Bagne of Brest

The Bagne of Brest was a building, now disappeared, built between 1749 and 1751, by Antoine Choquet de Lindu which dominated the port the length of its 254 meters. It could place 300 Forçat S. If it is wrongly often associated with a gun, the Tonnerre of Brest, it is however not with the latter that the escapes from convicts were announced.

For a long time, the prisoners of the bagne counted for approximately 10% of the Brest-native population. The convicts could as well be children (11 years) that elderly.

History

The construction of the bagne was launched after Louis XV had attached by an ordinance of September 27th, 1748 the bodies of Galères (before independent) to the royal navy, in order to make it possible this one to thus have a not very expensive labor.

The convicts, hitherto held on their galères, were to be lodged with ground well. In Brest, the question was solved by Antoine Choquet de Lindu, which made build in 1752 the bagne of Brest .

This building, length 260 meters and two stages divided into four great parts, could accommodate 400 to 500 convicts. Its design met three aims:

to easily maintain the police force,
to avoid the escape from the convicts,
to provide them the needs essential to the life.

Its localization was difficult to decide. So much of the Brest-native citizens wished that it was built inside the enclosure of the Arsenal, no site “in cliff bottom” did not have the place sufficient for its construction nor of the sanitary arrangements adapted to the building (fresh water, ventilation…). Also it was builds finally in Lannouron, on left bank of Penfeld, between the high rope manufacture, the barracks and the hospital.

It was closed in 1858, the living conditions being considered to be too soft compared to those of the workmen, according to the report/ratio of the baron Portal. The convicts from now on were sent in the penal settlements.

The building was demolished after the second world war, at the end of the Forties.

Life of the convicts to the bagne

When a convict arrives for the first time at the bagne, all his clothing is burned to him, so that a possible disease cannot declare and contaminate the occupants of the bagne. The convict is attached to another condemned, present for a certain time, and company will hold to him for one 3 years minimal period.

The convicts are used in the Arsenal of Brest as workmen. One allots if possible tasks to them corresponding to their former trade. Three categories of convicts can thus be distinguished:

the working (carpenter, carpenter, cartwright, pit sawyer, stone mason, roadmender, crusher of cement, plasterer, minor, blacksmith, metal worker, monumental mason…), remunerated from 15 to 20 centimes per day,
the daily (bardor, café owner, operation, digger…), remunerated 5 to 10 centimes per day,
the convict with tiredness , for the other tasks and the convicts “without speciality”, not remunerated.

Affected with a given task, the convict cannot be inattentive about it except exceptional and temporary reason. Also certain operations very applicants in labor could be realized only slowly: the form n°4 of Pontaniou which would have required work of 600 convicts, could have only one quite lower number of convict and thus saw his building work being prolonged during more than one about fifteen years…

The convicts have for the majority thus of a relative freedom during the day and of a pay a few centimes per day. Certain convicts benefitted from their spare time to make products, which they could then sell downtown: the convict locked up at the bottom of a dungeon or even encloses in the enclosure of the arsenal is thus especially a myth… supported by the images which one can have of the bagne such as it became after the creation of the Bagne S of overseas.

Famous convicts

Eugene-François Vidocq, wire of a baker of Arras, will escape some (as well as Bagne of Toulon) and will become chief of the police force.

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