The Prison Saint-Lazare was a prison in the Xe arrondissement of Paris, France.
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Originally a leper hospital founded on the road from Paris to Saint-Denis at the boundary of the marshy area of former Seine river bank in the 12th century, it was ceded on 7 January 1632 to Vincent de Paul and the congrégation de la Mission. At this stage it became a place of detention for people who had become an embarrassment to their families: an enclosure for "black sheep" who had brought disgrace to their relatives.
The maison Saint-Lazare was situated in the enclos Saint-Lazare, the largest enclosure in Paris until the end of the 18th century, between the rue de Paradis to its south, the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis to its east, the boulevard de la Chapelle to its north and the rue Sainte Anne to its west (today the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière). Its site is now marked by the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
The building was converted to a prison at the time of the Reign of Terror in 1793, then a women's prison (1896), its land having been seized and re-allotted little by little since the Revolution. It was largely demolished in 1935, with the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris installing itself in the remaining buildings, where they remained until recently. Only the prison infirmary and chapel (built by Louis-Pierre Baltard in 1834) remain of the prison, with the latter to be seen in the square Alban-Satragne (107, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis) in the 10e arrondissement. The surviving remains of the Saint-Lazare prison were inscribed on the supplementary inventory of historic monuments in November 2005.[1]
A song by Aristide Bruant entitled À Saint-Lazare is named after the prison.