IN FRENCH PRISONS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 741, 14 May 1886, Page 8

IN FRENCH PRISONS.

Nineteenth Century. The St. Paul’s prison at Lyons, where I spent the first three months of my incarceration, is not one of those old, dilapidated, and damp dungeons which are still resorted to in many French provincial towns, for lodging prisoners. It is a modern prison, and° pretends to rank amongst the best prisons dhpartementales. It covers a wide area enclosed by a double, girdle of high walls ; its buildings are spacious, of modern architecture, and clean in aspect 5 and in its general arrangement the modern id.eas in penitentiary matters have been taken into account, as -well as all necessary precautions for making it a stronghold in the case of a revolt. Like other departmental, prisons, its destination is to receive those prisoners who are awaiting their trial, as also those of the condemned whose penalty does not exceed one year of imprisonment. A subterraneous gallery connects it with another spacious prison for women —the St. Joseph. It was on a December night that I arrived there from Thonon, accompanied by three gendarmes. After the usual questions, I was introduced into a pistole which had been cleaned and heated for receiving me, and this pistole became my abode until the following March. On a payment of six francs

per month and three francs to the waiter, each prisoner incarcerated for the first time may hire a pistole for the time of his preventive incarceration, aud thus avoid living in the cells. The pistole is also a cell, bnt it is somewhat wider and much cleaner than the cells proper. A deep window under the ceiling gives enough of light, and six or seven paces, may be measured on its stone pavement, from one corner to the opposite one. It has a clean bed and a small iron 3tove heated with coke, and for one who is occupied and is accustomed to solitude it is a tolerably comfortable dwelling-place—pro-vided the incarceration does not last too long. Not so the cells which occupy a separate wing of the prison. Their arrangement is the same as everywhere now in Europe : you enter a broad and high gallery, on both sides of which you see two or three stories of iron balconies; all along these balconies are the doors of the cells, each of which is ten feet loug and six or seven feet wide, and has an iron bed, a small table, and a small bench—all three made fast to the walls. These cells are very dirty at Lyons, full of bugs, and never notwithstanding the wetness of the climate and the fogs which rival in density, if not in color, those of London. The gas-burner is never lighted, and so the prisoner remains in an absolute obscurity and idleness from five, or even four on a winter night, until the next morning. Each prisoner himself cleans his cell ; that is, he descends every morning to the yard to empty and wash hi 3 bucket with dirty water, and he enjoys its exhalations during the day. Even th« simplest accomodatim for avoiding this inconvenience, which we found later on at Clairvaux, has not been introduced at Lyons. Of course no occupation is given to the prisoners during the preventive incarceration, and they mostly remain in perfect idleness throughout the day. The prison begins to exercise its demoralising influence as soon as the prisoner has entered within its walls. Through my window, or while occasionally passing by, I sometimes saw swarms of boys invading one of the yards ; and at a three years’ distance I cannot remember these boys without a 3ad feeling and heartburn. The condemnations pronounced against chil« dren by the always condemning Police Cor« rectionnelle Courts are, in fact, much more ferocious than those pronounced against adults. The adult may be condemned to a few months or a few years of imprisonment j: the boy is invariably sent for the same crime to a ‘ House of Correction,’ to be kept there until his eighteenth or twenty first year. When the prosecutions against the Anarchists at Lyons had reached their culminating point, a boy of fifteen, Cirier, was condemned by the Lyons Court of Appeal to be kept in prison until the age of twenty-one, for having abused the police in a speech pronounced at a public meeting. Brutalised as they are by the warders, and left without any honest and moralising influence, they are foredoomed to become permanent inmates of prisons, and to die in a central prison, or in New California. The warders and the priests 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 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 undertakers. 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 multicolored 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. I did not see much of the relations between the administration and the common law prisoners at Lyons. But T saw enough to perceive that the warders—mostly old police-soldiers—maintained all the wellknown brutal features of the late Imperial police. As to the higher administration, it is pervaded with the hypocracy which characterises 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 rny wife, ill at the 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. I ought to say a few words about the Palais de Justice of Lyons, where we were kept for ten days during our trial. Bnt I should be compelled 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 ; sometimes they are literally covered with human excretions ; and a few days later, after a hasty sweep, they are resorted to for locking ud 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 my 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 Correctiouelle Court ; and a few days later, on March 17, 1882, we were brought in the night, in great secrecy, ana with a ridiculous display of police force, to the railway station, There we were packed up in cellular waggons to the ‘ Maison Centrale ’ of Clairvaux. The central prison of Clairvaux occupies the site of what formerly was the Abbey of St. Bernard. The great monk of the twelfth 1 century, whose statue, carved in stone, still

