rooms, while any inter- course with the common-law prisoners was severely prohibited.
Beading and the study of languages were thus the chief occupations of my comrades. A workman can study only when he has the chance of being imprisoned — and they studied earnestly. The study of languages was very successful, and I was glad to find at Clairvaux a practical proof of what I formerly main- In French Prisons. 285 tained on theoretical grounds — namely, that the Russians are not the only people who easily learn foreign languages. My French comrades learned, with great ease, English, German, Italian, and Spanish; some of them mastered two languages during a two years' stay at Clairvaux. Bookbinding was among us the most beloved occupation. Some instru- ments were made out of pieces of iron and wood; heavy stones and small carpenters' presses were resorted to; and as we finally obtained — about the end of the second year — some tools worth this name, all learned book- binding with the facility with which an intelli- gent workman learns a new profession, and most of us reached perfection in the art.
A special warder was always kept in our quarter, and as soon as some of us were in the yard, he regularly took his seat on the steps at tbe door. In the night we were locked up under at least six or seven locks, and, more- over, a round of warders passed each two hours, and approached each bed in order to ascertain that nobody had vanished. A rigorous supervision, never relaxed, and main- tained by the mutual help of all warders, is exercised on the prisoners as soon as they have 286 In French and Riissian Prisons.
left the dormitories. During the last two years I met with my wife in a little room with- in the walls, and, together with some one of our sick comrades, we took a walk in the soli- tary little garden of the Director, or in the great orchard of the prison; and never during these two years was I left out of sight of the warder who accompanied us, for so much as five minutes.
No newspapers penetrated into our rooms, excepting scientific periodicals or illustrated weekly papers. Only in the second year of our imprisonment were we permitted to receive a halfpenny colourless daily paper, and a Govern- ment paper published at Lyons. No socialist literature was admitted, and I could not intro- duce even a book of my own authorship deal- ing with socialist literature. As to writing, the most severe control was exercised on the manuscripts I intended to send out of the prison. Nothing dealing with social questions, and still less with Russian affairs, was per- mitted to issue from the prison-walls. The com- mon-law prisoners are permitted to write letters only once a month, and only to their nearest relatives. As to us, we could correspond with friends as much as we liked, but all letters sent In French Prisons. 287