Commissioner foucault, inspector Noël, and the "Pederasts" of Paris, 1780-3

Journal of Social History

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 285-307

  Merrick, Jeffrey ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE   (United States)

^b Department of History ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032326020     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh/32.2.287     Document Type: Review

References (46)

1. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'à nos jours, 36 vols. (1780-9; reprint Westmead, 1970), 23: 241-2 [13 October 1783]. The authors remembered Deschauffours because he, like Pascal, molested boys and used violence. They forgot about Diot and Lenoir, arrested before but executed after the "kidnapping" riots of 1750, analyzed in Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, Logiques de la foule: L'Affaire des enlèvements d'enfants (Paris, 1988). On these three cases see Maurice Lever, Les Bûchers de Sodome: Histoire des "infâmes'"(Paris, 1985).
2. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'à nos jours, 36 vols. (1780-9; reprint Westmead, 1970), 23: 241-2 [13 October 1783]. The authors remembered Deschauffours because he, like Pascal, molested boys and used violence. They forgot about Diot and Lenoir, arrested before but executed after the "kidnapping" riots of 1750, analyzed in Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, Logiques de la foule: L'Affaire des enlèvements d'enfants (Paris, 1988). On these three cases see Maurice Lever, Les Bûchers de Sodome: Histoire des "infâmes'"(Paris, 1985).
3. Mémoires secrets pour servir à l'histoire de la république des lettres en France depuis 1762 jusqu'à nos jours, 36 vols. (1780-9; reprint Westmead, 1970), 23: 241-2 [13 October 1783]. The authors remembered Deschauffours because he, like Pascal, molested boys and used violence. They forgot about Diot and Lenoir, arrested before but executed after the "kidnapping" riots of 1750, analyzed in Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, Logiques de la foule: L'Affaire des enlèvements d'enfants (Paris, 1988). On these three cases see Maurice Lever, Les Bûchers de Sodome: Histoire des "infâmes'"(Paris, 1985).
4. In an untitled chapter about what he called "deplorable vices," "monstrous errors," and "unbelievable turpitudes," Louis Sebastien Mercier noted that "the magistrate who keeps a secret register of those who betray the laws of nature may be alarmed by their number." Le Tableau de Paris, 4 vols. (Paris, 1782), 3: 130-3.
5. See the extensive bibliography of secondary literature on homosexuality in early modern Europe available through my web page (http://www.uwm.edu/People/jmerrick).
6. Registers of disorderly behavior compiled from the papers of Marc René de Voyer d'Argenson, lieutenant-general of police of Paris from 1697 to 1718, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection Clairambault 984-5; records of police entrapment and interrogation (1715-50), Bibliothèque de l'Arsénal, Archives de la Bastille 10254-60; papers of commissioner Foucault, Archives Nationales, Y13407 (1780), 13408 (1781), 13409 (1782), 13410 (1783). Dates in parentheses in the text and the notes refer to these unpublished and unpaginated papers.
7. One report (8 March 1782) mentioned B ... de M ..., presumably the actor Boutet de Monvel, who, according to Mémoires secrets, 17: 274 [27 June 1781], left the country after the police had arrested him for the fifth time.
8. On commissioners, inspectors, and agents, see Alan Williams, The Police of Paris, 1718-89 (Baton Rouge, 1979).
9. The agent Antoine (14 September and 5 December 1782) could be the "famous pederast" Antoine (11 April 1781) or the twenty-five-year-old shoemaker or jeweler Jacques Antoine, who was arrested after accosting "one of Mr. Noël's men" (21 August 1781).
10. After Foucault's death in 1783, Noël collaborated with commissioner Convers-Desormeaux. See AN Y11722. Bryant Ragan is working on a comprehensive prosopographical study of eighteenth-century Parisian pederasty cases. Our documentary volume on same-sex relations in early modern France, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, will include material from the police records as well as many other types of sources.
11. Perhaps the wigmaker's assistant exaggerated, since the agent who made the arrest reported that Rassant was no more than ready to stick his hand into the young man's pants.
12. See Joseph de Corcia, "Bourg, Bourgeois, Bourgeois de Paris from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Modern History 50 (1978): 207-33.
13. Saint-Clément had described himself to the eighteen-year-old as a servant, in order to protect his good name, encourage familiarity, avoid the expectation of payment or the possibility of blackmail?
14. Because the parish registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials were destroyed in 1871, there are no reliable demographic figures for Paris. Studies based on other sources and other cities indicate that most men married in their late twenties and that the percentage of men who remained unmarried increased in the course of the eighteenth century.
