The Haunting History of The Paris Morgue with Catriona Byers

If you were visiting Paris today, you’d probably find yourself walking past the love padlocks on the Pont des Arts, walking through Notre Dame and a mile on from there you’d be at the Louvre. If you were in Paris in the 1880s, there would be an altogether different attraction that you would almost certainly have found yourself in. The “only free theatre in Paris”, otherwise known as the La Morgue. The morgue first opened its doors to the public in 1804 on Île de la Cité, before moving to a new and larger building behind Notre Dame in 1864, where a memorial now sits. The location of the morgue was no accident: being in the epicentre of Paris and right next to the Seine, the morgue was in a good position to receive both the dead and the living. Many of the bodies, which were picked up off the streets or fished out of the Seine, were unidentifiable, so the public were ostensibly allowed in to help with their identification.

At the time, Paris was changing; it was becoming a more social, less divided city. Sigmund Freud described it in 1885 as a place where, “I don’t think they know the meaning of shame or fear; the women no less than the men crowd round nudities as much as they do round corpses in the morgue”. People of all ages and classes were beginning to socialise on the streets of Paris and in its local attractions. The morgue became one of the places to see and be seen and, since the morgue was open seven days a week, from dawn to 6pm, many Parisian residents became regular visitors right along with the tourists.

Joining me today is historian Catriona Byers who specialises in urban death, policing, medicine and photography from the nineteenth-century to the present day. She’s currently working on a PhD at King’s College London, focusing on the morgues of Paris and New York from 1864-1914. We were able to chat about the history of the morgue and some of the tragic stories of people who passed through there. We also examine how it was more than just a popular attraction as we examine the role it played in modern policing and forensics and more...

Thank you for listening.

Guest information:

Website: https://www.catbyers.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/heymorguegirl

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heymorguegirl/

If you want to get your hands on The Feminine Macabre Volume I, II, III or IV then make sure to take a look at https://spookeats.com/femininemacabre/ or via Amazon. You can explore my chapter titled, 'In Search of the Medieval' in Volume III.

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