Peines, tortures et supplices

This compact volume opens a detailed catalogue of the most notorious places of confinement and suffering in 19th‑century France. The first section walks the listener through the bustling workshops of Parisian prisons—Maz​as, La Roquette, Saint‑Lazare, and others—while quoting exact populations, wages, and the variety of trades prisoners performed. It then expands outward to the remote bagnes, the grim devices of torture used from medieval times to the present, and the finality of the guillotine.

The author adopts a strictly factual tone, avoiding theory and instead presenting curious minutiae that reveal how the penal system functioned day‑to‑day. Names of infamous detainees appear alongside statistical tables, giving a human texture to the otherwise bureaucratic description. Listeners gain a clear, if unsettling, portrait of the mechanisms of discipline and death that shaped French society during a turbulent era.