La Salpêtrière

By Thirza Vallois

Paris Kiosque - September 1998 - Volume 5, Number 9
Copyright (c) 1998 Thirza Vallois - used with permission
Excerpted from "Around and About Paris"

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When Princess Diana died on 31st of August 1997, her final journey from the Ritz to La Salpêtrière had a further symbolic dimension to someone like myself, who knew the history of both places. My immediate reaction was: "How extraordinary that the most glamorous of princesses, who had spent her last night out at the scintillating Ritz, should end up at La Salpêtrière, of all places! For La Salpêtrière is not just any Parisian hospital. It was built to shelter, and to shelter only, the most wretched outcasts and rejects of society. That Princess Diana should have died there seemed to me particulary poignant, as in recent years she had decided to devote her time precisely to some of the less privileged members of society.

September in Paris is the "mois du patrimoine", an annual occasion when Paris's magnificent monuments are open to the public. Rather than join the endless queues that snake in front of the city's dazzling palatial mansions, I'd rather take you to the third volume of "Around and About Paris", for a visit of La Salpêtrière in the less sightly 13th arrondissement. It will be our way of commemorating the first anniversay of Princess Diana's tragic death and paying tribute to her work:

With so much wine and beer flowing about, the banks of the foul river (referring here to the river Bievre which now runs underground) attracted the most wretched riff-raff, who whiled away the hours in unsavoury dives along the river, drowning their misery in cheap alcohol, engaging in brawls and crime. It was among the embryonic working class of Faubourg Saint-Antoine (now in the 11th and 12 arrondissements) and among the rabble of the future 13th, `more wicked, more inflammable and more disposed to mutiny than could be found anywhere else in Paris', according to Louis-Sébastien Mercier, that the French Revolution recruited its zealous hordes of angry followers. Restif de la Bretonne, a contemporary of Mercier, described how on the eve of 14 July the bandits from Faubourg Saint-Marcel passed by his house on their way to join those of Faubourg Saint-Antoine: Tout cela formait une tourbe formidable (All this formed a formidable bog). And it was the Patriotes of Faubourg Saint-Marcel who were the first to arrive at the Palais des Tuileries on 10 August 1792 and demand the abdication of the King.

It was here also that one of the most hideous episodes of the French Revolution took place, le massacre de La Salpêtrière, on the night of 3/4 September 1792. La Salpêtrière, originally a gunpowder factory (hence its name) set up conveniently opposite the King's Great Arsenal across the Seine, was converted at the time of Louis XIV into a sort of gigantic alms-house, into which were herded willy-nilly the tramps and vagabonds of Paris, its rascals and rogues, whores and cut-throats, charlatans and crooks - 40,000 in all out of a total population of 400,000! This initiative was intended to clear the streets of vice whilst providing shelter for this wretched portion of humanity. A royal edict of 27 April 1656 clearly stated the objective `to put an end to beggary and idleness, as being the source of all disorder'. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and what was meant as a charitable institution, where `all the poor would be gathered on clean premises, so as to be tended to, be educated and be given an occupation', turned out to be a diabolical depot for the dregs of society, an infernal mosaic of human misery. The feeble-minded and the hardened whore, the offender and the outlaw, the outcasts and the homeless, the epileptic and the paralytic were penned up side by side in the purgatory, the men at Bicêtre, the women at La Salpêtrière. And despite the architectural care bestowed on the establishment by the greatest artists of the day - Le Vau, Le Muet, Libéral Bruant - who had at their disposal huge donations from Fouquet, Mazarin and Pompon de Bellièvre, and despite the efforts of its first chaplain and most charitable man in the kingdom, Saint Vincent de Paul, the institution suffered from horrendous overcrowding and appalling conditions.

These deteriorated dramatically after 1680, when, following a new royal edict, La Salpêtrière also became a jail for prostitutes arrested on the authority of a sealed letter from the King. Caught in the net on the streets of Paris, they were driven in carts through crowds of jeering Parisians to La Salpêtrière, where they were paired off with hardened convicts and shipped off to the New World to populate its newly conquered territories. The reign of absolutism had no concern for the suitability of the couples or for their uprootedness. Nor did it have much compassion for the mentally deranged, as the Duc de La Rochefoucauld reported after a visit to the place: `Everything is in a state of neglect to a degree as inconceivable as it is distressing. All categories of madness are confounded; chained-up mad women (and there are many of them) are united with peaceful ones. The latter have to put up permanently with the horrific spectacle of the contortions and fury of their enraged inmates, which they accompany with perpetual screams, and never enjoy a moment of rest... Here there is no gentleness, no consolation, no remedy.'What the Duke had overlooked (or failed to mention) was that the building was also overrun by voracious rats.

