Pension Belhomme

The Pension Belhomme was a prison and private clinic during the French Revolution in the Rue de Charonne (11e arrondissement, Paris). Around 1765, the joiner Jacques Belhomme took on the construction of a building for the son of a neighbour, an aristocrat who had been mad since birth. Seeing that running an asylum was more lucrative than joinery, he opened an asylum for lunatics, old people and whoever else rich families wanted to entrust to him. A famous precursor of psychiatry, Philippe Pinel, carried out his first treatments of the insane here. Once the French Revolution had begun, Jacques Belhomme thought that his fortune was assured. Remote from the violent centre of Paris, he had noticeable advantages. In September 1793, when the Reign of Terror began, the députés encouraged the sans-culottes to imprison all suspect individuals: nobles, their wives and children, foreigners, priests, lawyers, the actors of the Comédie Française, rich people in general, in short, all those who had not made clear their allegiance to the Republic. With the prisons of Paris already overflowing, the state requisitioned Belhomme's asylum and then all other private clinics. Belhomme entreated the 12 police chiefs in charge of Paris to send him rich prisoners who would pay high fees to live in his asylum as comfortably as possible. From then on marquises, bankers, journalists, famous actors, old

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