La Sante Prison

Paris - La Belle Époque

La Santé Prison (named after its location on the Rue de la Santé) (French: Maison d'arrêt de la Santé or Prison de la Santé) is a prison operated by the French Prison Service of the Ministry of Justice located in the east of the Montparnasse district of the 14th Arrondissement in southern Paris, France, at 42 Rue de la Santé. It is one of the most famous prisons in France, with both VIP and maximum security sections.

La Santé is one of the three main prisons of the Paris area, along with Fleury-Mérogis (Europe's largest prison) and Fresnes, both located in the southern suburbs.

History

The architect Joseph Auguste Émile Vaudremer built the prison, which was inaugurated on 20 August 1867.

The prison is located on the site of a former coal market and replaced the Madelonnettes Convent in the 3rd Arrondissement, which had been used as a prison since the French Revolution. Previously, on the same site, was a Maison de la santé (House of Health), built on the orders of Anne of Austria and transferred in 1651 to what is now the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center.

In 1899, after the closure and demolition of the prison Grande Roquette, convicts were transferred to La Santé either to await transfer to the Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guiana or to await execution. Initially, there were 500 cells in La Santé, which was increased to 1,000 cells in 1900. The cells are 4 metres long, 2.5m wide and 3m high. The prison has a total capacity of as many as 2,000 prisoners, divided into 14 divisions.

With executions having previously been performed at the entrance to Grande Roquette, it was decided to do something similar at La Santé. The guillotine was erected at the corner of the Rue de la Santé and the Boulevard Arago, on the pavement. The first execution – and the first in Paris for ten years – occurred on 6 August 1909. It was for Georges Duchemin, who had been convicted of parricide.

On 7 May 1932, Eugene Boyer, a 27-year-old criminal who had been denied a presidential pardon the previous day by President Paul Doumer, was to be executed by guillotine. Doumer was assassinated the day the execution was scheduled: in France, the president could reverse his decision until the last moment and obviously Boyer could not benefit from this potential "ultimate mercy", so the execution was cancelled "in extremis" (twenty minutes before the time scheduled). He was finally pardoned by Albert Lebrun on 13 May – which respected the tradition of pardoning those sentenced to death the first time in the presidential office – and he was sent to the Prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni in Guiana. He was referred to as André Baillard in the book by Henri Charrière.

Nearly forty prisoners ended their lives in this place. It was also at this site that the second-last public execution in France was performed, for burglar and double murderer Max Bloch on 2 June 1939. Fifteen days later on 17 June, Eugen Weidmann, guilty of six murders, was guillotined in front of Versailles prison and on 24 June the decision was made to ban public executions. In the same decision, the death penalty was made dependent on the Court of Appeal of Seine (either Seine-et-Oise or Aube), with prisoners executed inside Prison de la Santé.

On 15 March 1940, the Vocoret brothers, who killed three policemen in Issy-les-Moulineaux, were the first criminals to be guillotined inside the prison.

During the German Occupation of France, in addition to common law criminals, there were also executions of 18 Resistance fighters and communists. Nine of them were guillotined between August 1941 and July 1942. The other nine were shot on 30 April 1944. They are memorialized by a plaque affixed to the wall of the prison at the corner of Rue Jean-Dolent and Rue de la La Santé.