On that night of 3/4 September 1792, the unbridled rabble of Fauborg Saint-Marcel, equipped with their notorious pikes, assaulted La Salpêtrière, initially with the generous intention of releasing the cruelly detained street-girls. However, with so much alcohol flowing in their veins, by the time they reached La Salpêtrière their brutish instincts got the better of them and the enterprise turned into an unutterable orgy of blood. Whereas 183 prostitutes were indeed released and hailed by the mob, 45 dishevelled, mentally-deranged women were dragged into the street and massacred in view of all. This prompted Madame Roland, hitherto a great supporter of the Revolution, to write in her Memoirs that the Revolution `has been stained by villans and become hideous'.

Lovers of 17th-century architecture may wish to visit La Salpêtrière, the largest hospital in Paris, sprawling on the north-eastern edge of the arrondissement. The main entrance in on Square Marie-Curie, on Boulevard de L'Hôpital, adjacent to the Gare d'Austerlitz. Here stands a statue of Pinel, commemorating the 19th-century doctor who devoted his career to the relief of the mentally ill. The imposing façade of the institution ahead vividly recalls the façade of the Hôtel des Invalides, not surprisingly, since the two are roughly contemporary and were designed for a similar function, that is, to remove from the streets the undersirable or cumbersome members of society and to intern them in a glorified setting as befitted an era of the Sun King. Homeless war veterans were shut up in the Invalides (1670) and all categores of paupers at the Hôpital Général (1657), which was made up of three sections, Bicêtre for males, La Pitié for boys and La Salpêtrière for women. Paris at the time numbered 400,000 inhabitants - 10 per cent of whom were homeless! As many as 10,000 were interned at La Salpêtrière alone, making it the largest hospice in the world!

Following the canons of the time, Louis Le Vau designed a compound in perfect geometric order arund a square courtyard, La Cour Saint-Louis, endowing it with an austere façade in keeping with the nature of the institution. However, he was too busy with other ventures - the Louvre, Versailles, Vincennes - and had to pass on the torch to Duval and Le Muet, and it was Libéral Bruant, the architect of the Invalides, who was commissioned to build the institution's chapel in 1669 on the site of an earlier chapel dedicated to Saint Denis. At the entrance to the chapel is an elegant porch with three harmonious Ionic arcades, and a beautifully sculptured wooden portal, also dating from the 17th century. Inside the chapel a latern-shaped dome surmounts a central octagonal rotunda where the high alter stands, the meeting-point of four austere equal-sized naves which make up the shape of a Greek cross. This design allowed four groups of worshippers for whom the chapel was erected - men, women, boys, girls - to be seated apart yet close to the high alter - the demented, the feebleminded, the homeless and the debauched - all of whom listened to the sermon and the Holy Scriptures read to them from the beautiful wrought-iron lectern that may still be seen at present. The chapel was in fact the keystone of the venture, which gave it moral and spiritual credibility, and it is not insignificant that the first chaplain of La Salpêtrière was no other than Saint Vincent de Paul, the most respected churchman of the 17th century, who had devoted his life to improving the lot of the poor and alleviating the pains of society's rejects.

Reality proved very different. La Cour Manon Lescaut, one of the hospital's courtyards, commemorates the tragic heroine of l'Abbé Prévost's novel, who, like so many of her contemporaries, was locked up for debauchery in the prison section of La Salpêtrière before being deported to the `islands'. Throughout the 18th century, La Salpêtrière remained the antechamber of deportation, helping France consolidate her grip on the newly acquired territories in Canada, Louisiana, and the Caribbean Islands.

The mentally deranged had their own section in this purgatory, where they were chained to the cell walls, abandoned to their fate, bitten by rats, screaming out their agony. It was only in the early 19th century, at the instigation of Dr. Pinel, that the approach to mental disease began to change. Friend of the Encyclopédistes and child of the 18th-century enlightenment, Dr. Pinel did away with the chains, a revolutionary step and hitherto inconceivable. Pinel died in 1826 but he had shown the light to his followers and during the reign of Louis-Philippe the inmates' cells were also done away with - yet another revolution. In the second half of the 19th century, when Dr. Charcot took over the department, La Salpêtrière became world famous as a psychiatric centre, and students came from all over Europe to listen to Charcot's lectures. Among them was a young student by the name of Sigmund Freud.

Today a cultural association, Les Amis de Saint-Louis, helps to promote the 17th-century chapel and bring it to the attention of the public by way of various activities. You may consider attending a chamber-music concert here on a Sunday afternoon.

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Thirza Vallois brings Paris to life in a way that enthralls her readers and provides them with a detailed knowledge of the city which exceeds that of most Parisians, while her fast moving style disguises a depth of historical fact that is normally only found in academic tomes. Writer William Boyd wrote in The Spectator: "I think we can safely toss all other Paris guidebooks aside....There can be no higher praise than when I say they come close to the world's greatest guidebook, J. Link's "Venice for Pleasure" and they should soon achieve similar legendary status." The French Ambassador to the UK wrote: "I am convinced that this guide will constitute from now on, for the British lovers of Paris, a reference book which will have the success it deserves." Around and About Paris may be ordered here.

A long time resident of Paris, she currently lives just three hours outside of Paris in London, and may be contacted via thirzavallois@iliadbooks.demon.co.uk.