Paris prison + Gare de l'Est Nazi style

Last week I posted about the old women's prison torn down in the 1930's. Here's breaking news about the last prison in Paris, La Santé. Update today from the Guardian: 

France is about to turn the page on a shameful chapter of its penal history by renovating its most notorious prison, La Santé.

La Santé, named after a neighbouring hospital in southern Paris, has held some of Frances's most famous prisoners in its colourful 147-year history. They have included poets Paul Verlaine and Guillaume Apollinaire, and the playwright Jean Genet, as well as Carlos the Jackal, war criminal Maurice Papon and the Algerian revolutionary leader who became independent Algeria's first president, Ahmed Ben Bella. Although the prison had a VIP wing, Ben Bella told an interviewer: "The French put me with the prisoners who were being guillotined. I could see the guillotine from my cell."

In 2000, the prison's chief medical officer was so shocked by the brutal conditions in the overcrowded jail that she published a diary about her seven-year experience that sparked a parliamentary inquiry.

"Three inmates fought with knives. I was standing in blood until about midnight. The next day, it starts all over again … multiple injuries. It's the humidity, the sun, the suffocating heat in the cells that makes them go crazy," Véronique Vasseur wrote in the diary. Her description of a jail infested by rats, cockroaches and lice was a vision of hell. Some prisoners in the cramped shared cells drank drain cleaner or rat poison to put an end to their misery and others suffered from skin rashes caused by the lack of hygiene with only two showers allowed each week, she said.

La Santé was built to hold 1,400 prisoners, but at the time of the exposé by Vasseur – who received death threats after publication – it was housing more than 2,300. Since that time the most insalubrious blocks have been closed, and on Sunday, the last 60 prisoners were moved out under reforms ordered by justice minister Christiane Taubira, who has ordered a four-year facelift.

When the prison reopens in 2019, it will contain 800 cells.

I'd meant to post about visiting under Gare de l'Est, the train station where many French soldiers, 'le poilu', left for the front in 1914.  This time to highlight what we saw in the bunkers circa the Second World War, the war the Great War was fought to prevent.  I'll let the photos do most of the talking.

an aerial view of the station and lines leading East

Below Gare de l'Est the hangout room for the train hobby club - all former and present SNCF who love trains big and small

Here's a set up and the club work on this all the time

Going deeper below the station

Ring the bell to enter the shelter/bunker

This is what it looks like on the platform and you can get out through the grill if needed. I used that in a book and was so thrilled to have this photo as proof.

Cara - Tuesday

le Quatorze Juillet is not the Revolution

Let's burst your bubble right away. The French Revolution did not begin on July 14, 1789. Nor did it commence at the 'citoyens' outrage at the Bastille prison and erupt into a spontaneous storming of the Bastille that ignited the 'paysans' all over France. The Revolution and Reign of Terror began a day earlier on July 13th, 1789 and at another prison up the 'hill' in Paris. Now a few Metro stops away. In these days, insurrections were fermenting all over Paris against the Royalty, and this time the powder keg was lit.
I think we should know this because the straw that broke the big French Royalty's back in France stemmed from protests against the inhuman conditions at the Women's Prison of Saint Lazare. The Prison Saint Lazare held Marquis de Sade at one time and later Mata Hari, who was shot,

before it was torn down in the 1930's.
But yes, the crowds did storm the Bastille a day later after they'd marched down from Prison Saint Lazare -which they hadn't pulled down and they should have. Imagine their frustration that the Bastille held only seven occupants, the angry crowd which had swelled into a riot, re-inforced by arms stolen from the military at Invalides,  tore it down as a symbol making it a rallying place to this day.
Originally Saint Lazare prison was a leprosarium founded on the road from Paris to Saint-Denis in the 12th century. St. Vincent de Paul and his Mission took it over later to make it a place of detention for people who had become an embarrassment to their families: un enclos, an enclosure for 'black sheep' who had brought disgrace to their relatives.
The prison was situated in the enclos Saint-Lazare, the largest enclosure in Paris until the end of the 18th century, in the tenth arrondissement between the Rue de Paradis to its south, the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis to its east. Its site is now marked by the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the only remaining part of the prison as it was then.

The building was converted to a prison at the time of the Reign of Terror in 1793, where the Marquis de Sade was held, a year later into a women's prison.

Women were imprisoned for debts, prostitution, thievery, even being 'not quite right in the head' and giving her landlord trouble, you name it. To give an example; a father, a gambler, of a family living in a tenement ran off without paying the rent. His wife, with three young children, was held responsible for his debts and the rent. She and her children were thrown into St. Lazare prison. No records indicate they ever got out. Women gave birth in prison, whole families lived there in squalid conditions. Few of the women imprisoned in St. Lazare had rich families or benefactors who paid off the guards for better conditions or food as happened de riguer in other prisons like the Bastille. Abuse and vermin infestation made the place notorious. It took more than forty years, after a decree mandated that the prison should be shut down, for it to finally happen.

That special treatment prison option hasn't changed. Carlos, the Jackal, imprisoned for life, lived in le Santé previously in the VIP wing with disgraced government officials and got better meals and service than you or I would. He still does and 'runs', according to my source, a wing of a prison in northwest France where he's now incarcerated, after marrying his attorney, and smokes imported Cuban cigars. A gift of you know who.

This is the painting of Prison Saint Lazare that stays with me -

Cara - Happy real Bastille Day