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Camille Claudel’s thirty years of confinement
Camille Claudel confined 30 years at her family's request despite physicians' notes supporting release
Read each occurrence in context. Evidence labels below are the labels recorded by the source edition; importing a row does not independently verify it.
Account 1
Worldwide register by region (Batch 2) · Batch 2
- Country / period
- France, 1913–1943
- Mechanism
- Family-initiated commitment (loi de 1838)
- What is documented
- Camille Claudel confined 30 years at her family's request despite physicians' notes supporting release
- Finding or status
- Archival record (Montdevergues)
- Contrary evidence / limits
- Her diagnosis is itself contested; not a political case
- Label
- LEAD
Account 2
Worldwide register by region (Batch 2) · Batch 9
- Jurisdiction / date
- France, 10 Mar 1913 – 19 Oct 1943
- Mechanism
- Placement volontaire under the loi du 30 juin 1838 — family-requested admission on one physician's certificate; the committed person acquired the legal status of a minor
- What is documented
- Dr Michaux signed the certificate on 7 Mar 1913, five days after her father's death; her mother requested the placement and her brother Paul initiated it; admitted to Ville-Évrard, transferred to Montdevergues in Sept 1914; the 1914 admission certificate recorded "systematic persecution delusion"; biographers and psychiatrist Michel Deveaux record that doctors considered her releasable in the 1920s and that the family refused; the press at the time questioned the severity of the measure and the 1838 law; visitors described her as lucid; she stopped sculpting and died in the asylum
- Finding or status
- Museum chronology and standard biographies (Musée Camille Claudel, "1909–1943: period of confinement"; The Conversation, comparing the Spears conservatorship)
- Limits
- She had shown symptoms since at least 1905–1911; the dispute is over the 30-year duration against medical advice, not the initial admission; motives attributed to the family (protecting Paul's career, inheritance) are inference
- Label
- DISPUTED on motive; VERIFIED on duration and family control
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Reference and provenance
1913-FR-CLAUDEL