rises on a neighboring hill, stretching its arms towards the prison, had well chosen his residence at the mouth of a fine little dale supplied with excellent water from a foun-tain,-and (at the entrance to a wide and fertile plain watered by the Aube. Early m 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 srying out, e Un, deux ! un, deux !’ and the heavy wooden shoe’s answering in cadence to the word of command. A few minutes later, the steamsound their call, and the michines 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 tnrned in one direotien, 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 minutes, and at half-past two, when all men less than thirty-five years old, and having received no instruction, are sent tor an hour to the school. At four the prisoners go to take their dinner; it lasts for half - a £' hour, and a walk in the yard follows. The same Indian files are made up and they slowly march in a circle, the warder always crying his cadenced ‘ Un, dieux ! They call that faire 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 forced 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 nrevots who are nominated from among the Prisoners, and 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 tor 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. Such is the regular life of the prison—a life running for years without the least modification, and which acts depressingly on man by its monotony and its want of impressions. 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 exper--ience, the benefits of an ‘intensive culture One would suspect me of exaggeration if I enumerated all crops of vegetables we made in our kitchen-garden, less than fifty square yards. No compulsory work was imposed upon us ; and my comrades—all workmen who had left at home their families without support—never could obtain any regular employment. A special warder was always kept in our quarter, and as soon as some ct us were in the yard, he regularly took his seat on the steps at the door. In the night we were locked up under at least six or seven locks, and, moreover, 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 maintained by the mutual help of all warders, is exercised on the prisoners as soon as they have left the ■dormitories. During the last two years I met with my wife in a little room within the walls, and, together with some one of our sick comrades, we took a walk in the solitary little garden of the Director, or m 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 scTmuch as five minutes. The food of the prisoners is, in my opinion, quite insufficient. The daily allowance consists chiefly of bread, ■'Bso grammss per day (one pound and ninetenths). It is grey, but very good, and if a prisoner complains of having not enough ■of it, one loaf, or two, per week are added to the above. The breakfast consists of a soup which is made with a few vegetables, water, and American lard—this last very often rancid and bitter. At dinner the game soup is given, and a plate of two ounces of kidney-beans, rice, lentils, or potatoes is added. Twice a week the soup $5 made with meat, and then it is served ' only at breakfast, two ounces of boiled meat given instead of it at dinner. The men are thus compelled to purchase additional food at the canteen, where they have, for very honest prices varying from three-farthings to twopence, small rations of cheese, or sausage, pork meat, and ■sometimes tripe, as also milk, and small rations of figs, jams, _ or fruits in the summer. Without this supplementary food the men obviously could not maintain their strength ; but many of them and especially old people, earn so little that, after deducting the percentage money raised by the State, they cannot spend at the canteen even twopence per day. I really wonder how they manage to keep body and soul together. And now, what are these relations between warders and prisoners which I saw atfClairvaux? Many chapters could be written about them, but I shall try to be as short as possible, and point out -only their leading features. It is obvious that a long life of the warders in common ■and the very necessities of their service have developed among them a certain brotherdood, or rather esprit de corps, which

causes them to act with remarkable uniformity in their relations with the prisoners. In consequence of that esprit de corps, as soon as a prisoner is brought to the prison, the first question of the warders is whether he is a soumis or an insoumis—a submissive fellow, or an insubordinate. If the prisoner is described as an insubordinate, he will be punished again and again. If he sneaks in the ranks, although not louder than the others, a remonstrance will be made in such terms that he will reply and be punished, and each punishment will be so disproportionate that he will object again, and the punishment be doubled ‘ A man who has been once sent to the punishment quarter is sure to return thither a few days after he has been released from it,’say the warders, even the mildest ones. And this punishment is not a light one. The man is not beaten ;he is not knocked down. No, we are civilised people, and the punished man is merely brought to the cellular quarter, and locked up in a cell. The cell is quite empty :it has neither bed nor bench. For the night a mattress is given, and the prisoner must lay his dress outside his cell, at his door. Bread and water are his food. As soon as the prison-bell rings in the morning, he is taken to a small covered yard, and there he must—walk. Nothing more ; but our refined civilization has learned how to make a torture even of this natural exercise. At a formal slow pace, under the cries of un, deux, the patient must walk all the day long, round the building. They walk for twenty minutes; then a rest follows. For ten minutes they must sit immovable, each of them on bis numbered stone, and walk again for twenty minutes; and so on through all the day, as long as the engines of the workshops are running; and the punishment does not last one day, or two ;it lasts for whele months. It is so cruel that the prisoner implores but one thing : * Let me return to the workshops.’—• ‘ Well, we shall see that in a fortnight or two,’ is the usual answer. But the fortnight goes over, and the next one too, and the patient still continues to walk for twelve hours every day. Then he revolts. He begins to cry in his cell to insult the warders. Then he becomes * a rebel’—-a dreadful qualification for anyone who is in the hands of the brotherhood of warders and as such he will rot in the cells, and walk throughout his life. If he assaults a warder, he will not be sent to New Caledonia ; he will still remain in his cell, and ever walk and walk in the. small building. One man, a peasant, seeing no issue from this horrible situation, preferred to poison himself rather than live such a life. P. Kropotkin.