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Origin and history

The Hospital de la Charité de Senlis originated in a vow made in 1647 by Jacques Joly, a priest and lawyer from Senlis. By a notarial act, he bequeaths his property to create a hospital, but his gift is insufficient. After his death in 1652, the religious of Paris Charity, of the order of the hospitals of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, tried to acquire a building in Senlis, but faced legal and financial problems, including a fraud linked to the property of the hotel of the Paon, dependent on the abbey of Chaalis. Senlis's skeptics imposed time limits on hospitals, which eventually obtained royal letters patent in 1668, allowing the official foundation of the hospital.

The establishment officially opened in 1670 with fifteen beds, financed by donations in the form of annuities. Initially intended for the poor and the sick, he quickly specializes in the reception of mentally ill and paying residents, including criminals with psychiatric disorders. The buildings gradually expanded, with a first chapel blessed in 1670 and a church built between 1706 and 1715, after the demolition of the first chapel, which was the victim of bad manners. The hospital also develops services for disabled soldiers and traumatized officers, while maintaining an infirmary for indigent patients.

Under the Old Regime, Senlis Charity is distinguished by rigorous management and innovative psychiatric specialization. Pensioners, often interned on royal or family orders, receive humanist care, including adapted diets (freedom, semi-freedom, confinement) and therapeutic activities such as reading or playing. The hospital generates income thanks to the affluent residents, allowing continuous expansions until 1752. Despite tensions with local authorities over tax exemptions, he remained the only religious establishment in Senlis spared by the Revolution, thanks to its social utility.

The Revolution transformed the hospital into a civil Hospice of Charity in 1792, before its merger with the Saint-Lazare Hospital in 1833. The buildings, sold to the city and the Oise department, were reconverted: the infirmary became a school, the church a museum, and psychiatric wings a prison in 1840. Ranked a historic monument in 1942, the site suffered destruction during the First World War, including the Conventual building on Rue de la République. Today, some of the premises are home to housing, while the abandoned church awaits a new vocation.

Architecturally, the hospital combines classicism and functionality. The church, facing south-north to adapt to the terrain, has a baroque facade with pilasters and triangular pediment. The infirmary of 1708, equipped with a tower in frame, and the psychiatric wings, with austere facades on the street but bright side of the courtyard, reflect the evolution of medical needs. The cellars, the underground ossuary and the traces of the prison transformations (1843) bear witness to the multiple lives of this place, a symbol of the progress and contradictions of pre-modern mental medicine.

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