I've been looking through a history of French prisons, with illustrations. There are multiple editions online at either Google Books or BnF, including an 1845 edition under the title "
Les bagnes: histoire, types, moeurs, mystères", credited to Maurice Alhoy and an expanded 1878 edition under the title "
Histoire des bagnes, depuis leur création jusqu'à nos jours : Brest, Toulon, Rochefort, Lorient, Cayenne, Nouvelle-Calédonie", credited to Pierre Zaccone. Same illustrations, but in better quality in the earlier 1845 edition. There is an even earlier edition from 1830 limited to only the Rochefort prison but the copy at BnF is terrible quality.
The text is very long (the 1878 edition is over 1000 pages in two volumes) and of limited interest, as are most of the illustrations. However, there are a few nice ones that fit into this thread: a couple of brandings of young women, a female prisoner being stripped, and a pear of anguish used as a gag by burglars on the lady of the house:
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I have said that the text of this book is of limited interest, but checking out the Wikipedia entry for "
pear of anguish", I was intrigued to find that its earliest reference is to a 1639 book on the history of thieves, where a robber called "Capitaine Gaucherou de Palioly" supposedly used it in his burgleries. There are little more references until Alexandre Dumas's musketeers sequel "Twenty Years Later" from 1845, where it is used in a prison escape.
That made me wonder why we have an illustration of the use of a pear of anguish on a bourgoise lady in an 1845 book, and as I know that pears (whether oral or vaginal) are of great interest to CF authors, I searched the book for context for the illustration. I found this jolly anecdote (Google translated from French, with light editing from me for readbility):
Never, it is said, has the audacity of criminals gone so far as now, and yet there is no lack of proof which gives the advantage in cruelty to the means of the preceding generations of criminals.
The chronicles preserve the memory of the pear of anguish used among thieves of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This instrument, which had the shape of the fruit from which it took its name, was introduced by force into the mouth of the person they wanted to rob: internal springs made open the bulb, which then held the patient's mouth open and prevented him from calling out relief. To put an end to these anxieties, a specially made key had to come and relax your springs.
We read in the general inventory of the history of thieves that the author of this diabolical invention was a Languedocian, named Pallioli, a renowned thief whom a local locksmith from Paris served as best he could. The first victim on whom he used instruments was a large, opulent bourgeois from the area around Place Royale. One day, he was alone in his house with a lackey Pallioli came knocking at his door, accompanied by three other scoundrels like him. The lackey, taking them for a few gentlemen, went to warn his master, who was still in bed, and brought him into the room; as they remained there for some time, they consulted together as to what they should practice in this; some wanted to kill the bourgeois, others did not.
On this dispute the bourgeois arrives and asks them what they wanted. Pallioli takes him by the hand and pulls him aside with these words filled with blasphemy and strange swearing: “Sir, it is necessary that I kill you or that you give me what we ask of you: we are poor soldiers who are forced to live this way, since now we have no other exercise."
The bourgeois, surprised, thought of shouting thief! But, instantly, the three others ran up, and grabbed him, made him open his mouth, and put their pear of anguish inside, which, at the same time, opened and came loose, making you become poor man like a gaping statue, and opening his mouth without being able to cry or speak except through his eyes. It was then that Pallioli took the keys from his pocket, and opened a cabinet where he saw two bags of pistols, which having done in the very sight of the bourgeois, God knows what anguish the poor man had, and what sadness to see thus taking away his property, without being able to say a word, apart from the fact that the instrument caused him great pain; because the more he tried to withdraw it and remove it from his mouth, the more he widened and opened it: so that he had nothing to do other than to beg with signs the said jokers to take away from him what he had in his mouth.
But, having returned the keys to his office, they left with his money. The patient, seeing them outside, began to go and look for his neighbors, and showed them by gestures that he had been robbed; he brought in locksmiths who tried to file the said pear of anguish; but the more they filed, the more torment she caused him; because, even outside, there were points which entered his flesh. He remained in this state until the next day, when he received from Pallioli the blessed key, and a letter thus written:
“Sir, I did not want to mistreat you, nor to be the cause of your death. Here is the key of the instrument that is in your mouth; it will deliver you from this bad fruit. I know very well that this will have given you a little trouble; I do not stop being your servant for this reason."
Some time later, Pallioli wanted to repeat the experiment on a rich dowager; but the noble lady made such efforts, and had, says the chronicle, such a powerful jaw, that she broke the spring, and called for help in time to make the brigands abandon the loot they had already taken.
So, that appears to be the story from the 1639 book on thieves, with a slightly different spelling for the main villain. Disappointingly, all the detail is on the use on a male victim, with the female victim shown in the illustration being restricted to a throwaway mention at the end. At least she was feisty enough to beat the thieves off. Altogether a pretty unlikely story, especially with leaving the gag behind in the victim's mouth when they get away. Aren't there easier and cheaper ways of gagging somebody? They weren't event trying to extort any information by torture.
Still, the story is consistent with what Wikipedia says: the early pears opened by spring and were closed with a key, not the other way around. Also, this book is a likely source for Dumas to have learned about the pear -- it came out in the same year as the Dumas novel, and as we know that Dumas did a lot of research on French prisons ("The Count of Monte Cristo" demonstrates this, written at the very same time) he more than likely owned a copy of this book.
