My Journey into Insanity

Where I put stuff I learn because I just want to understand Les Misérables. I am no scholar. I don't know what I'm doing. Slowly descending into insanity.

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[reginalds-deactivated20210314]

AUDIO GIFT - Les Miserables, Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne (7:30pm, December 20th, 2014) - tracked

CAST: Simon Gleeson (Jean Valjean), Hayden Tee (Javert), Patrice Tipoki (Fantine), Lara Mulcahy (Madame Thénardier), Trevor Ashley (Thénardier), Kerrie Anne Greenland (Éponine), Emily Langridge (Cosette), Chris Durling (Enjolras), Euan Doidge (Marius), Rodney Dobson (Bishop of Digne), Luke Joslin (Grantaire), Alexandra Travers (Little Cosette), Ben Jason-Easton (Gavroche)

NOTES: Final performance of Les Mis Oz in Melbourne before it moves on to Perth. Recorded in row d of the grand circle. The cast was truly on top of their game for this performance and it was the most responsive audience I’ve ever been a part of. I’m so glad they were, the audiences of the Melbourne run have been extremely mixed and the cast more than deserved such a send off as this. Includes album art, cast list, a scan of the complete cast page from the program, the curtain call, and the outro.

DOWNLOAD HERE

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Paris Between Empires, Philip Mansel (chapter 9, pages 284-285)

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Paris Between Empires, Philip Mansel (chapter 1, page 13)

note: "throughout the next month" refers to March/April 1814

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Paris Between Empires, Philip Mansel (chapter 1, page 4)

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by James Morton

Eh, it was alright. I learned a few things, but not much. Doesn't really help things that I grew to dislike Vidocq, so I wasn't all that interested in reading about him after maybe the first fifty pages. I did get a little bit of insight into some of the prisons, though. I guess that's something.

This book suffers from that it tries to be so much more than a biography. A lot of superfluous events and people are introduced and the author jumps around between subjects so much; it gets really confusing as to who's who and what's what. Morton will bring in a person who you're supposed to know, I guess, but a little bit of a reminder would have been a big help. The book also does not flow chronologically. Morton jumps all over the place in time, so that I'm constantly trying to figure out what things happened when and in what order. He mentions dates, but hardly mentions how old Vidocq is, which would have been helpful to me. I think I might have been more interested if I was reading a better-written book.

The best thing I might have gotten out of this book, in fact, were recommendations for other resources to read. We shall see.

posts relating to this source

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 8, pages 72-73)

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 5, pages 44-48)

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 23, page 243)

Just something of interest.

[frenchhistory]

L’ancien bagne de Toulon, fin du 19e

@credits

The bagne of Toulon was created by an ordinance of King Louis XV in 1748 to house the convicts who had previously been sentenced to row the galleys of the French Mediterranean fleet.The name ‘bagne’ came from the Italian word bagno, or bath, the name of a prison in Rome which had formerly been a Roman bath.

Since the 15th century, French prisoners had been sentenced to serve on the galleys, sometimes even for minor crimes. By the eighteenth century, cannons and changes in modern naval warfare had made the galleys obsolete, and the use of galleys for punishment was stopped. The prisoners were first transferred to a group of ships tied up at the arsenal and port of Toulon, which were called the “bagne flottant” (the floating prison.) Then, new buildings were constructed on the shore in the Arsenal, between the Nouvelle Darse (new port) and Veille Darse (old port.) Other bagnes were created in Brest and Rochefort.

Though there were no more galleys being built, prisoners continued to be sent to Toulon. The convicts were used for digging earth and construction work, both in the Arsenal and in the town. They also provided labor for the big treadmills used in spinning ropes in the Corderie, or rope factory, of the Arsenal.

At the beginning of the Second Empire of Napoleon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte), the government decided to close the prisons at the naval ports, which were considered undesirable and expensive to run. It was therefore decided to replace the so-called “bagnes métropolitains”, the prisons within cities, with transportation to French Guyana (with the central administration in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and Devil’s Island mainly used for political prisoners) and later also to Noumea in French New Caledonia. The bagnes of Rochefort and Brest were closed in 1852 and 1858 respectively, but Toulon, the largest, took longer to empty.

By 1873, the bagne had become too expensive to operate, and the workers were too unskilled and required too many guards to be of practical use. The bagne was closed, and the buildings were used for various military purposes. They survived until 1944, when the bagne was almost entirely destroyed by an Allied bombing raid. All that remains today is a single small building and a fragment of wall, on the southeast side of the Darse Vauban.

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 15, pages 156-157)

(This sounds a little bit like what Javert was doing. Interesting.)

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Benjamin-Nicolas-Marie Appert (1797-1847), a philanthropist and prison reformer, was a member of the Société Royale des Prisons de France. He started life as a teacher of soldiers and then of prisoners. Unfortunately  two of his pupils escaped and it was into La Force for him, where he experienced the degradation of prison life for himself. He appears under his own name in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir (1830).

(footnote from The First Detective, James Morton, chapter 17, page 181)

(just a note for me to maybe look more into this some time.  Sounds interesting.)

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 15, pages 149-151)

Highlighted the part that mentions the "most capable employees in the Préfecture." Perhaps Javert was on this case.

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The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 19, page 194)

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They were joined by a collection of instruments of torture and an example of the manacles and weighted boots which Vidocq had worn in his prison days.

The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 19, page 196)

(on Vidocq's exhibition in London 1845; posted here just for the small example of prison practices)

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Vidocq, like Fossard and other released convicts, had the right to be bitter. Along with their yellow passports they could not live in Paris or in certain other major towns or within twelve kilometres of the coast or a frontier. A released convict could not change his residence without the consent of the local Prefect. I t was a regime thought to be a prime cause of recidivism.

The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 16, page 179)

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Overall, however, the authorities were pleased with their chief. In April 1822 Vidocq's annual salary was raised to 4,440 francs with an increase of 1,000 francs in April 1823.

The First Detective, James Morton (chapter 12, page 122)