More on French Prisoners

In researching prisoners for genealogy, we were happy to find these fine articles about French prisons. We pass them on to our readers on the sad chance that they may need these resources to discover more about the residence of an incarcerated ancestor:

• Wikipedia on Devil's Island, a prison that holds the same place in France's popular imagination that Alcatraz once held in the American.
• A Questia journal article: "Neither Myth nor Monolith: the Bagne in Fin-de-Siècle France" by Stephen A. Toth, a study of just how hard hard labour was or not.
• Wikipedia article on the bagne of Toulon, one of the toughest of hard labour prisons.
• A discussion of the archives on the prisons of Cayenne and New Caledonia, giving a very good listing. In French.
• A History of the Guillotine, with unutterably creepy photographs, by a fellow who will build you a guillotine to your specifications.

We had thought to go on to list ten, but in pursuing this subject we have now made ourselves so thoroughly unhappy, we stop here. 

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©2010 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy