When one thinks of Paris today, there are many famous places which draw our attention: the stunning views from the Eiffel Tower, the beautiful art of the Louvre, the incomparable Notre Dame Cathedral, the grand avenue of the Champs Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacré-Coeur on the hill of Montmartre, the bistros, the cafes, the museums, the bridges, the fountains, the palaces, and all the other countless grand and beautiful places that have drawn countless people to Paris for so many years. Yet, the attraction of Paris is not exclusive to the beautiful and romantic. In a previous article, I covered the sewers of Paris, which were a major attraction in the Victorian era, and continue to be, as the Musée des Egouts de Paris is still open to those who prefer a side of Paris which is perhaps a bit more gritty – and smelly.
There was another unique location which drew much interest in the 19th century. Much like the Musée des Egouts, it was not an attraction based on beauty or art, but based on the shocking and novel. At the heart of Paris, nestled in the middle of the swirling Seine River, is a small island known as the Ile-de-la-Cité. Upon this island, tied to the rest of Paris by ten ornate bridges, are some of the grandest structures in Paris, including the Hôtel Dieu, the Palais du Justice, and the breathtaking Notre Dame Cathedral. But there was once another building on this small island, resting inconspicuously behind the far grander and more massive Notre Dame. It was a squat, square building, and rather unimpressive in comparison to its neighbors, but it drew many crowds in the 19th century. What was this fascinating building which caused such interest? La Morgue.
Location, Location, Location
The location of the Paris Morgue was not by accident. Although the location was also ideal for attracting tourists, the real reason behind its construction on the Ile-de-la-Cité is a bit more practical. The original morgue, built in 1804, was a squat, square building which looked remarkably like a casket. Even then, it was on the little island in the middle of the vast city, and remained there for sixty years. In 1864, a new, larger building was created, and it was moved to the very edge of the Ile-de-la-Cité. A more modern mind might imagine that this was done to hide it away from the larger and more beautiful aspects of Paris, keeping it well-hidden in a little out-of-the-way, forgotten corner, behind the back of Notre Dame – but this was not the reason for the move at all. There was an even more practical reason for the location of the Paris Morgue.
In a city of thousands, built upon the banks of a large river, and with thirty-two bridges just within the city proper, all needing constant maintenance – not to mention the other enterprises happening near, over, and in the Seine (and before the creation of such entities as OSHA and other similar safety committees) – accidents were bound to happen. The heavy clothing of the Victorian era made swimming difficult, and a fall into the Seine was an often fatal occurrence. Not only this, but for those fateful souls who, for one reason or another, found their life more miserable than they could bear, the Seine made an obvious and easy escape from their troubles, and it was not unheard of for some pitiful soul to throw themselves from one of the lovely bridges. Besides accident and suicide, one must also consider the abundance of crime which exists in all major cities.. The Seine was an obvious and opportune choice for those who needed to dispose of a body. Therefore, it was essential, both for the investigation of crimes and for missing persons, to have a rapid and ready response when a body was observed in the river. The Morgue was placed on the banks of the Seine for one single reason: fishing out corpses.
The Cold Case
Paris is known for paving the way into the modern century. By the Victorian era, Paris had a long history of creating new styles of clothing and art which were copied by the rest of Europe, but this was not all. The Paris sewers were the first major sewers of the modern era, and the design of large pipes to separate drinking water from waste water was duplicated by other cities. The tour cars which allowed tourists to travel the sewers and observe their design were the progenitors of the modern subway system. Alphonse Bertillon and the Paris Prefecture of Police instituted the first method of identifying individuals systematically and accurately, and laid the groundwork for modern police procedure and forensic investigation.
The Paris Morgue is another on this list of modern inventions which can be traced back to 19th century Paris. It has long been known that cold will slow the deterioration of food, but the idea of using it to slow the decay of bodies is a modern one. Ice has been used for refrigeration since at least the Flood of Noah, and possibly before. Records of ice being used and preserved for refrigeration can be traced back to the earliest records of the Chinese, Greek, Roman, and Hebrew nations. Even into the early 20th century, ice was a highly valued commodity and a major industry. Early refrigerators were called 'ice-boxes' after earlier versions, which were merely insulated boxes cooled by ice. Methods of storing ice improved greatly as demand grew throughout the 19th century. Frederic Tudor transported ice by sailing ship from New England to the southern states and as far south as the Caribbean Islands. At the start of the ice trade, over half the ice was lost on the journey. Tudor makes note that ice loss was at 66%, but his improvements on insulation methods reduced this down to a mere 8%. Despite this, the cost and trouble of transporting and storing ice for any length of time or over any long distance was great, and alternative methods of cooling were in the process of being developed.
Cool Customers
People dabbled with artificial cooling as early as 1755, when William Cullen designed a cooling machine using a vacuum pump and diethyl ether. Benjamin Franklin also experimented with artificial cooling, and discovered that evaporation of other liquids like ether or alcohol could be used to cool water below freezing. It was not until 1856, however, that a refrigeration machine became available for sale, designed by Alexander Twinning. The design used a closed cycle of compressed ether, and was improved and enlarged by James Harrison, who marketed the large machines to meat-packing plants and beer breweries for large-scale cooling. Three years later, Ferdinand Carre switched from ether to the cheaper and more available ammonia. The risk of poisoning from a gas leak kept the machines from ever becoming widely used for anything more than industrial use until a synthetic alternative was discovered in the 1920's: Freon.
There was one exception, however: The Paris Morgue. In 1882, when refrigeration was still a new concept, and only twenty-three years after the first commercial refrigeration systems were introduced, La Morgue de Paris installed a state-of-the-art refrigeration system, allowing the morgue to deep-freeze up to fifteen bodies. Most often, bodies would be placed into the deep-freezer until they were frozen completely solid by temperatures as cold as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius) and then put on display for three days in the warmer (but still cool) outer hall, as they slowly thawed. Yes, they were put on display.
The Gravest Show on Earth
Even before the morgue was rebuilt bigger and better in 1864, visitors were a common occurrence, and corpses were placed on display – not only for identification, but simply for the sake of curiosity – but the new building made the Paris Morgue an unmissable attraction. The morgue proper was closed off from the salle d'exposition, or showroom, by large glass panels set into columns, which guarded the guests from the smell of the ammonia coolant and the smell of slowly thawing corpses. Behind these large glass panels were set chilly cadavers. Before the installation of the large refrigeration system in 1882, ice water was used to keep the corpses cool. Pipes were run through the display with spigots to slowly drip the freezing water onto the corpses, but the deep-freezer was far more practical.
Upon entry, whether by a coroner's wagon or fished directly from the Seine, the bodies were stripped, inspected, and placed into one of the fifteen drawers of the deep-freezer. Their clothing was inspected for any personal effects or items of identification during this time, and once the bodies were frozen, they were placed on marble slabs, laying slightly elevated, in front of the large glass windows, like so many museum artifacts. Records indicate that they were placed on display totally nude. Sketches from artists depict the bodies with a cloth draped over the waist, or a small screen , but that was all. Their clothing was also displayed, hung from hooks above the bodies, while the former occupants of these vestments were laid bare beneath them for all of the people of Paris to view.
And view them they did; Parisians and tourists, old and young, rich and poor, all mingled together in the salle d'exposition. Many visitors were considered 'regulars', and visited multiple times, rarely missing a day, and sometimes coming more than once per day. Charles Dickens was one of these, visiting the Paris Morgue multiple times, and calling it an 'old friend'. The Morgue was open from dawn until six every day of the week, including Sundays. It was a show that was free for all to attend, no matter one's station or status, and contained a cast of characters that was forever changing – if they were a bit stiff.
The fascination came partly from the possibility of identifying someone. There were some who came in hopes of finding a lost friend or relative, assumed dead but simply missing. In an era when fingerprint identification was still a mere gleam on the horizon, this macabre display aided greatly in the identification of bodies, especially those drawn from the Seine, with no clues as to their identity. Once Bertillon's methods, and later on, fingerprinting, became more widely used, the display of bodies was no longer a necessity, and it was discontinued in 1907 on moral objections, but for many years, the Morgue was the cheapest and most popular show in Paris.
Abra Cadaver: the Morbid Magic of the Macabre
Identification might have been important to some, but it was hardly what captivated the massive crowds. At the height of its popularity, the Morgue reached as many as forty thousand visitors per day, seven days a week. It is impossible to pretend that all these came for the purpose of identifying an acquaintance. Many came from simple, morbid curiosity. Bodies which had lost a limb or were mangled in some way were by far the most popular. In 1876, a woman was found in the Seine who had been cut in half – though whether intentionally or by accident is unknown – and displayed for two full weeks. Keep in mind that this was before the refrigeration system was installed, and the corpse was kept cool only by the steady drip of ice-water. When this method of preservation ultimately failed, a wax replica was placed on display instead, causing even more excitement.
The fact that the morgue was intentionally used to draw tourism is evidenced by the frequent use of wax replicas to represent bodies which could no longer be displayed. The bodies of small children and women (who, like the men, where displayed with only a scanty cloth or screen about the waist) drew the most interest, alongside any body which had suffered some brutal death, like decapitation or dismemberment. The bodies which find their way to the Paris Morgue in my own novel, Grayscale, would have drawn immense crowds, had they been placed on display, rather than hidden away in the deep-freezer by the fictional Chief Inspector Fournier.
This morbid curiosity might seem strange to modern minds, but something similar exists today. The high popularity of the modern police procedural retains some of this fascination with death and mystery. Programs like Bones, Criminal Minds, the entire family of CSI's, NCIS's, and countless other television programs which focus on crime and murder strike the same innate fascination which drew so many to La Morgue de Paris. Before the invention of television, those who wished to sate their thirst for crime and mystery had to find it elsewhere, and the morgue provided the perfect place. Gruesome and mysterious deaths could be seen, pondered, and potentially even solved.
All this could be done without spending a penny. In the 19th century, it was rare to find entertainment which cost nothing. Opera houses, concerts, and dramatic plays were readily available, but not without paying the price of entrance. Books must be purchased. Clubs required membership fees. There was no radio, television, or streaming services offering up a veritable avalanche of entertainment. The morgue was open to everyone at all hours of the day, and on hot summer days, it was even pleasantly cool, thanks to the modern refrigeration unit. Unlike museums, the morgue offered a spectacle that was always changing. New bodies were turning up all the time, and the morgue made efforts to keep every display table full for as long as possible. Empty tiers brought disappointment to the many visitors, who expected to see a full performance. After waiting in what was often a long line, stretching from the morgue's front doors out into the square beyond, the visitors voiced their disapproval upon seeing an empty slab of marble.
The consistent and regular crowds drew street vendors, who set up outside the morgue, selling everything from oranges and cakes to anything else they thought might interest the crowds as they waited in line. There was no death too grisly and no corpse too hideous to stop the crowds. In 1895, when two small children were pulled from the Seine within days of each other, the crowds became so eager to see the corpses that the police were called to maintain order. While the idea of young women viewing nearly-nude men, and young men viewing nearly-nude women, would have caused a terrible uproar in any other setting – and indeed, it did, during the student riot of 1893 – the morgue caused no such outrage for the several decades that it openly displayed the corpses given into its care. It was merely another thing to see and do in Paris, like the Jardin des Plantes or the Tour d'Effiel.
Dead to Rights
Despite causing and increasing what we might rightfully consider an unhealthy fascination for the macabre, the display of bodies did have some positive results. Corpses were occasionally identified, even before the age of fingerprints, and long before the age of DNA testing. Though the identification of bodies was not an extremely frequent occurrence, it was known to happen. Even the slight chance of recognition was a great help for the investigators, but it was not the only weapon in their arsenal. Murder investigations posed a great difficulty for the police methods of the time, and the criminal was rarely caught as easily as those in the stories of Sherlock Holmes. However, murder suspects were often taken to the morgue to view the bodies. It was a popular belief at the time that a murderer would confess more readily when viewing his (or her) victim. However unlikely this theory may be, some confessions were successfully gained by this method.
Whether you view this open interest in death as morbid, revolting, or merely a bit strange, the fact remains that it was a helpful method of identifying those who would otherwise be unknown and forgotten, and occasionally in convicting those who might otherwise have gotten away with murder. Today, the usefulness of displaying corpses is practically nil, but I have no doubt if a morgue chose to display corpses today, there would certainly still be people clamoring to get in. Would you be one of them? Remains to be seen!
For more information on the Paris Morgue or my novel, Grayscale, check out these links:
Grayscale - by Paul Campbell
Death in Paris: The Morgue, by Benjamin Chadwick
The Morgue: A gruesome Tourist Attraction, by Marilyn Brouwer
The Morgue was the best show in town, by Dave Roos
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