"Souvenirs du bagne"1840
|| Bourgeois Parisians
were drawn to the subject of crime and prison reform in the early
nineteenth century. Was this the product of some change in the
incidence of crime - a rapid rise in the crime rate that focused
French minds on the problem and intensified the social fear?
Louis Chevalier's Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses
makes a case for this social-fear hypothesis. Paris in the early
nineteenth century became a city "menaced by crime and haunted
by fear"(Chevalier, 14);
the influx of workers into Paris, the physical conditions of
the slums, and the tensions that resulted produced a neurosis
that was combined with the bourgeois' morbid fascination with
the criminal underworld. (Wright,
- Once convicted of a crime, men and
women were at the mercy of their guards. Many writers including
Hugo described the terrifying conditions of the prisons and the
hardships of life on a chain gang. While these descriptions may
have been romanticized, life as a convict
- One of the most famous bandits in nineteenth
century France was the bandit-turned-policeman, Vidocq.
After escaping countless times from prison, Vidocq was employed
by the Parisian police force and used his knowledge of the underworld
to infiltrate the slums and subsequently inform the police of
crimes in the making.
- The writer-murderer, Lacenaire,
lived, killed, and died at the height of the romantic era in
France when the "mood of the times" helped to arouse
public interest in the criminal underworld. This climate of romanticism
inspired talk of "the art of murder" among the bourgeois.
Golden Mean Between the Guillotine and Liberty", a forgotten 19th century artist's stylized
conception of prison life at the time