15. One man arrested on the boulevards, who talked himself out of custody, mentioned his wife and child (26 December 1782). Another, who ended up in prison, told the police that he was following a prostitute, but they concluded that he was a pederast because of his costume (21 November 1782).
16. On taverns and urban disorder, see Thomas Brennan, Public Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, 1988).
17. These cases are more informative that the ones involving entrapment. One of Noël's agents testified that Claude Baurin had suggested that they go into the Champs-Elysées in order "to have a good time together" (25 December 1781). Louis Cabares (14 September 1782) and Henri Hurzel (5 December 1782) made "indecent popositions," not recorded in the reports, to another agent.
18. Two men allegedly corrupted Swiss guards, which suggests that Swiss guards could be corrupted (23 December 1780 and 4 January 1781). Another man offered money to a guard in the Champs-Elysées, first to have sex with him and then to let him go (8 September 1782).
19. When Clarard ran into Buterlin on the boulevards six weeks later the count wanted to take him to Russia. Chauvot, like Robinet, procured for Buterlin (15 October 1780).
20. Erica Marie Benabou's La Prostitution et la police des moeurs au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1987) includes a few pages (180-6) on homosexual prostitution, but this subject has not been investigated systematically.
21. Noël described a pederast named Langlois as a friend of Thibouville's servant nicknamed Lajeunesse (27 November 1780). Thibouville's landlord, the marquis de Villette, was probably the most notorious sodomite of his generation. André Laurent, secretary of Villette's wife, was arrested with another man under the trees in the Champs-Elysées (7 June 1782). On Villette see Jeffrey Merrick, "The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle de Raucourt: Representations of Male and Female Homosexuality in Late Eighteenth-Century France," in Homosexuality in Modern France, ed. Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant Ragan (New York, 1996), 30-53.
22. Viennet is mentioned in one other report (15 March 1781). He plays a prominent role in the pamphlet Les Enfants de Sodome à l'Assemblée Nationale, published in 1790. For additional references to abbés see the reports dated 28 January, 10 February, and 6 October 1781, and 8 March 1782.
23. Another forty-two-year-old man followed his giton into the army (10 November 1781). This word, derived from the name of a character in the Satiricon of Petronius, generally referred to younger males who played the "passive" role in sexual relations between men. See Claude Courouve, Vocabulaire de l'homosexualité masculine (Paris, 1985), 118-20.
24. Foucault and Noël did not explain what they made of the fact that they found the soldier Laplanche's uniform in another man's room (25 September 1781).
25. The police did not interrogate François Lelouze, for example, "in order not to let him know the reason why he was arrested" (4 January 1782). For a case of a man arrested by mistake, see the report dated 22 April 1781.
26. Foucault's papers contain two other reference to Versailles. One man visited Paris with the intention of soliciting and taking "recruits" back to Versailles (8 November 1781). Another visited Versailles to debauch "young folk" for a count in Picardy (8 March 1782).
27. Saint-André reported that Borin had touched his hand, told him it was cold, and taken it in his own to warm it.
28. Others used the same excuse (23 April 1781 and 13 December 1782). The more imaginative Lafosse (not the jeweler) explained that he had fallen asleep in the Champs-Elysées after eating and drinking with another man and that he had unbuttoned his pants because they were too tight (10 July 1782).
29. Foucault's papers include a considerable amount of raw material for the study of the elusive subject of friendship. A clerk named Clier stated that he had met a soldier named Martin at a tavern in the neighborhood of La Courtille, where they spoke to each other because they were seated at adjacent tables, and that they had been "friends" from that time on. When Foucault asked if he was "intimitely associated" with anyone else, Clier replied that he was "always alone" wirh Martin, which evidently suggested to the commissioner that they were more than just friends (14 January 1781).
30. Several men accused individuals of making false accusations against them for personal reasons (5 December 1780, 4 January and 15 May 1781, and 8 February 1782).
31. During his interrogation Percheron stated that he had never had sexual relations with men and denied all the charges against him (3 April 1783).
32. The brother told the commissioner that the assailant lived in a wigmaker's house in the rue Saint-Honoré. Less than a week later Noël searched the apartment of one Lefevre in a wigmaker's house in that street but found no relevant evidence. He asked Lefevre "various questions," not recorded in the report, and concluded that the assailant was a disreputable character named Valoux (30 January 1781). Valoux was arrested by Noël on 5 February and asked by Foucault on 10 February if he had encountered an apprentice cook when he lived in the apartment of his friend Lefevre.
