Crossword-Solution: BAGNES 6 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

The government at last hit on the plan of sending to the _bagnes_ of Toulon and Brest for several of the turnkeys and gaolers of those great convict _dépôts_, to whom the features of all their former prisoners were perfectly known.

And what a leveller is play! He who whispers in the ear of the Crown Prince yonder is a branded felon from the Bagnes de Brest; the dark-whiskered man yonder, who leans over the lady's chair, is an escaped forger; the Carlist noble is asking friendly counsel of a Christino spy; the London pickpocket offers his jewelled snuff-box to an Archduke of Austria.

These prisons received all sentenced to short terms of imprisonment, the long-term convicts going to the _bagnes_ (the great convict prisons at the arsenals of Rochefort, Brest and Toulon), while in 1851 transportation to penal colonies was adopted.

Shore prisons were, however, provided for them, known as _bagnes_, baths, a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (_bagno_), and said to have been derived from the prison at Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there.

The forest--the cave--the animal! What were we but children of the outer dark, condemned from the start of time, our faces ground hard against the flints, our feet bogged in hag and mire? There must have been several hundreds of the convicts in the yard, and yet I was told later that it was not a fourth of the misery that Bicêtre held, and that scores were leaving weekly for the _bagnes_--the hulks at Toulon and at Brest--while others took their places.