3-043-841 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Outside the prison of La Roquette, Paris: letters for the prisoners, 1871. 'The prison called the Nouveau Bicêtre, in the Rue de la Roquette...is ordinarily used for the preliminary confinement, during six months, of felons sentenced to a term of penal servitude...Our own Artist, Mr. Simpson, visited La Roquette on the Monday morning, when there was still a large number of living prisoners, two thousand he was told, within this prison... Hundreds of the Communist insurgents, being captured at the barricades with arms in their hands, and having refused to submit to the officers commanding the troops, were instantly taken to the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace, or to the courtyard inside the prison of La Roquette, or to other places where they were ranged in front of a wall and shot by the soldiers or sailors. There were not a few women among these wretched victims...Outside [the prison], their wives, mothers, and sisters, or other friends, waited about the entrance, hoping to learn their fate, or handing to the gendarmes and soldiers on guard some letters for those whom they loved'. Above the gate is written 'Dépot des Condamnés' (Depot of the Convicts), and below the national motto of France: 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.