33. According to this report Prainguet was arrested on 11, 15, 18, and 20 October, but his name is not mentioned in the reports of the pederasty patrols on the 15th and the 18th.
34. When Foucault sent men to prison he never wrote down how many days, weeks, or months they would spend there, but he did mention the length of previous imprisonments in the cases of some recidivists.
35. The cautious Foucault also asked his superior to decide what to do with two priests, a lawyer named Tessier, and a secrétaire du roi named Desestre. Lenoir imprisoned one priest and instructed the other to leave Paris, released Tessier, and warned Desestre to be "more circumspect" in the future (13 December 1782).
36. Quoted by Jacques Peuchet, Mémoires tirés des archives de police de Paris, 6 vols. (Paris, 1838), 1: 290, from manuscripts given to him by Lenoir.
37. See Bryant Ragan, "The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality," and Michael Sibalis, "The Regulation of Male Homosexuality in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, 1789-1815," in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality, 8-29 and 80-101, respectively.
38. See Bryant Ragan, "The Enlightenment Confronts Homosexuality," and Michael Sibalis, "The Regulation of Male Homosexuality in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, 1789-1815," in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality, 8-29 and 80-101, respectively.
39. Brothers Armand and Placide denied the charges. Placide declared that "there could be no suspicions about this crime except with respect to b[rother] Cofans," who, like the other adolescent novice, had joined the army after his expulsion from the monastery (14 April 1783).
40. See Michel Rey, "Les Sodomites parisiens au XVIIIe siècle," mémoire de maîtrise, Paris VIII, 1980, as well as the articles based on his thesis and additional research: "Justice, police, et sodomie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle," in Droit, histoire, et sexualité, ed. Jacques Poumarède and Jean Pierre Royer (Paris, 1987), 175-84; "Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700-1750: The Police Archives," in Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexual Behavior during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Maccubbin (Cambridge, 1987), 179-91; "Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris: From Sin to Disorder," in The Pursuit of Sodomy in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York, 1989), 129-46.
41. See Michel Rey, "Les Sodomites parisiens au XVIIIe siècle," mémoire de maîtrise, Paris VIII, 1980, as well as the articles based on his thesis and additional research: "Justice, police, et sodomie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle," in Droit, histoire, et sexualité, ed. Jacques Poumarède and Jean Pierre Royer (Paris, 1987), 175-84; "Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700-1750: The Police Archives," in Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexual Behavior during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Maccubbin (Cambridge, 1987), 179-91; "Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris: From Sin to Disorder," in The Pursuit of Sodomy in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York, 1989), 129-46.
42. See Michel Rey, "Les Sodomites parisiens au XVIIIe siècle," mémoire de maîtrise, Paris VIII, 1980, as well as the articles based on his thesis and additional research: "Justice, police, et sodomie à Paris au XVIIIe siècle," in Droit, histoire, et sexualité, ed. Jacques Poumarède and Jean Pierre Royer (Paris, 1987), 175-84; "Parisian Homosexuals Create a Lifestyle, 1700-1750: The Police Archives," in Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexual Behavior during the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Maccubbin (Cambridge, 1987), 179-91; "Police and Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century Paris: From Sin to Disorder," in The Pursuit of Sodomy in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe, ed. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma (New York, 1989), 129-46.
43. See, most recently, Randolph Trumbach, "Are Modern Western Lesbian Women and Gay Men a Third Gender?" in A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Martin Duberman (New York, 1997), 87-99. This article includes references to others by the same author, most notably "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture," in Third Sex/Third Gender, ed. Gilbert Herdt (Chicago, 1994), 111-36.
44. See, most recently, Randolph Trumbach, "Are Modern Western Lesbian Women and Gay Men a Third Gender?" in A Queer World: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Martin Duberman (New York, 1997), 87-99. This article includes references to others by the same author, most notably "London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture," in Third Sex/Third Gender, ed. Gilbert Herdt (Chicago, 1994), 111-36.
45. See Jeffrey Merrick, "Sodomitical Inclinations in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris," Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1997): 289-95.
46. On gens de la Manchette, see Courouve, Vocabulaire, 156-8.