Anatomy of a Massacre

Abstract

This article describes the massacre of 35 women in the Paris Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in September 1792. The killing of the women in the city's largest prison-hospital complex for women was a unique event in the French Revolution's history because it was the only all-female institution targeted during the September Massacres. Using archival documents, the author explores what the violence against women in Salpêtrière suggests about gender and punishment at the dawn of modernity.