150 years of Saint-Michel prison told in photos in a book edited by the neighborhood committee
In Toulouse, the Saint-Michel neighborhood committee is publishing and presenting on October 18 a book of photographs devoted to the former Saint-Michel prison. Closed in 2003, it was listed as a historical monument eight years later.
It is an imposing work, which traces the 150 years of existence of a symbolic place in Toulouse, the Saint-Michel prison, located in the suburb of the same name. 271 pages. About ten photographers from the 1920s to today. Nine contributing authors. Six years of work for the Saint-Michel neighborhood committee, which publishes it on behalf of author-distributor, under the leadership of its president Guillaume Drijard.
A star-shaped remand center
The Saint-Michel prison, with the appearance of a medieval castle and easily recognizable by its castelet at the entrance, was designed by the departmental architect Jacques-Jean Espié and built from 1861 to 1869. It can accommodate 400 inmates, including women who are incarcerated in a reserved area. Seen from the sky, it has the peculiarity of a five-pointed star architecture starting from a central rotunda.
A few years later, it became a morbid place since the town hall of Toulouse decided, in 1923, to have those condemned to death executed in front of the prison casket, and no longer in Port-Garaud where these executions had taken place until then. It was in 1923 that the last two condemned to death were publicly condemned in Toulouse.
Saint-Michel prison during the second world war
But the story of Saint-Michel prison will continue for a long time to come. During the Second World War, many resistance fighters were imprisoned there, tortured, some condemned to death and executed or deported to the death camps. Among them, Angèle Bettini, Henriette and Suzanne Guiral, Raymond Naves, who died in Auschwitz, François Verdier, assassinated by the Gestapo, Alice Bessou-Kokine who died in deportation in Ravensbruck, Marcel Langer, guillotined in the courtyard of the Toulouse prison on the 27th. July 1943.
The writer and politician André Malraux will make a brief stay there, after being arrested by the Germans for his resistance activities in the Lot.
On August 19, 1944, the prison was freed by the wives of the inmates who forced open its doors.
It was in the 2000s that the closure of the Saint-Michel prison was decided by the Ministry of Justice. On January 27, 2003, the last 528 detainees left Toulouse for the new remand center in Seysses.
From the origins to today, through photography
It is therefore all this Toulouse history that the book, entitled “The Saint-Michel prison in Toulouse – In pictures, from the origins to the present day”, retraces. With photographs from studio Henri Manuel, Jean Dieuzaide, André Cros, Thierry Bordas, Dominique Delpoux, Christian
Cros, Marc Le Flour, Magali Chapelan, Maurice Cuquel, Clément Poitrenaud.
And the contributions of Odile Foucaud, art historian, Régis Granier, author of historical works, Élérika Leroy, specialist in resistance in the Toulouse region, Gérard Lapagesse, painter and animator of workshops with prisoners, Christian Cros, photographer and head of the photo, film and video department of the Toulouse National School of Architecture, Magali Chapelan, photographer and filmmaker, Maurice Cuquel, photo-reporter, Florence At, photojournalist.
“The Saint-Michel prison in Toulouse – In pictures from the origins to the present day” is available for direct sale from this Monday, October 18, 2021, at the local committee of the neighborhood, 95 grande rue Saint-Michel in Toulouse – in the courtyard on the left, Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays at the Saint-Michel farmers market (in front of the castelet of the former Saint-Michel prison), from 9 to 1 p.m.
It will then be on sale in bookstores and boutiques from November.