Bicêtre

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Jacques Rigaud : Panoramic view of the Bicêtre hospital and gardens.

Bicêtre was a castle, hospital, madhouse, and prison in what is now Le Kremlin-Bicêtre near and southwest of Paris .

The lock

The name comes from a castle that was built on land that Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester 1282-1304, bought in 1286. The corruption of the place name first made Winchester Vincestre, then Bicestre and finally Bicêtre. In 1294 King Philip IV confiscated the castle, which later became one of the preferred residences of the last Capetians and the first Valois . It was considered to be one of the richest princely residences in the country: in 1330 the palace was equipped with a portrait gallery of popes, kings, cardinals and princes. Bicêtre came into the possession of Jean de Valois, duc de Berry (1340-1416), who renovated the castle and housed part of his collections here.

In May 1401, Amadeus VIII , Count of Savoy († 1452), and Mary of Burgundy (1380-1422), daughter of Philip the Bold , Duke of Burgundy , married in Bicêtre . On November 2, 1410, the Treaty of Bicêtre was concluded here, one of the first peace agreements between the parties at the beginning of the civil war between Armagnacs and Bourguignons . In 1411 the buildings were burned down in connection with this civil war.

The hospital and prison

King Louis XIII 1633 ordered the construction of an asylum for crippled (invalide), old and frail soldiers ( soldats estropiés, vieux et caducs ) on the ruins of the castle. In 1647, on the initiative of Vincent von Paul, the hospital was expanded to become a home for foundlings ( Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés ). Under Louis XIV , the house was part of a general hospital from 1656 and was tasked with taking in beggars and other undesirable people ( indésirables ).

In 1735, the arrival of a Jansenist clergyman by the name of Fuzier, who wanted to take care of the choirboys, marked the beginning of a conflict that broke out ten years later under the name Affaire de l'Hopital général , and which was disguised as a religious dispute appears to have engaged in child sexual abuse.

Bicêtre later recorded all problem cases of the Parisian population and did not differentiate between the poor, the sick and the criminals: the mentally ill (who were chained up until the arrival of Philippe Pinel , who was medicin chef de l'hospice de Bicêtre from 1792 to 1794 ), fraudsters , Murderers, vagabonds and delinquents of all kinds, including homosexuals caught red-handed, since they were no longer publicly burned. The prisoners were flogged to drive out their wrongdoing.

During the revolution , on the basis of a report by Mirabeau, those prisoners who were here without judgment were released. In September 1792, almost 200 prisoners were beaten to death with clubs during the September massacre, including many children who had been picked up on the streets for minor thefts, begging or vagabonding. Bicêtre later took on counterfeiters who were considered counter-revolutionaries at the time. The majority of them were accused and guillotined of alleged involvement in a prisoner conspiracy in June 1794. On February 10, 1794, the politician Jacques Roux committed suicide in Bicêtre to avoid the guillotine .

Le Malheureux Cloquemin Sous les Verroux , 1830, depicts the transport in chains from Bicêtre to Bagno

Strait jackets are said to have existed in Bicêtre in 1790 , made by an upholsterer named Guilleret . The first experiments with the guillotine were carried out here on April 17, 1792, first on live sheep, then on the corpses of three vagabonds. From 1793 Bicêtre served as a transit station for the penal colonies . A prominent inmate was the Marquis de Sade for a short time in 1803 . In 1808 the doctor and anatomist Franz Joseph Gall also visited the institute for experimental purposes for his lectures and to confirm his cranial and brain theory, phrenology .

In 1836 the facility was closed as a prison.

Bicêtre is also known for its huge well, which was dug in 1733: 5 meters in diameter and 60 meters deep. In 1855 a steam engine was installed, until then the water was brought up by prisoners and the mentally ill (later only by the mentally ill).

The mortality rate in Bicêtre was 18.75% annually from 1815 to 1818.

In the place of the old complex is now the Center Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) de Kremlin-Bicêtre and part of the medical faculty of the Paris-South University .

Bicêtre in literature

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marion Sigaut, La Marche rouge , éditions Jacqueline Chambon, Paris 2008.
  2. ^ Paul Bru: Histoire de Bicêtre (hospice, prison, asile) d'après des documents historiques . Progrès médical, 1890.
  3. ↑ Another from Paris, July 15. In: Augspurgische Ordinari Postzeitung , No. 175, July 22, 1808, p. 1 ( digitized version of the Augsburg University Library ).
  4. ↑ Louis-René Villermé : Mémoire sur la mortalité dans les prisons . In: Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale , born in 1829.
  5. ↑ Chapters four to seven of Part 15; Insel paperback, Frankfurt / M. and Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-458-35088-0 .